DEFA's Positive Heroes

Home , Angel Wagenstein, DEFA, Erwin Geschonneck, Hermann Axen, Herwig Kipping, Kurt Maetzig

“Wir sind Geburtshelfer eines neuen Lebens”: DEFA’s Positive Heroes

Anna Louise Stainton

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures University of Toronto

‘Wir sind Geburtshelfer eines neuen Lebens’: DEFA’s Positive Heroes

Anna Louise Stainton

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

University of Toronto

2019 Abstract Of the catalogue of feature films produced by the German Democratic Republic’s state- owned production studio, DEFA (Deutsche Filmaktiengesellschaft), the most well-known and well-studied are its antifascist films. However, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to the protagonists of these films and their function as role models (Vorbilder) and representatives of the East German state and its ideology. These figures may be referred to as positive heroes: a term from Soviet literature which describes a character who embodies dedication to socialist ideology and the Party, as well as an ideal of socialist leadership. This dissertation examines the portrayals of positive heroes in DEFA films from the late 1940s—prior even to the founding of the GDR—through to the early 1990s, when

DEFA’s final films post-German reunification were produced. I begin with an analysis of

DEFA’s most important project in its first decade, Kurt Maetzig’s two biographical films about Ernst Thälmann, in which I argue that positive heroism in DEFA films is made up of two connected character types: the symbolic hero, who represents the Party, State, and ideology, and the role model or Vorbild, who represents a locus of identification for the spectator. Using a framework based on Žižekian psychoanalytical theory, I argue furthermore that these character types play a significant role in the ideological mission of iii antifascist films: to construct and disseminate specific forms of socialist, East German identity. Moreover, my analysis of the portrayals of positive heroes highlights the underlying contradictions within the GDR’s doctrine of antifascism, and thus in its foundational narrative.

Acknowledgments

My deepest thanks to all those who have contributed their support, advice, and time during the research and writing process of this dissertation. In particular:

TO MY THESIS SUPERVISOR Professor Stefan Soldovieri Whose enthusiastic support and invaluable suggestions made this thesis possible

TO MY THESIS COMMITTEE Professor John Noyes and Professor Angelica Fenner For their detailed comments and thought-provoking questions

TO THOSE WHO HAVE PROVIDED GRANTS AND FUNDING TOWARDS THIS RESEARCH The University of Toronto Faculty of Arts and Science, School of Graduate Studies, JIGES, and the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

TO ALL MY FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES who have volunteered their time, resources, and attention during the research and writing of this thesis Yasmin Aly, Katrin Bahr, Dr. Christin Bohnke, Dr. Rosemary Deller, Professor John Lessard, Dr. Lara Pehar, Konstanze Schiller, Dr. Vasuki Shanmuganathan, and Eugenia Siegel.

TO MY FAMILY Marion, Clive, and Elisabeth Stainton For their love and support

And finally, TO MY HUSBAND Marcel Thach Who has always believed in me, and without whose endless patience and love, this work would not exist. v

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ...... iv Table of Contents ...... v List of Figures ...... vii DEFA’s Positive Heroes: An Introduction ...... 1 Theoretical Approach ...... 9 The Thälmann films: the symbolic hero and the Vorbild ...... 16 Mothers and martyrs ...... 19 The Mitläufer and the Masses...... 21 The decline of the positive hero...... 23 Aims ...... 25 Chapter 1: The Thälmann films: shaping the facets of the positive hero ...... 26 Production History ...... 29 Thälmann as a model leader...... 33 Thälmann or Hitler? ...... 47 Fiete and Änne as Vorbilder ...... 66 Chapter 2: Mothers and Martyrs: foregrounding the Vorbild...... 78 Socialist Mothers ...... 81 Mothers as Martyrs ...... 88 The Thälmann films: Änne as a socialist mother-martyr ...... 90 Senseless death: (not) dying for the cause in Rotation...... 94 The German Vaterland and ‘Mother Russia’ in Ich war neunzehn ...... 100 Mothers and Martyrs...... 115 Stepping forward, stepping back: generational transition in Stärker als die Nacht ...... 119 A vicious circle of martyrdom? Doubling and repetition in Die Toten bleiben jung ...... 130 Becoming a maternal Vorbild: Die Buntkarierten ...... 142 The didactic imperative of socialist motherhood...... 150 Conclusion ...... 152 Chapter 3: Mitläufer and conversion narratives: founding a socialist state on fascist ground ...... 154 Why examine Mitläufer narratives through the lens of religious conversion? ...... 163 Rambo’s ‘sequential stage model’ of conversion ...... 172 1. Context ...... 174 Context: The Mitläufer as working class ...... 176 vi

Context: The Mitläufer as a child ...... 177 Context: Fathers and sons ...... 180 Context: Second World War and the Third Reich ...... 183 2. Crisis ...... 187 Crisis: Warning Signs ...... 190 Crisis: Fathers, Sons, and the Oedipus Complex ...... 193 Crisis: Fascism, Socialism, and the Abject ...... 198 3. Quest ...... 205 Quest: the search for a symbolic father...... 210 Quest: liminal spaces and the abject ...... 217 Quest: a path to the socialist reign of law ...... 221 4-5: Encounter and Interaction ...... 222 Encounter and Interaction: enter the symbolic father ...... 226 Encounter and Interaction: the symbolic father as fetish ...... 232 Encounter and Interaction: two outcomes ...... 236 6-7: Commitment and Consequences ...... 238 Commitment and Consequences: framing stories and happy endings ...... 240 Commitment and Consequences: rituals, the abject, and the consequences of commitment ...... 244 Commitment and consequences: borderline commitments and inadequate fathers ...... 252 Commitment and Consequences: the death of the father, the madness of the son ...... 255 Conclusion: the masses and the reign of law ...... 260 Chapter 4: Hollow heroes: DEFA in the 80s and 90s ...... 264 Ambiguous Mitläufer: trapped in space and time ...... 268 Der Aufenthalt: a "heterotopia of deviation" ...... 270 The paradox at the root of the reign of law: Dein unbekannter Bruder ...... 279 Stielke, Heinz, fünfzehn: identity in crisis...... 292 Stalin no more ...... 308 Zwischen Pankow und Zehlendorf: finding the middle ground ...... 309 Das Land hinter dem Regenbogen: escaping Stalin ...... 321 Conclusion ...... 336 DEFA’s Positive Heroes: Conclusion ...... 338 Bibliography ...... 343 Filmography ...... 352

vii

List of Figures

Figure 1 ...... 51 Figure 2 ...... 51 Figure 3 ...... 55 Figure 4 ...... 57 Figure 5 ...... 57

DEFA’s Positive Heroes: An Introduction With the end of the Third Reich and the death of Hitler, a huge hole was ripped in the fabric of German identity. In both Soviet- and Allied-occupied Germany, the German people were compelled to rethink what it meant to be German and to develop specific ways of remembering and dealing with their past prior to 1945—ways that differed between the occupied zones. As these zones became two separate states, the question of German identity became irrevocably tied to how each state went about memorialising Germany’s past. Each of the occupying powers had their own interest in establishing and propagating certain policies of memory, and these policies continued after the end of the occupation, with the formation of the two German states. The best known of these approaches to memory is the West German concept of Vergangenheitsbewältigung: the attempt to work through the mistakes of the past and the acceptance of guilt, shame, and responsibility for those mistakes.1 East Germany had a markedly different approach to memory, which was connected to the GDR’s official stance concerning responsibility for—and complicity in— the Third Reich. The government of the fledgling socialist state promoted the idea of a shared history of resistance and antifascism, positioning the perpetrators of German fascism as an Other to be rooted out and exposed, and representing West Germany as a continuation of the Third Reich: an imperialist, capitalist state.

In the first two decades after the founding of the GDR, the project of antifascism became one of the most important mandates of the state-run film production company, the

Deutsche Filmaktiengesellschaft (DEFA). The project, spearheaded by the state and

1 The success of Vergangenheitsbewältigung in practice has been repeatedly and publicly questioned, most notably in Theodor Adorno’s essay “The Meaning of Working through the Past”, in: Adorno, Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords.

2 embraced by East Germans in need of positive representations of Germanness, resulted in an entire genre of antifascist films. These films played a key role in the state’s identity politics, strengthening and solidifying the national myth of an antifascist East versus the fascist West.

From the beginning of the Soviet occupation of East Germany, it was recognised that film had a key role to play in the antifascist ideological education of the German masses. As

Richard Taylor notes, film had long been understood to be an important propaganda tool in the Soviet Union: ‘The Soviet authorities were concerned with cinema not as a revolutionary art form so much as a revolutionary medium for political communication.

Lenin himself is supposed to have remarked, “Of all the arts, for us cinema is the most important.”’2 It was an efficient means of reaching the masses, especially in 1920s Russia, when many were still illiterate. Films had mass appeal and were accessible in a way that literature or other forms of propaganda were not. Consequently, the Soviet forces were quick to approve of appropriate film productions in occupied Germany, beginning with Die

Mörder sind unter uns (1946).

The East German film production studio, DEFA, came into existence in May 1946, when it was founded with approval from the Soviet occupying forces. Between 1946 and

1948, the films produced often dealt with the contemporary situation of their viewers. As

Thomas Heimann notes: ‘Die Künstler führten Figuren in die Handlung ein, die für viele im

Kinopublikum Identifikationsmöglichkeiten bereitstellten: heimkehrende Soldaten und

Kriegsgefangene, Flüchtlinge und “Umsiedler”, alleinstehende Frauen, elternlose Kinder und Jugendliche, die such in der Trümmerwelt der Städte bewegten und z. T. noch die

2 Taylor 1983, 445 3 verlogenen Erziehungsideale des nationalsozialistischen Systems mit sich trugen.’3 These so-called “Rubble films” did not usually contain portrayals of explicitly socialist or communist characters. (Indeed, such films were made in both the SOZ/GDR as well as the

Allied Occupied Zone/FRG.) Instead, they showed characters who, through their experiences, had developed an antifascist point of view, either during or immediately after the war. Most of these projects were set in the contemporary, post-war period, and sought to represent individuals who chose the “right path” (of peaceful antifascism). This went some way to fulfilling the mission of film in the Soviet Occupied Zone of Germany, as set out by Befehl no. 51, issued on September 4, 1945:

‘Der Film als Massenkunst solle seinen Beitrag zum demokratischen Aufbau

Deutschlands und zur “Ausrottung der Reste des Nazismus und Militarismus aus

dem Gewissen eines jeden Deutschen, das Ringen um die Erziehung des deutschen

Volkes, insbesondere der Jugend, im Sinne der echten Demokratie und Humanität”

leisten und für Frieden und Völkerverständigung werben.’4

Nevertheless, antifascist films, while playing an important role in fulfilling this mandate, did not make up the majority of films produced by DEFA. DEFA produced only 12-15 feature films per year,5 of which only two or three might be historical antifascist films in any given year. Recognizing that there was a demand among the film-viewing public for other genres, DEFA also made feature films in genres such as comedies, musicals, and

(particularly from the 1970s onwards) Alltagsfilme, which dealt with the daily lives of GDR citizens. Furthermore, the GDR added to its domestic production with films from abroad, as

3 Heimann, 60 4 Heimann, 51 5 Heiduschke, 25 4

Sebastian Heiduschke notes: ‘it was necessary to import films and fill East Germany’s screens with productions from Eastern European comrades. Entering into film trade agreements with studios from Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia was fairly uncomplicated, and films from many of these countries attracted more viewers to East

German cinemas—especially when these films turned out to be more radical, innovative, and progressive than DEFA productions.’6 As such, DEFA’s antifascist productions played a fairly modest role in the film landscape of the GDR.

Despite this, antifascist films played an important role in DEFA’s mission. As Seán

Allan describes, prior to the official founding of the GDR, ‘although the majority of filmmakers working for DEFA […] were ideologically committed to an antifascist agenda, there was very little consensus as to the form such films should take.’7 After 7 October

1949, Allan notes, things began to change: ‘filmmakers at DEFA soon found that the fuzzy definitions of antifascism with which they had been working hitherto were to be subjected to a much greater degree of ideological control.’8 DEFA’s filmmakers were criticized for a lack of “positive heroes” and that their films were not representative of, nor educative enough in socialist ideology. Heimann notes one reason for this, that there was a

‘Widerspruch zwischen dem gewünschtem Bild der Partei über die gesellschaftliche bzw. kulturelle Realität und den tatsächlichen gesellschaftlichen Erfahrungshorizont der Masse der Bevölkerung.’9 Indeed, not only the “masses” but also the filmmakers themselves often did not fully understand how to go about incorporating the reality they saw with the

6 Heiduschke, 25 7 Allan 2015, 52 8 Allan 2015, 54 9 Heimann, 97 5

“correct” ideological perspective in film, or struggled to fulfill this aim when required to rely on “bourgeois” colleagues.10

What, exactly, did DEFA consider to be a positive hero? The term itself can be traced back to the Soviet Union, as Paul D. Morris eloquently describes:

‘As manifested in Soviet literature, the positive hero elevates the world as it is to as

it should be. His actions, tempered by unswerving devotion to the Party and its

philosophy make him a natural leader capable of inspiring the masses, for whom he

works, into struggle for the shining future determined by History as theirs. Thus, the

heroic qualities of the positive hero are rendered entirely functional as socialist

realism demands of its literature a positive example of revolutionary consciousness

and, relatedly, of adherence to the Party and its ideology.

The functionality of the positive hero in relation to the needs of the Party is

further related to the concept of historicity. Here the positive hero of individual

works was expected to embody the ideals and the social needs of the community as

determined by the Party and its conception of the historical moment. […] The

positive hero, then, is intended in socialist realism to provide not simply a positive

example and to incarnate the positive ideals for the author and his or her work, but

also to reflect the historical state of social development as determined by the

Party.’11

10 One problem for DEFA at this time was the acknowledged lack of qualified film professionals who were at the same time convinced socialists. As a result, many of DEFA’s employees (and even some directors) had previously worked for UFA and were not yet convinced of socialism, but simply needed a job. See Heimann, 99-100 11 Morris, 93 6

The references to positive heroism by DEFA functionaries in its early years certainly follow in this vein, if with less specificity. At a September 1952 conference dedicated to discussing the future of film in the GDR, for example, the role of the positive hero was repeatedly discussed. Hermann Axen, secretary of the Zentralkomitee (ZK), in his opening speech, proposes that the success of socialist realist films rests on their portrayals of positive heroes. As Thomas Heimann notes, the conference served to cement DEFA’s direction as pro-socialist realism and against formalism, with the positive hero playing a key role: ‘Die Darstellung des positiven Helden sei wesentliches Vehikel, um ein vollendetes

Kunstwerk zu schaffen, das den gesellschaftlichen Ausweg verkünde. Nur jene Held widerspiegele dies, der “optimistisch und zukunftsfroh” die Kinomassen begeistere und

überzeuge.’12

However, Axen’s definition of a positive hero, in contrast to Morris’s description above, is both broad and rather vague:

‘Die positiven Helden der Kunst des sozialistischen Realismus sind vor allem die

Angehörigen der fortschrittlichsten Klasse, der Arbeiterklasse, ihre Führer und

Kämpfer, ihre Helden; es sind die hervorragenden Arbeiter in der Produktion.

Positive Helden sind die werktätigen Bauern, die Bauern unserer

Produktionsgenossenschaften; sind die Angehörigen unserer Intelligenz, diese

Träger von Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technik. Positive Helden der Vergangenheit

sind alle Großen unseres Volkes und die lichten Gestalten der großen literarischen

Werke unserer fortschrittlichen Dichter und Schriftsteller.’13

He goes on to add:

12 Heimann, 135 13 Axen, “Über die Fragen der fortschrittlichen deutschen Filmkunst,” 31-32 7

‘unsere positiven Helden geraten in Konflikte, haben Fehler und Schwächen; sie

werden erzogen und gestählt. Sie sind niemals fertige Helden, aber sie sind

einheitlicher als Marquis Posa oder Don Carlos, denn sie sind innerlich nicht

zerrissen, selbst wenn sie im Kampf von den Feinden des Volkes physisch zerrissen

werden.’14

By his definition, large swathes of the population of the GDR counted as positive heroes— but the (rather heated) discussion surrounding Slatán Dudow’s film Frauenschicksale15

(1952), later in the conference, confirms that simply to portray members of the working class in film who are committed to socialism or antifascism was not enough for them to be considered positive heroes. In his closing remarks to the conference, he reiterates the point that the strength of the positive hero is key to the success of the film—but does not specify exactly what Dudow’s film was missing:

‘Gab es etwas Kühnes, gab es etwas Fortschrittliches im Film “Frauenschicksale” von

Dudow? Zweifellos, aber mehr als die Absicht und mehr als Ansätze, wie Genosse

Rodenberg gesagt hat, ist nicht herausgekommen. Was ist das Entscheidende? Nicht

der negative Held, sondern welche Rolle spielt das positive Held. Und der positive

Held ist in diesem Film schwach geraten. Es besteht die Absicht, den positiven

Helden zu zeigen, aber er ist nicht typisch, nicht kraftvoll.’16

14 Axen, “Über die Fragen der fortschrittlichen deutschen Filmkunst,” 32 15 Dudow’s film revolves around Conny, a West Berliner who starts relationships with multiple different women, then leaves them with the consequences of his actions— pregnant, dead, or, in the case of Renate Ludwig, implicated in criminal activities. Nevertheless, Renate is ultimately able to dedicate herself to the building of a socialist Germany instead. 16 Axen, “Schlußwort,” 163 8

This brief survey of Axen’s remarks, made at the conference which established socialist realism as the artistic direction of DEFA’s film production, demonstrates that the positive hero was of great importance. Furthermore, it shows that those functionaries at DEFA’s head and in positions of influence over it, while demanding better representation of positive heroism in its films, could not adequately articulate what it looked like in practice.

Axen, at the end of his remarks, calls for further discussion of the positive hero: ‘Der

Hauptfehler besteht darin, dass wir nicht in der DEFA-Kommission diesen prinzipiellen

Fehler der Schilderung der positiven Helden neben dramaturgischen Schwächen gründlich besprochen haben.’17 However, it is difficult to find evidence that demonstrates that this further discussion ever took place, at least in any documented meeting.

Why was this error considered to be so important by Axen and the other critics of

Dudow’s film at the conference? As Alan L. Nothnagle notes, ‘from the beginning, the KPD and the SED centered its antifascist propaganda around selected heroic figures.’18 This approach, as Nothnagle goes on to describe, stems from a speech made by Ernst Thälmann in 1932: ‘Why don't we celebrate our revolutionary heroes who fell in the battle for freedom? Why don't we celebrate our youth comrades Demare and the other young proletarians assassinated by French imperialism during the Rhein-Ruhr occupation? The example of these fighters, the brave risking of their lives for the cause of the proletarian freedom struggle—those are facts which can enthrall and inflame each and every young

Communist and young proletarian.’19 In other words, the positioning of positive heroes at the centre point of the antifascist project originates in the German context with Thälmann,

17 Axen, “Schlußwort,” 164 18 Nothnagle, 103 19 Thälmann, quoted in Nothnagle, 104 9 a figure who, in fictionalised form, became one of the most notable examples of DEFA’s positive heroes, as the first chapter of this dissertation argues.

This strong connection between antifascist film and positive heroism is the primary reason for the focus of this dissertation, which examines the portrayals of positive heroes in DEFA films set between 1918 and 1945. The key questions this dissertation aims to answer are as follows: How may we define positive heroism in DEFA films, based on how such characters are portrayed in the films in question? How do these portrayals reinforce antifascism as the key tenet of East German national identity and its foundational, legitimating narrative? And are there contradictions that underlie these portrayals?

Theoretical Approach In his opening speech to the 1952 conference, Axen quotes Zhdanow, the former head of propaganda in the Soviet Union: ‘Die Sowjetliteratur muß verstehen, unsere Helden zu gestalten, sie muß verstehen, einen Blick in unsere Zukunft zu werfen. Das wird keine

Utopie sein, denn unsere Zukunft wird durch planmäßige, bewußte Arbeit schon heute vorbereitet.’20 This concept, that the correct portrayal of heroes is directly connected to the successful future of ideological project of the state, is at the basis of the theoretical approach taken in this dissertation, which is centred around the work done by Slavoj Žižek on the concept of the ‘king’s body.’21 He takes up the idea that a king, as a real, existing person and as a repository of symbolism within a society, has two bodies: ‘the visible, material, transient body and another, sublime body, a body made of special, immaterial

20 Axen, “Über die Fragen der fortschrittlichen deutschen Filmkunst,” 33 21 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 253-273 10 stuff,’22 an idea grounded in Lacanian psychoanalysis. However, Žižek then extends this concept to the body of the totalitarian leader, specifically discussing not only Lenin, but also Stalin. The people’s revolution, in the formation of a socialist or communist state, results in the creation of a new, sublime body as a locus of power: the body of the People.

The totalitarian leader’s role is to act as the agent that enables the people to “give birth to” the People. Žižek states that ‘the [totalitarian] Leader assumes the role of a deputy from (of) the future; he acts as a medium through which the future, not yet existing People organizes its own conception.’23 Axen’s quoting of Zhdanow implies a connection with this ‘deputy from (of) the future’; that a ‘Blick in die Zukunft’ is necessary for the correct portrayal of heroes. The promise represented by the totalitarian Leader can thus be understood as being enacted or reinforced in portrayals of positive heroes, because they act as material proxies or substitutes for the location of the sublime body.

Julia Hell takes up this theme in her chapter 'Specters of Stalin, or Constructing

Communist Fathers,’ in which she connects Žižek’s theory to the literature of the GDR in its first two decades. She focuses on the idea of the 'empty locus of power.’24 In Žižek’s theory, this is what occurs when a king is replaced by a democracy: the sublime body of the king loses its material mainstay (since the king is not replaced by another absolute leader as successor), and, thus, is destroyed and never replaced. Hell translates this to the situation in Germany in 1945. Prior to this, German national identity had been focused around Hitler, and, earlier, the Kaiser. The occupation of Germany after Hitler’s death and the focus on not replacing Hitler with another fascist dictator meant that the resulting void could not be

22 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 255 23 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 262 24 Hell, 28 11 filled. Hell considers that Stalin’s physical absence from East Germany as the real centre of power left an ambiguous situation behind for East German identity formation. As she notes, it was ‘out of the question’ to propose a form of nationalism in East Germany based around the East German party and its leaders. ‘The people’s body was “polluted” by National

Socialism and therefore could not serve as a basis for a national narrative of popular resistance.’25 In other words, the People could not be born from the people of the GDR. By using portrayals of fictional (or fictionalised) socialist heroes in literature, who could temporarily act as proxy vessels for the sublime body and thereby act as points of identification for the people of the GDR, it was possible to avoid finding a permanent, physically present East German locus of power who would supplant Stalin.

This dissertation takes up this aspect of Hell’s interpretation of Žižek’s theory and considers how such proxies may function in DEFA cinema. However, my understanding and use of Žižek’s theory as a basis differs from Hell’s on multiple levels. Hell’s work focuses on family and connects the position of Stalin as the totalitarian leader of the GDR with another cultural phenomenon of the post-war period, that of the absent father. This refers to the widespread absence of a father figure in many families due to his death or imprisonment in a P.O.W. camp. It also indicates the problematic aspect of Stalin as agent of the birth of the

People in the GDR: he is permanently physically absent from East Germany, but politically irreplaceable in his position as the central figure of power in the new state. Hell explores how East German novels of the 1940s, 50s and 60s produced paternal narratives, in which socialist ideology is passed from father to son: these fictional fathers fill the gap in the formation of a post-war East German identity left not just by the absent fathers of families,

25 Hell, 29 12 but the absent (distanced) father of the state, Stalin. These father figures act as proxies or vessels for the location of the sublime body. The novels usually followed fathers and sons through several generations and created a socialist foundation in German history for the

GDR. They encouraged a tangible German, socialist, and antifascist identity that East

German readers could relate to and assume as their own.

While Hell’s use of Žižek’s theory is convincing when applied to the literary works examined in her book, such large-scale family narratives are not often found in GDR cinema. Unlike Hell, my thesis is not only concerned with the paternalistic role of specific characters, but rather with their wider function as positive heroes. As such, my work makes greater use of Žižek’s concept of the sublime body of the People by examining which characters (and character types) become proxy vessels for this body and by analysing how they are portrayed aesthetically and structurally in film. In the cinema of the GDR, this role of proxy for the sublime body of the leader does not often fall into the hands (and bodies!) of fictional fathers, but rather fictional leaders, heroes, and role models: characters presented in positions of authority, tasked with the moral and ideological guidance of their peers or younger protégés. These figures control and direct ideology (or are shown to attempt to) within the space of each film. They become a centre point for identification, as ideological loci of power.26

While it certainly makes sense in Hell’s work (which focuses on literature from the

1940s and 50s) to consider Stalin as the primary location for the sublime body, this is not the case in my project, since I propose to use Žižek’s theory as a basis for considering films made decades after Stalin’s death, as well as prior to it. While Stalin was, of course,

26 Hell, 29 13 replaced by other leaders of the USSR, none of these later leaders had the same resonance within the East German imaginary. This is partly due to the denunciation of the personality cult surrounding him after 1956. Susan Buck-Morss’ book, Dreamworld and Catastrophe:

The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West offers a solution to this. Underpinned by the

German political theorist Carl Schmitt, she describes the basis of sovereignty in any state.

Firstly, she states that ‘the act of identifying the enemy is the act of sovereignty’ and that ‘to define the enemy is, simultaneously, to define the collective. Defining the enemy is the act that brings the collective into being.’27 The interests of the people are reflected in the sovereign agent, who therefore has absolute power. ‘There is no collective until the

‘democratic’ sovereign—precisely in the act of naming the common enemy—calls that collective into being.’28 This is an act that sounds remarkably like Žižek’s totalitarian leader, who enables the body of the People to be born from the people of a state. According to

Buck-Morss, this act of sovereignty underlies the ‘political imaginary’ of any nation (a term taken from the Russian philosopher Valerii Podoroga).29

In Buck-Morss’ formulation, the political imaginary has three ‘icons’: the common enemy, the political collective, and the sovereign agent who wages war in the name of the collective. The enemy is both a term within the political imaginary and a threat to the political imaginary. The former is the ‘normal’ enemy who has already been positioned within the political terrain. The latter is the ‘absolute enemy’ who threatens the coherence of the reign of law. An enemy who ‘really acts like an enemy’30 poses no threat on this level.

Thus, the second kind of enemy may equally exist within the nation or collective as well as

27 Buck-Morss, 9 28 Buck-Morss, 9 29 Buck-Morss, 11 30 Buck-Morss, 12 14 outside of it, because they don’t really act like an enemy. The existence of the antifascist movement in the GDR certainly speaks to the presence of this fear at the heart of the state!

The absolute enemy is also collective in nature—it is a collective term and therefore always an abstraction. A further threat is that the absolute enemy might disappear. This threatens the legitimacy of the sovereign agent because it negates ‘the act that brings the collective into being’ and thus ‘threatens to dissolve the collective itself.’31

The absolute enemy could be understood, in conjunction with Žižek’s theory, as the antithesis (and necessary compliment) of the absolute represented by the sublime body of the king/the People, in that, following Buck-Morss’ logic, each one cannot exist without its opposite: its Other. In the case of the GDR, this Other takes the form of fascism, imperialism, and capitalism. Just as the absolute enemy is collective and thus an abstraction, the sublime body is understood by Žižek in similar terms—as an abstract, rather than a material concept. One could add here that such abstractions may be given textual form, in literature or film, and thus made ‘material’ to the collective whose existence is a necessary component of the sovereign agents’ sovereignty, just as much as the enemy is. The collective’s existence, therefore, depends on its ability to identify the enemy and its opposite, the sovereign agent. Buck-Morss defines the Party—not the State or its leader— as the sovereign agent in a socialist state. Citing Soviet theory, she states that, ‘the socialist state “rests on a firm political sovereignty of working people,” of which the party is the legitimate representative.’32 This definition offers a possible solution to the problem posed by Stalin’s death to this project. If, in fact, the sublime body, analogous to Buck-Morss’

‘sovereign agent,’ is located primarily within the Party, (and not within the Party’s leader),

31 Buck-Morss, 13 32 Buck-Morss, 19 15 then this makes it possible to consider its connection to positive heroes in DEFA films beyond 1953 through to the end of the GDR. Moreover, it highlights the importance of such characters for the duration of the state’s existence. As such, I move away from Hell’s emphasis on Stalin as the material “body of the king” and towards an idea of the sublime body of the People as an abstract concept requiring textual form—although as the fourth chapter of this dissertation shows, Hell’s term ‘specters of Stalin’ is apt even when referring to DEFA films produced after 1990.

Furthermore, Hell’s point about the ‘polluted’ nature of East German bodies is important as it highlights the reasons behind an on-going fissure in East German politics of identity, something which Anke Pinkert has uncovered in her book, Film and Memory in

East Germany. In her analysis of Konrad Wolf’s Ich war neunzehn (1968), she notes that the antifascist war films of the 1960s shared ‘an interest in exposing some of the traces and hollow spaces related to the war past and “ordinary fascism” within the contemporary cultural memory of the 1960s.’33 In other words, antifascist film, in Pinkert’s assessment, takes on a more complex dynamic in its third decade, as it became clear that more straightforward representations of antifascist discourse did not succeed in fully constructing a collective cultural memory based around the concept of shared antifascist resistance. Instead, it left gaps and fissures—unanswered questions for the youth born too late to personally remember the war. This dissertation therefore also explores how the representations of positive heroes—characters acting as temporary vessels for the centre point of national identity within the state—fill, obscure, or open up questions about such ongoing fissures of memory and identity.

33 Pinkert, 147 16

The Thälmann films: the symbolic hero and the Vorbild The first chapter of this dissertation takes as its focus the two biographical films made about Ernst Thälmann in the earliest years of the GDR: Ernst Thälmann - Sohn seiner Klasse

(1954) and Ernst Thälmann - Führer seiner Klasse (1955), both directed by Kurt Maetzig.

The chapter demonstrates how the Thälmann films represent multiple aspects of positive heroism—and, due to their long and complex production process, represent a portrayal of positive heroism that perhaps come closest to the ideal called for, but not found in Dudow’s

Frauenschicksale, which was the centre of the debates on positive heroism at the 1952 conference discussed previously. Specifically, the chapter shows that the term “positive hero” can in fact be applied to two distinctive character types: as I term them, the “symbolic hero” and the “Vorbild”.

The symbolic hero is a character who is positioned within the film to function as a vessel for the State, Party and ideology—to function as the “sublime body” of the People, discussed above. These characters act as the embodiment of socialist ideology and the

Party leadership. They do not undergo character development, nor are they portrayed as making mistakes or (generally) being prey to human emotions. They are not individuals with whom the spectator can identify, and the camerawork of the films in which they appear does not encourage the spectator to do so. Instead, they, as in Žižek’s description of the sublime body, are ‘made of special stuff;’34 they embody the ‘sublime Thing’35 that marks them as the “true” Communists, such as Lenin or Gorky, to which Žižek refers: ‘when a Communist speaks and acts as a Communist, it is the objective necessity of History itself

34 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 260 35 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 260 17 which speaks and acts through him.’36 The symbolic hero—on-screen representation of the sublime body—is the cornerstone of the antifascist foundational narrative of the GDR, which legitimises it as a state, or, in Žižekian terms, the ‘reign of law.’37 As Žižek outlines, the reign of law is founded by ‘illegal violence’:38 ‘“At the beginning” of the law, there is a certain “outlaw”, a certain Real of violence which coincides with the act itself of the establishment of the reign of law: the ultimate truth about the reign of law is that of an usurpation.’39 For example, the ‘violent overthrow of the king’40 would be such an act of

“illegal violence;” a crime that not only destroyed the previous reign of law, but, if repeated, would result in the collapse of the new reign of law founded upon this violence. Hence,

Žižek states, ‘the illegitimate violence by which the law sustains itself must be concealed at any price, because this concealment is the positive condition of the functioning of the law.’41 In Žižek’s argument, this concealment is enacted by the sublime body: it is the ‘“little piece of the real” which “stops up” and thus conceals the void of the law’s vicious circle.’42

The symbolic hero—the sublime body—thus grants the antifascist narrative its legitimating function. As such, the symbolic hero may be termed “fetishistic”, his role being one of concealment.

The other aspect of the positive hero, the Vorbild, fulfils the role that the symbolic hero, by definition, cannot. Because the symbolic hero represents the sublime body of the

People—that which the Leader holds in perpetuity for the people, until such a time as they

36 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 260 37 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 260 38 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 260 39 Žizek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 204 40 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 83 41 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 204 42 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 260 18 are ready to birth it—he cannot also function as a figure with which the spectator should identify, because the spectator is part of precisely that “people” who are not yet ready.

Instead, a second character type is required: the Vorbild. The Vorbild’s role is to provide the spectator with a character who is still an idealised, dedicated socialist, but one with which the spectator can identify—and who can also show the spectator the path to closeness to the symbolic hero (and thus the State, Party, and ideology). The Vorbild type of positive hero has a privileged relationship with the symbolic hero and is a dedicated and active socialist, but also is shown to make mistakes and, usually, to undergo a form of Bildung as part of their narrative. They have human emotions and must make sacrifices and suffer hardships. To make use of a Christian metaphor which is also often present in the films, they are the disciples to the symbolic hero’s Christ. In the first chapter I also demonstrate how these character types are portrayed in conjunction with one another and with the

“masses”—the on-screen portrayal of the “ordinary people.” As I argue, elements of this triad are consequently found to a greater or lesser extent in every film discussed in this dissertation.

My argument in the first chapter thus follows Russel Lemmons, whose analysis of the Thälmann films suggests that they are an example of deliberate (antifascist) myth- building.43 I explore how this myth-building is supported and shaped primarily through the portrayals of these characters, with Thälmann himself representing the symbolic hero, and his fictional disciples, the couple Fiete and Änne, the Vorbilder. The primary focus of the chapter is to uncover what, exactly, makes a character—and thus Thälmann—a symbolic hero. The films make use of techniques seen also in Soviet portrayals of Lenin and Stalin, as

43 Lemmons 2013, 157-185 19 well as techniques used in Nazi portrayals of Hitler, to highlight Thälmann not just as a leader, but as a vessel for the Party, State, and ideology, as a representation of the sublime body of the Leader, as described above. Moreover, the chapter shows how the representation of the symbolic hero functions as an ideological fetish, covering over the violence at the root of the reign of law. It also introduces the connection between portrayals of positive heroes and Christian religious allegory, which is more fully explored in the second and third chapters.

The secondary focus of the chapter is the Vorbild, and the ways in which the

(entirely fictional) characters of Fiete and Änne function as Vorbilder. In particular, I show how their portrayal works to connect Thälmann, as a symbolic hero, to the people (the masses). My discussion of Änne’s portrayal also touches on the theme of socialist motherhood, which is dealt with in much greater detail in the second chapter.

Mothers and martyrs Where the focus of the first chapter lies primarily with the symbolic hero, the second chapter of this dissertation deals with the Vorbild. It examines the strong links between motherhood and martyrdom commonly found in DEFA antifascist films, and exposes the

Oedipal dimension of positive heroism, a theme which is then further developed in the third chapter. Firstly, I examine films that portray maternal martyrdom, and explore the links between these martyrdoms and masculine positive heroism. There is, as I show with reference to Mathewson’s work on Gorky’s definitive socialist realist novel, The Mother,44 a strong historical connection between motherhood and martyrdom in socialist cultural

44 Mathewson, 167-176 20 productions. Secondly, I examine films that portray male martyrdom, and demonstrate how these narratives are connected to portrayals of mothers as positive heroes.

Both sections are informed by Julia Kristeva’s concept of ‘père-version’ in relation to motherhood, in addition to the Žižekian theories outlined thus far, as well as a Lacanian understanding of the Oedipus complex. Kristeva defines this concept as ‘the self-denial implicit in making oneself anonymous in order to transmit social norms which one may disavow for oneself but which one must pass on to the child, whose education is a link to generations past.’45 As such, this chapter examines how women are “made anonymous” (or make themselves anonymous) in order to facilitate the Oedipal process of Bildung for the people; to ready the people to give birth to the body of the People, and achieve their communist destiny. I analyse three films in this respect: the portrayal of Änne as a mother in Maetzig’s Thälmann films; Wolfgang Staudte’s Rotation (1949); and Konrad Wolf’s Ich war neunzehn. I show that, in each case, with the death or removal of the mother, the child

(the Vorbild) is portrayed as finally able to reach ideological maturity.

The second half of the chapter explores, on the other hand, films in which the martyrdom of the Vorbild forces the mother to (at least temporarily) take on a more active ideological role, in order to ensure that the next generation has that opportunity. In each of the films discussed here—Maetzig’s Die Buntkarierten (1948/49), Dudow’s Stärker als die

Nacht (1954) and Hans-Joachim Kunert’s Die Toten bleiben jung (1968)—the mother’s role is to ensure the future of the ideology, even as her husband or son die as part of the antifascist resistance (or due to her own ideological negligence, as in Die Buntkarierten).

45 Kristeva 1985, 149 21

The portrayal of mothers discussed in the second chapter thus deals with mothers of Vorbilder and mothers as Vorbilder, and the films discussed portray stories in which the successful resolution of the Oedipus complex (and thus ideological maturity) occurs with the aid of the mother: through her correct ideological education of her children, and her

“removal from the picture” once the child is ideologically ready. This is in stark contrast to the role of the mother discussed in the third chapter of this dissertation: the mothers of

Mitläufer.

The Mitläufer and the Masses The third chapter of this dissertation underpins the Žižekian approach of the previous chapters with a focus on a Lacanian understanding of the Oedipus complex in order to analyse several Mitläufer films made between the 1940s and the 1970s: Staudte’s Rotation

(1949), Heiner Carow’s Sie nannten ihn Amigo (1959), Wolf’s Sterne (1959), Wolf’s Leute mit Flügeln (1960), Frank Beyer’s Königskinder (1962), Kunert’s Die Abenteuer des Werner

Holt (1965), Carow’s Die Russen kommen (1968/87), Joachim Hasler’s Meine Stunde Null

(1970), Wolf’s Mama, ich lebe (1977), and Ralf Kirsten’s Ich zwing dich zu leben (1978).

Using Lewis R. Rambo’s sequential stage model for conversion as a basis for analysis, and with reference to Kristeva’s concept of abjection,46 I read the Mitläufer films as conversion narratives (both failed and successful), in which the process of conversion may be simultaneously read as the resolution (or lack thereof) of an Oedipal crisis. In doing so, I explore the allegorical process of socialist Bildung portrayed in antifascist films in more depth and demonstrate how these films, despite dealing with protagonists who are not positive heroes, still fulfil the Žižekian purpose of the antifascist myth, serving to cover

46 Kristeva 1982 22 over the “illegal violence” at the root of the reign of law and thus shore up the State, Party and ideology.

The films examined in this chapter do this in two ways. Firstly, they each feature portrayals of symbolic heroes (as well as Vorbilder, in some cases), who play a key role in the Mitläufer’s conversion. It is through an ‘encounter’ and ‘interaction’ (using Rambo’s terminology)47 with the symbolic hero, that the Mitläufer is able to successfully complete their conversion to socialism; the symbolic hero functions as a symbolic father

(occasionally this is also the protagonist’s real father within the narrative). Their interaction enables the Mitläufer to resolve his Oedipus crisis through an identification with the symbolic father, who, as representative of the sublime body, represents the ideological system into which the Mitläufer, through his conversion, is inducted.

Secondly, the films draw a connection between the feminine and fascism, portraying fascism as irrational and emotional, as opposed to rational, masculine socialism. In many of the films, the mothers of Mitläufer are specifically portrayed as connected, in some way, to fascism; thus, the resolution of the Mitläufer’s Oedipal crisis fully corresponds to a break from (maternal) fascism, the ideology into which they were born, and a new ideological adherence to socialism. In Kristevan terms, then, fascism is portrayed as abject in these films: as Jeffrey Stevenson Murer describes, ‘in the process of abjection, the important point is that the enemy-other not only is created by the self but previously was part of the self.’48

The chapter concludes by examining two films in which the conversion and resolution of the Oedipus complex process is portrayed as incomplete (Die Russen kommen and Ich zwing dich zu leben) and one in which the ending is somewhat ambiguous (Die Abenteuer des

47 Rambo, 17 48 Murer, 116 23

Werner Holt), in order to explore the paradox inherent to antifascist films: that fascism is made abject, not other, due to the necessity of its continued presence to constitute the identity of the state. Indeed, in his closing remarks to the 1952 conference, Axen stresses the necessity of the “negative hero”:

‘Genosse Gerhart Eisler hat Unrecht, wenn er auf Grund der Kritik am negativen

Helden des Filmes behauptet, daß einige Kritiker negative Helden überhaupt aus

dem Filmen herauslassen wollten. Das wäre aber doch lächerlich, so etwas zu

beabsichtigen. […] Solange es Imperialismus gibt, gibt es auch negative Helden.

Solange es Überreste des Kapitalismus im Bewußtsein der Menschen gibt, gibt es

auch negative Handlungen und Äußerungen.’49

This concurs with Žižek’s conclusion regarding the formation of a national identity around such a ‘threatening intruder:’ that it is ‘nothing but an outside-projection, an embodiment of our own projected antagonism,’ through which the identity ‘constitutes itself.’50 Without fascism, antifascism would not be necessary; but without fascism, the foundational, legitimating narrative of the state would collapse.

The decline of the positive hero The final chapter of this dissertation examines how DEFA films of the 1980s and 1990s make use of the tropes and positive hero archetypes of the antifascist films discussed in the first three chapters. However, the result is ambiguity or (in the 1990s) the undermining of ideological certainty rather than the shoring up of the reign of law.

49 Axen, “Schlußwort,” 163 50 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 38 24

The first half of the chapter deals with Mitläufer and Vorbilder in three 1980s DEFA films: Beyer’s Der Aufenthalt (1982), Ulrich Weiss’s Dein unbekannter Bruder (1982), and

Michael Kann’s Stielke, Heinz, fünfzehn (1987). It examines how they do not provide definitive conversions or answers for their protagonists or the spectator, but rather deal far more with ambiguity than any earlier films; they show neither failed nor successful conversions, but rather only doubt and paranoia. As such, with reference to the concept of the fascist abject outlined in the previous chapter, I argue that several of the characters discussed here are portrayed as trapped in abjection, unable to complete the ideological

Bildung—or resolve the Oedipal crisis—that would allow them to delineate their subjectivity and ward off the abject. My discussion of these films is inflected by Foucault’s concept of heterotopic space, to explore the common theme of limited, enclosed spaces that appears to some extent in all three films.

In the second half of the chapter, I examine two films from the 1990s: Horst

Seemann’s Zwischen Pankow und Zehlendorf (1990/91) and Herwig Kipping’s Das Land hinter dem Regenbogen (1990/91). Both films serve to delegitimize and demythologize the archetypal sublime leader—Stalin—and the ideological system he represents. Ultimately, I demonstrate that both sets of films serve to in some way foreground, rather than cover over, the concealed “illegal violence” at the root of the reign of law—and thus undermine the ideological cohesion supported by the narratives of the earlier films.

Aims It is important to clarify here that I do not propose to make claims about GDR identity in terms of how the real public of the GDR responded to these films. As Detlef Kannapin rightly states:

‘It is the nature of the beast that there is no “GDR Identity”. It is better to use the

concept of consciousness, which insists on the fact that the GDR had an existence

and that the citizens living in this state had in some way a conscious opinion about it

or attitude towards it. The DEFA feature films in their entirety and development are

perhaps a seismograph of that consciousness.’51

Hence, I do not seek to say what effect these films had on GDR citizens’ conception of their own national identity—but rather what forms of GDR identity are implied or suggested by their portrayals of positive heroes, and what forms of identity they aim to show. Indeed, as

Kannapin himself says of DEFA Aufbaufilme: ‘they aim to legitimate the predominance of the SED as the logical outcome of the course of German history and to endorse the party’s role as the leading force in the nation.’52

The aim of this dissertation is thus to examine portrayals of positive heroes in the antifascist historical films made by DEFA, throughout the nearly five decades of its existence; to uncover the forms of GDR identity that representations of positive heroes seek to propagate; and to explore the underlying contradictions inherent in these portrayals.

51 Kannapin, 189 52 Kannapin, 192

Chapter 1: The Thälmann films: shaping the facets of the positive hero The official founding of the GDR in 1949 initiated a number of state projects, many of which were designed to help stabilize and legitimize the new state. One of these efforts was

DEFA’s Ernst Thälmann project, which began shortly after the GDR’s founding and culminated in two films, directed by Kurt Maetzig and released in 1954 and 55 respectively: Sohn seiner Klasse and Führer seiner Klasse. These films narrate the life of the famous communist leader from the First World War through to his death in Buchenwald in

1945. While in the early stages of the production process, the aim was to produce a film about the “real” Thälmann (potentially even a documentary), during the course of the production team’s meetings and under the influence of high-level state officials, the film moved towards a portrayal of Thälmann as a heroic, legendary figure, with a rather fictionalized script. Instead of a truly biographical film, using material from those who had known the leader, Thälmann’s story became a means to portray three decades of German communist history, with Thälmann as its figurehead, as a means to demonstrate that the

GDR’s founding was the result of a sustained history of communist organization and resistance in Germany. In this vein, Wilhelm Pieck, writing in 1954, described the first film as follows: ‘In ihm hat der von der Kommunistischer Partei geführte Kampf der deutschen

Arbeiter gegen die militaristische und faschistische Reaktion in der Weimarer Republik seine meisterhafte künstlerische Gestaltung gefunden.’53 Ernst Thälmann – Sohn seiner

Klasse opens with a scene from the First World War in which Thälmann and his comrades, including his friend, Fiete Jansen, rise up against their officers on hearing the news of

53 BArch FA 3072/I, Document entitled ‘Film und Gesellschaft in der DDR’

27 revolution at home in Germany. The main action of the film, however, takes place during the 1920s, showing Thälmann’s actions in Hamburg up to and during the immediate aftermath of the Hamburg Uprising, including his visit to Lenin in Moscow. It closes with

Fiete Jansen narrowly avoiding a death sentence, marrying Thälmann’s protégée Änne, and being imprisoned for his role in the Uprising. Ernst Thälmann – Führer seiner Klasse begins with Fiete’s release from jail, and the first half of the film follows Thälmann’s political fight against Hitler to be elected Chancellor. Following the Reichstag fire, Thälmann and many of his followers are arrested. The second half of the film alternates between Thälmann’s steadfastness in prison, and Fiete and Änne’s actions in his name, in the outside world.

Fiete fights in the Spanish Civil War and then the Soviet Red Army, while Änne is active in the resistance in Berlin and is ultimately arrested. She dies in prison, during a bombing raid, as Thälmann watches. The film ends with Thälmann’s death orders, although his death is not shown. The films’ plotlines therefore deviate—in some cases, significantly—from the realities of Thälmann’s biography, most notably with the insertion of the fictional characters of Fiete and Änne, but also with dates, events, and, at one point during the script’s development, with the presence of other historical figures such as Wilhelm Pieck and Rosa Luxemburg.54 Over the course of the five years of production, the focus shifted from a film on Thälmann’s “real” biography to an idealized portrayal of the leader and his narrative.

54 ‘Another scene showed future GDR president Wilhelm Pieck in Berlin, fighting alongside Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht during the failed revolution of 9 November 1918. As Schwab pointed out, neither Luxemburg nor Pieck “were in Berlin at that time.”’ Lemmons 2013, 164. Lemmons goes on to note that this scene was later deleted, but other historical inaccuracies criticized by Schwab remained: ‘The committee agreed that the scenes portraying the First World War should remain, but it chose to scrap the one showing Pieck, Liebknecht, and Luxemburg together on 9 November.’ Lemmons 2013, 165. 28

It thus seems pertinent to begin with a brief overview of the production history of the films, exploring the aims of the producers and the Ministry of Culture for the project, and the outcomes of these choices in the films’ final realisation. This provides a backdrop for the following examination of the depiction of Thälmann in both films, in order to analyse how he is represented through the editing, camerawork, and other filmic elements.

This analysis focuses on three elements of Thälmann’s portrayal: the various speeches he gives, the way he is compared or contrasted to other political leaders, and his relationship with the two supporting characters, Fiete and Änne Jansen. My reading of the two films explores the ways in which the films represent Thälmann as a “positive hero” both for his comrades in the film but also for the film's contemporary spectators. I argue that there are two distinct aspects of the positive hero archetype: that which has a symbolic and fetishistic function, as embodied by Thälmann, and that which acts as a role model and centre of identification for the spectator, as represented by Fiete and Änne. In the course of my analysis of the two films, this distinction is qualified and the characteristics of these two aspects fleshed out: that of the symbolic, fetishistic aspect in my discussion of the parallels drawn between Thälmann and Lenin in Sohn seiner Klasse; and that of the role model,

‘Vorbild’ aspect in my discussion of Fiete’s and Änne’s role in the films. In addition, I show how Fiete and Änne are portrayed as ideal “ordinary workers”, representative of the contemporary spectator as well as the socialist masses, and thus how they demonstrate how one should follow and serve Thälmann, the model socialist, as a real person.

Production History Most scholarly work on the Thälmann films has focused primarily on their production process.55 The first meetings concerning the project took place in the weeks following the foundation of the GDR in 1949. Representatives from the SED, the Ministry of Culture, and high-ranking members of the DEFA production studio were brought in, along with Rosa

Thälmann, Ernst Thälmann’s widow, and Willi Bredel, Thälmann’s biographer, who was to work on the script alongside Michael Tschesno-Hell. Initially, their aim was to make a film that focused on the factual details of Thälmann’s biography. To this end, Bredel and

Tschesno-Hell interviewed people close to Thälmann in order to gather information about his life and created a first draft of the script, which focused heavily on Thälmann as an individual. This approach was, however, at odds with the plans of the SED. The minutes from the first production meeting on 8 October, 1949, in which they discussed Bredel’s first

‘Exposé’, show that they were focused on the importance of the film for the GDR’s youth and the impact that they wanted the film to have on them, particularly in terms of combatting the appeal of western films and capitalist culture that were so easily accessible at that point in time, due to the ease with which people could cross the inter-German border, particularly between East and West Berlin, and the abundance of cheap cinemas showing Hollywood and other films in the West. While the scriptwriters understood the political importance of the film, it took some time for them to produce a draft deemed acceptable by the committee.56 It was not until March 1953 that their script was accepted, after many meetings, criticisms, and revisions. In the final version, Thälmann appears as a

55 See: Lemmons, Hitler’s Rival: Ernst Thälmann in Myth and Memory; Schenk “Mitten im Kalten Krieg: 1950 bis 1960”; Schittly, Zwischen Regie und Regime: Die Filmpolitik der SED im Spiegel der DEFA-Produktion. 56 For a comprehensive overview of the criticism the scriptwriters faced, see Lemmons 2013, 161-165 30 model individual through which the history of 20th Century German Communism may be followed. Russel Lemmons discusses this in his book, Hitler’s Rival: Ernst Thälmann in Myth and Memory, in which he traces Thälmann’s importance as part of the foundational myth of the GDR. In Lemmons’ view, the Thälmann films are a prime example of deliberate myth- building on the part of the Socialist state, a process which he sees as having already begun with the German Communist Party during the final years of the Weimar Republic.57 This myth-building was a response to the question of the legitimacy of the GDR as a state which was still a pressing one at the time of the release of Ernst Thälmann: Sohn seiner Klasse in

1954. It was even more so at the beginning of the project’s production process in 1949— indeed, the very first production meeting for the film was held the day after the GDR’s founding (8 October 1949 and 7 October 1949 respectively.) The minutes of that first meeting demonstrate how, from the very beginning, the film was intended to link the past to the present-day GDR:

“1.) Prinzip, d.h. Aussage des Films. Forderung: Thälmann sprach schon 1932/1933

aus: “Hitler bedeutet Krieg!, sprach es nicht nur aus für eine Partei, sondern für

Deutschland. Der Film erbringt hierfür den Wahrheitsbeweis in künstlerischer Form

und stellt sich somit in die große Friedensbewegung unserer Tage. Weitere Aussage

des Films: Ernst Thälmann ein Begriff in der ganzen demokratischen Welt – auch

damit eine starke Gegenwartsverknüpfung gegeben.”58

This description, written before it had even been decided whether the project would result in a documentary or feature film, neatly encapsulates the intention for the Thälmann

57 Lemmons 2013, see Introduction. 58 Protokoll der 1. Sitzung des Thälmann-Kollektivs der DEFA, Sonnabend, den 8.10.1949 (BArch DR 118/ 32624, 1/3) 31 project to draw a continuous line from Germany’s past to the beginning of the GDR. The huge budget of the project (ten million Marks,59 partially provided by the Soviets) and the four years of production meetings that preceded filming demonstrate the importance of this project to the ruling SED party. During the course of those four years, Bredel and

Tschesno-Hell reworked the script for the first film multiple times, responding to suggestions and criticisms from sources ranging from contemporaries of Thälmann (such as Lisa Bredel),60 other DEFA directors (such as Andrew Thorndike)61 DEFA functionaries

(such as Sepp Schwab),62 and even high-ranking state officials such as Pieck and Ulbricht.63

Such suggestions were often wide-ranging and contradictory; Bredel and Tschesno-Hell were under pressure to reduce the length of the script, but were also continually asked to add in new scenes and material. Although casting and preparation of filming locations was a time consuming endeavour as well—Günther Simon, for example, was by no means the

59 Anders, “Ernst Thälmann - Führer seiner Klasse, Propaganda für Arbeiterklasse”. 60 Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Kurt-Maetzig-Archiv, Nr. 108: Letter from Lisa Bredel to DEFA and Maetzig dated 15.4.1952: ‘Nicht Ernst Thälmann ist der “Held” dieses ersten Teiles, sondern die politischen Ereignisse! Da es mir aber richtig erscheint, die politische Persönlichkeit Ernst Thälmanns sich entwickeln zu lassen, andererseits aber noch etwas in den Film hinein muss, das die Handlung auflockert, müsste man ein parallel laufendes Lebensschicksal gestalten, um so Familienleben, Menschen, die Arbeiten, lernen, leiden, lieben zeigen zu können.’ 61 Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Kurt-Maetzig-Archiv, Nr. 108: document dated 25.4.1952 by Andrew Thorndike: ‘Die Entsendung Ernst Thälmanns nach Moskau mit der Begründung, daß die Erfolge im Hamburg vor allem sein Verdienst seien, ist im Film viel zu wenig begründet. Ernst Thälmann muss – vor allem am Anfang – mehr als Führer der Hamburger Arbeiter, als geistiger Mittelpunkt der Bewegung dargestellt werden.’ 62 Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Kurt-Maetzig-Archiv, Nr. 108: “Protokoll der Besprechung über den Thälmann-Film am 20.11.50”: ‘Herr Dir. Schwab […] schlägt vor, [Thälmann] selbst nicht so sehr in den Vordergrund zu stellen, sondern hier herauszuarbeiten, wie unter Thälmanns Führung die Partei von einigen hunderttausend Mitgliedern entstanden ist […].’ 63 Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Kurt-Maetzig-Archiv, Nr. 108: “Protokoll der Besprechung über den Thälmann-Film am 20.11.50”: ‘Genosse Ulbricht hat den Vorschlag gemacht, die Begegung Thälmanns mit Stalin ganz klar zu zeigen, da von diesem Zeitpunkt ab Thälmann als Führer der Arbeiterklasse gilt.’ 32 first choice to play Thälmann, and thousands of extras for the many crowd scenes had to be found—it was the work on the literary scenario and eventual script that took up much of the four years of work between the initial meetings in 1949 and filming in 1954.

The focus of previous scholarship on the history of the production phase of the films is understandable considering the dramatic changes that were made to the original drafts and the obvious importance of the project to the SED in the early days of the GDR. However, few and rather cursory attempts have been made to examine how the films portray

Thälmann,64 and therefore I propose an analysis of the strategies used by Maetzig in his portrayal and, specifically, how Thälmann is portrayed as an idealised hero in comparison to his comrades and his opponents.

While scholars such as Schenk and Schittly have read the Thälmann films primarily as portraying the leader himself as a role model figure, my reading of how these films connect the historical leaders to GDR identity politics is more complex. While outwardly, it may seem that the films are calling for individuals in the contemporary GDR to try and emulate the famous leader, the ways in which Maetzig portrays the character in film would

64 See Russel Lemmons’ chapter on the Thälmann films in Lemmons, Hitler’s Rival: Ernst Thälmann in Myth and Memory, in which he primarily discusses the production process of the films but does briefly describe how the films seek to position Thälmann within communist history: ‘From start to finish, the film is laced with images designed to appeal to the allied concepts of Vermächtnis (legacy) and Erbe (inheritance). No opportunity is missed to relate the party’s views on these topics, right down to the pictures on the walls. Photographs of Lenin, Liebknecht, and Luxemburg grace the walls of working-class homes and party offices, and those of Otto von Bismarck, that archenemy of socialism, decorate the rooms of the leaders of the Weimar Republic. Characters in the film read the works of Lenin, with Thälmann at one point diligently studying State and Revolution. Meanwhile, the troops who defend the detested Weimar Republic invariably have swastikas, the symbol of the fascist menace, on their helmets. The message is clear: the workers trace their heritage to the transcendent leaders of international socialism: Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin.’ (chapter 4). See also Ralf Schenk’s analysis of the two films in Schenk, “Mitten im kalten Krieg”, 104-109 and Dagmar Schittly’s brief analysis in Schittly, Zwischen Regie und Regime: Die Filmpolitik der SED im Spiegel der DEFA-Produktion, 65-69. 33 suggest otherwise. In this chapter, I demonstrate how the films instead position him on an elite level beyond that reachable by “ordinary people”, in the godlike ranks of Stalin and

Lenin, while proposing other, fictional role models for the citizens of the GDR. Indeed,

Thälmann as a character fulfils a purely symbolic function in the film, and as such my reading of the films demonstrates how they represent two distinct aspects of the concept of the “positive hero”—the symbolic hero and the Vorbild—only one of which is embodied by

Thälmann.

Thälmann as a model leader In the fifth meeting of DEFA’s Thälmann Collective, which took place on 29 November

1949, it was stated exactly how the figure of Thälmann should appear to the films’ audience:

‘Die Zentralfigur Ernst Thälmann muss so interessant und fesselnd gezeichnet und

dargestellt werden, dass sie unvergesslich ist, - das ist das Geheimnis des

nachhaltigen Erfolges aller geschichtlichen Filme. Sie muss Vertrauen ausstrahlen –

als ein wahrer Sohn des Volkes! – und beim Zuschauer das Gefühl erwecken: und

den haben wir durch die Schuld des deutschen Volkes verloren! Erscheint Ernst

Thälmann auch als tragischer Held, so ist er doch ein ganz positiver Held, denn seine

Sache siegt.’65

In other words, Thälmann’s position as a “positive hero” should be made clear by the film(s) produced (how many this would be had at this point in the production process not yet been decided!) and his character should invoke both trust and a call to action in the

65 Protokoll of the 5. Sitzung des Thälmann-Kollektivs der DEFA, Dienstag, den 29.11.1949 (BArch DR 118/32624, 1/3) 34 spectator, who should be drawn to an antifascist position as a result of the film. A 1954 review of Sohn seiner Klasse reiterates that the film’s characters are models for their audience: ‘Der Film zeigt uns die Helden, die unsere Vorbilder sind’.66 (And in line with my argument, implies multiple heroes and Vorbilder, rather than just the one, central hero of

Thälmann).

An analysis of some of the speeches Thälmann makes throughout the films is fruitful in demonstrating how the editing and camerawork position him as a positive hero, particularly in the sense of being a model Communist and leader. Thälmann makes numerous speeches and there are some commonalities in how the camera is used in many of these scenes. In particular, when he makes longer speeches that build up to a climax or pertinent point, the camera often starts with a half- or full-body shot of him in focus, with the crowd out of focus behind him. Then, the camera gradually zooms in on him as the speech reaches its climax until it finishes with a close-up on his face as he finishes with a memorable line. This has the effect of building tension and momentum around his words to the climax of his final line or lines. Usually the camera will then cut away to the crowd (in a reaction shot) or it will cut to shots of Nazis or SPD government members, or, in at least two scenes, to Hitler, in an explicit comparison. As an example of a reaction shot, in the scene in Führer seiner Klasse where Thälmann gives a speech to the Reichstag, after a medium close-up shot of Thälmann at the end of his speech, the camera cuts to a shot of his silent and respectful followers waiting for him outside of the building, in which the screen is entirely filled by a sea of their faces. In this scene, this is especially impactful because previous cuts during his speech show those listening inside the Reichstag acting in a

66 Review of Ernst Thälmann – Sohn seiner Klasse in the Berliner Zeitung, 19.3.1954 35 particularly disrespectful way: the NSDAP members try to storm the podium and disrupt his speech by playing a trumpet inside the legislature. As such, the two types of reaction are explicitly compared: the disrespectful fascists and the reverent masses outside, implying that the fascists are a small elite whereas Thälmann’s supporters are the masses of ordinary workers.

Even though, particularly in Thälmann’s early speeches, the camera is not usually at an angle that would imply that the film spectator is in the position of a crowd member in the scene, the spectator of the film still feels that Thälmann’s speech is directed at them personally because the camera moves from a more distanced view of him into these close- up facial shots. The speech is, therefore, much more intimate to the spectator than if the camera were positioned from within the crowd. This has a direct effect on the emotional impact of his speech on the spectator. The comparison or reaction shots reinforce this by either showing the respect that Thälmann’s followers in the film have for him or by showing how ridiculous his opponents are; they are irrational and cannot control themselves. As a result, the spectator’s bias that Thälmann is on the correct side of history is reinforced. Julia Hell points out that the idea of the Party as the ‘victors of history’ through their ‘(supposedly leading) role in the antifascist resistance’ was a key strategy of the SED for legitimizing the state and its rule.67 This particular kind of direct comparison, between close-ups of the leader and shots of the audience, is a technique that was also used by

Soviet filmmakers to similar ends (as well as by Nazi filmmakers such as Leni Riefenstahl, as discussed later in this chapter). Soviet filmmakers of the 1920s onwards, made use of this kind of sequence. The opening and closing speech scenes in Lenin in October (dir.

67 Hell, 30 36

Mikhail Romm, 1937) provide one example of this, with close-ups and medium shots of the speaker interspersed with audience reaction shots and aerial crowd shots, with a final close-up shot at the climax of the speech. In both cases, the crowd is always also visible around the speaker, so that their impact on their mass audience is always highlighted. The minutes from the 1949 and 1950 production meetings for the Thälmann project note that the group’s members particularly saw Lenin in October as well as Man with a Gun (Sergej

Yutkevich, 1938) as good models for their project. The films, both made for the twentieth- anniversary of the October revolution, were popular with audiences on their release: audiences famously ‘stood and clapped whenever Lenin […] appeared on the screen’ during screenings of Lenin in October, while 17 million viewers saw Man with a Gun.68 Both were produced for similar reasons to the Thälmann films: to aid in the hagiography of a particular leader in order to solidify in film their position within the state’s mythology.

Romm’s film focused on Lenin, with a small appearance by Stalin, and portrays the former as a leader in (and of) action during the October Revolution, and was praised by the

Thälmann group for ‘die Dichte der Atmosphäre und der Persönlichkeitsgestaltung’.69

Yutkevich’s film, which affords Stalin and Lenin more or less equal presence, was however

‘officially identified as the introduction to the Soviet cinema of the figures of Lenin and

Stalin, as they were imprinted on the popular consciousness and memory.’70 Judith Devlin describes the response to Yutkevich’s film on its release: ‘The director, it was opined, had achieved this not by setting himself the task of reproducing the historical facts of the great men’s lives, but by showing them in such typical and critical situations as allowed their

68 Devlin, 161 69 Protokoll of the 4. Sitzung des Thälmann-Kollektivs der DEFA, Dienstag, den 15.11.1949. (BArch DR 118/32624, 1/3) 70 Devlin, 157 37 inner, as well as their external, greatness and personalities to be shown.’71 The Thälmann production group echoed this praise, lauding ‘die Gestaltung erfundener, aber mit innerer dokumentarischer Wahrhaftigkeit gezeichneter Vordergrunds-Figur.’ 72

The Thälmann films were correspondingly inspired by this approach. The real historical Thälmann was the leader of the German Communist Party from 1925 to 1933, when he was arrested by the Nazis and imprisoned until being shot in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945. While Thälmann was also in reality a charismatic and popular leader of the Party, the Thälmann of Maetzig’s films is portrayed as the perfect socialist leader, inspiring absolute loyalty from his followers, who treat him with a quasi-religious awe. Rather than a man who gradually grows and develops as a communist, he instead becomes a vessel through which German communist history can be depicted. From the very beginning of the first film, he is already the great leader—he simply gains followers, loyalty, and recognition as the narrative progresses. Indeed, Thälmann’s filmic persona is lacking not only in character growth, but also in emotional depth – he rarely reacts emotionally to events, instead seeming stoic and unfazed even when his closest friends are in danger. He is a model socialist; the cause is always more important to him than personal matters.

This was partially the explicit intention of those behind the project. In their 1974 portrait of Kurt Maetzig, Ludmilla Kasianowa and Anatoli Kawawaschkin note that ‘sie wollten der Geschichte vom Schicksal Ernst Thälmanns den Charakter eines Volksepos

71 Devlin, 157 72 Protokoll of the 4. Sitzung des Thälmann-Kollektivs der DEFA, Dienstag, den 15.11.1949. (BArch DR 118/32624, 1/3) 38 geben.’73 In other words, the focus was more on the historical events and on archetypal characters who would fit into a recognizable narrative pattern. This was something that had already been recognized as a useful strategy for political literature in the Soviet Union, particularly by Maksim Gorky. As Irene Masing-Delic notes, he ‘[favoured] the heroic romanticism of transcendence, [and] often chose the genres of legends, myths, and fairy tales, or evoked them subtextually.’74 While the Thälmann films may not be fairy tales, they certainly have a mythic or legendary quality that echoes the narrative patterns set by

Gorky. Rufus W. Mathewson, Jr., in discussing Gorky’s novel The Mother, states that it

‘contains two formulas often found in later Soviet fiction: the conversion of the innocent, the ignorant, or the misled to a richer life of participation in the forward movement of society; and the more important pattern of emblematic political heroism in the face of terrible obstacles.’75 The latter certainly applies to Thälmann’s narrative, as well as that faced by Änne and Fiete, his closest comrades and friends. Not only does the use of a recognizable, archetypal narrative structure enable the viewer to more easily comprehend the film’s events, it gives Thälmann the status of a cultural touchstone for the GDR—and thus helps to establish the film’s version of his history as a foundational narrative of the state. Judith Devlin, in discussing Yutkevich’s Man with a Gun, notes that ‘the epic or myth was preferred to the limitations of biography, dokumental’nost and historical veracity: but it was a myth which mimicked reality, setting store on naturalistic realism and at least enough plausibility to command belief.’76 In other words, the Thälmann films’ mythic quality lies in the same place as that of Yutkevich’s film: that the director did not attempt to

73 Kasianowa and Kawawaschkin, 31 74 Masing-Delic, 123 75 Mathewson, 67 76 Devlin, 157 39

‘[reproduce] the historical facts of the great men’s lives, but [shows] them in such typical and critical situations as allowed their inner, as well as their external, greatness and personalities to be shown.’77 Richard Taylor calls these types of films ‘cultic’, arguing that they ‘lie at the heart of the personality cult in Stalinist cinema.’78

It is not only Thälmann’s overall narrative arc that marks him as extraordinary, but also the camerawork and editing. Particularly, Maetzig makes use of cuts contrasting

Thälmann’s private and public life to demonstrate his complete dedication to his cause and his affinity to Lenin, for example, by cutting from Thälmann giving a speech to Thälmann in a private context. In the very first speech Thälmann gives, the film cuts from the close-up of his face to a waving, red flag as the listening crowd repeats his chant of ‘Trotz alledem’, (a quote from Karl Liebknecht) then cuts to Thälmann alone in his room, reading Lenin. He looks up from the book and straight into the camera and says, “Das heißt also das unser

Kampf unvermeidlich, und gerecht, ist.” Similarly, the film later cuts from him at the end of a speech to him talking to Fiete Jansen, explaining his plans for the Hamburg uprising. The film thus contrasts Thälmann, the public figure, with Thälmann, the private person.

However, the private person that we see is still, in all ways, a model socialist, reading Lenin or making plans with his comrades. Indeed, in the former scene, the film even succeeds in reappropriating his “private” moment into collective engagement with the audience, where

Thälmann becomes the bearer of Lenin’s message for the spectator. He becomes a vessel for the “Party line”, rather than the private scene serving to flesh out his character. This is where the films have come under criticism, not just by modern scholars, but also by contemporary critics, who saw Maetzig’s Thälmann as a one-dimensional character lacking

77 Devlin, 157 78 Taylor 1993, 88 40 in personality. Indeed, in a 1999 interview, Maetzig himself concurred with these criticisms and said of the GDR’s leaders: ‘They eliminated anything that was personal and not affirmative in the most obvious sense of the word; they wanted a film of an idealized person.’79

In my opinion, however, contrasts such as this between Thälmann's public and private life serve a different purpose: the point here is not to show Thälmann as someone who has a private existence outside of his public persona, but rather, to demonstrate his ties to the body of socialist leadership. In my view, the ultimate goal of these films goes beyond Russel Lemmons’ conclusion, that they serve to mythologise Thälmann and ‘[secure his] place in the GDR’s legitimizing narrative.’80 Rather, they insert him into the ranks of the

Party elite, alongside and as heir to Lenin and Stalin, on a level above that of “ordinary people”. In other words, Thälmann’s portrayal does not solely serve a legitimising function, but also an ideological one. Thälmann’s idealised portrayal implies that he is not expected to be read by the spectator as a hero to be emulated, but rather than he embodies the ideological principles of communism itself—he is the embodiment of both the ideology and the Party.

That this was also the case for Lenin and Stalin has previously been explored by

Robert C. Tucker, in his article on the roots of Stalin’s personality cult. In particular, he discusses Stalin’s October 1931 letter, published as “On Some Questions of the History of

Bolshevism,” as a key example of Stalin’s contributions to his own personality cult. Tucker’s analysis also demonstrates the synonymy between Party and Leader implicit in the leader- myth, noting that Stalin twice uses the phrase ‘Lenin (the Bolsheviks) in the letter: ‘Lenin,

79 Brady, 84 80 Lemmons, 2013, 157 41 by Stalin’s fiat stood for true Bolshevik revolutionism as distinct from any and all false varieties—left, right, or centre.’81 Tucker notes the letter’s implications for its intended recipients: ‘they were that a party historian should not be guided […] by what he could document, but by what he knew a priori must be true—that Lenin, being a “real Bolshevik,” could never have underestimated centrism or that Stalin, also a “real Bolshevik,” could never have taken an un-Bolshevik position at any juncture. […] Scholars had to be ready to falsify (in the normal meaning of the word) whenever a priori party-historical truth—as revealed by word from Stalin or his spokesmen—should so dictate.’82 In other words, Lenin and Stalin are both to be considered commensurate with the Party, and thus any ‘party- historical truth’ spoken by Stalin was to be automatically considered to be party truth, since, as “real Bolsheviks”, his “truths” concerning the Party (and thus socialist ideology) could not be false.

This may be understood from a psychoanalytical perspective using Slavoj Žižek’s work on Ernst Kantorowicz’s concept of the King’s Two Bodies.83 Following on from Claude

Lefort,84 Žižek has connected the concept to totalitarianism, and particularly, to Stalin and

Lenin. Žižek describes this as follows: a king, as a real, existing person and as a repository of symbolism within a society, has two bodies: ‘the visible, material, transient body and another, sublime body, a body made of special, immaterial stuff,’85 an idea grounded in

Lacanian psychoanalysis. Žižek, following Lefort, then extends this concept to the body of the totalitarian leader, specifically discussing not only Lenin, but also Stalin. The people’s

81 Tucker, 356 82 Tucker, 356-57 83 Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies 84 Lefort, 292-306 85 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 255 42 revolution, in the formation of a socialist or communist state, results in the creation of a new, sublime body as a locus of power. Žižek calls this the body of the People: in “true” communism, it would be a sublime body reflecting the People’s collectivity, without the necessity of the organising “head” of the King. However, since a socialist state must progress to that stage, it requires, in the interim, a leader. The totalitarian leader’s role is to act as the agent that enables the people to “give birth to” the People: to be a vessel for the sublime body that will, in time, arrive. As such, the totalitarian leader fulfills the same role to the people as the king, with the redoubled bodies, (material and sublime) but in the case of the leader, the latter connects him to the people as the embodiment of their own sublime body, which will be returned (or ‘reborn’) to them at some point in the future.

In the case of Thälmann and the GDR, it is a little more complicated. As Hell notes, it was “out of the question” to propose a form of nationalism in East Germany based around the real existing East German party and its leaders. ‘The people’s body was ‘polluted’ by

National Socialism and therefore could not serve as a basis for a national narrative of popular resistance.’86 In other words: the People could not be born from the (real) people of the GDR. By using portrayals of fictional (or fictionalised) socialist heroes in literature, who could act as vessels for the sublime body, it was possible to avoid finding a permanent, physically present East German locus of power who would supplant Stalin. Instead, the sublime body is represented through fictionalized accounts of socialist leaders (some of whom really existed in the past), such as Thälmann. As such, the comparisons to Lenin in the first instance serve to propose Thälmann as a vessel for the sublime body of the People by first representing him as Lenin’s heir.

86 Hell, 29 43

In the first example I gave, where he reads and interprets Lenin, we can see him learning directly from the communist leader. This is further demonstrated by the audience echoing his chant of ‘Trotz alledem!’, a quote which would have been instantly recognized by the spectator as from Liebknecht. These quick cuts from the speech, to the crowd’s response, to the shot of him reading Lenin, cement Thälmann’s position in the lineage of communist leaders, and therefore as, like them, a director of ideology. This glorification of

Thälmann is in stark contrast with his actual biography, in which he spent most of the Nazi period in jail before being ultimately and ignominiously executed by the Nazis.

To this end, Thälmann is again compared to Lenin in a key scene where he meets the

Russian leader. In this scene, Thälmann and other key German communists are invited to

Moscow to meet with the Russian leader. Despite how busy Lenin is portrayed as being in this scene, he is clearly shown as being specifically interested in Thälmann and how

Thälmann has managed to get so many workers to support him in the Hamburg Uprising.

The choice of camera angles in this scene are significant, especially when Lenin asks

Thälmann to sit down. In a medium long shot, we see Thälmann sat in an armchair from the front with Lenin seated facing him. The spectator sees only Lenin’s back, leaning forward with interest. Through this positioning, Thälmann appears as an equal to Lenin: a possible great statesman. The mise-en-scene presents Thälmann at the centre of the scene, with

Lenin’s body language and position similar to that of Thälmann’s comrades and followers in other scenes, thus implying that Lenin sees him as an equal, someone from whom he can also learn. It is from this point in the film that Thälmann begins to be portrayed in his speech scenes not just as a "working-class hero”—a man of the people—but also as a great political leader, part of the elite. Indeed, in the next speech we see after this meeting the 44 camera places the spectator in the crowd listening to Thälmann, through the use of a point- of-view shot from the crowd’s perspective, where in previous speech scenes the camera has always been angled somewhere above the crowd's perspective. Thälmann has been moved from ‘a man of the people’ to ‘a leader of the people,’ on a level with Lenin (and therefore implicitly, the entire elite “class” of great Communist leaders). The camera’s move downwards, to a position among the masses, implicitly elevates Thälmann to a level not only physically higher up than the camera’s perspective, but therefore also metaphorically “above” both the on-screen masses and the spectator. In other words, it is this scene which particularly marks Thälmann’s transition from ‘Son of his Class’ to ‘Leader of his Class’. This is also noted in Walter Ulbricht’s suggestions for the script at a November

1950 meeting: ‘Genosse Ulbricht hat den Vorschlag gemacht, die Begegnung Thälmanns mit

Stalin ganz klar zu zeigen, da von diesem Zeitpunkt ab Thälmann als Führer der

Arbeiterklasse gilt.’87 While all scenes with Stalin that made it into the final film were cut after the leader’s death and the denunciation of the Stalin personality cult, the scene with

Lenin also fulfils this function.

In a Žižekian sense, Thälmann is also positioned as comparable to Lenin directly prior to the Hamburg Uprising scenes. Beginning with a medium shot, Thälmann and Fiete walk through the Hamburg docks, along the water’s edge. The camera tracks them as they walk, with the taller Thälmann almost at the centre of the shot and the shorter Fiete to his side and looking up at him. He turns to Fiete and tells him that, in their fight in the morning, they must avoid any unnecessary deaths, and then, notably, says: ‘Wir sind Geburtshelfer.

Geburtshelfer eines neuen Lebens. Und für dieses neue Leben geben wir alles her. Alles.’

87 Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Kurt-Maetzig-Archiv, Nr. 108: “Protokoll der Besprechung über den Thälmann-Film am 20.11.50. 45

After saying this, he turns back towards the camera and continues to walk, his gaze directed upwards, over the head of the spectator. Shortly afterwards, the camera cuts away to the next scene.

This statement is thus highlighted as the central point of the short scene—its main message—and it recalls Žižek’s idea of the functioning of the sublime body in a totalitarian state (in which he explicitly discusses Lenin as an example): the People must give birth to its own sublime body, but the People does not yet exist—only the people exist, until that body exists. In order to solve this paradox, the Leader must be involved: ‘By conceiving of himself as an agency through which the People gives birth to itself, the Leader assumes the role of a deputy from (of) the future; he acts as a medium through which the future, not yet existing People organizes its own conception.’88 Thälmann’s statement in this context thus positions him as the Leader through whom the People may do this, a role which is also fulfilled by Lenin (and later, Stalin), in Žižek’s analysis. What is interesting is that by using

‘wir’, he implies that at least Fiete, and possibly also the others fighting in the Uprising, also fall under this umbrella. Nevertheless, as discussed later, Fiete does not fill a leadership role (at least not in this film) but has a different part to play in the narrative.

What is perhaps contradictory in these scenes is the juxtaposition of the two leaders, Thälmann and Lenin. While they position Thälmann as a member of the Party elite and vessel of the Party’s “message”, they also make it clear that Lenin—and therefore the

Soviet Union—is the consecrating force behind German communism (and Thälmann, as its leader). As such, in some ways the positioning of Thälmann as the spiritual leader of GDR socialism is somewhat undermined, or at least weakened, since it suggests that East

88 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 262 46

Germans must still look to the Soviet Union for the location of the ruling elite. This is also implied in changes suggested by the DEFA-Kommission to a draft of the film’s script: ‘Wir schlagen eine Verbesserung insofern vor, dass auf Kosten anderer weniger wichtiger

Episoden im Drehbuch Lenin nicht nur einen Satz, sondern mehrere Sätze seiner berühmten Rede auf dem Kongress der Komintern spricht. Dabei kommt die internationale

Bedeutung und die internationale Führung der KPdSU(B) stärker zum Ausdruck.’89 While they also state that Thälmann’s “Führerqualitäten” should be better expressed in the same scene (which would ultimately be cut altogether), they twice stress the importance of highlighting ‘unsere internationale Führung’.90 That the German Thälmann should be represented as subordinate to the Soviet leaders notwithstanding all attempts to mythologise him is perhaps unsurprising: this hegemony of leaders was even enshrined in

SED Party ritual. As Julia Hell notes:

‘the East German totalitarian project faced yet another unique problem: given that

the real center of power was located in Moscow, its symbolic locus could never be

unambiguously filled in Germany. Stalin, the leader who embodied this authorizing

center, was absent, as was made more than obvious by a rather peculiar ritual

developed in the 1950s in the GDR: at all Party meetings, Stalin was voted honorary

chair and a seat left empty in his honor.’91

The title of the second film is therefore perhaps even more telling; Thälmann is a “Führer”, but he is leader “seiner Klasse”. While Thälmann may occupy an elite position above the

89 Undated comments by “A” (potentially Anton Ackermann) on behalf of the “DK” (DEFA- Kommission), in Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Kurt-Maetzig Archiv, Nr. 108. 90 Undated comments by “A” (potentially Anton Ackermann) on behalf of the “DK” (DEFA- Kommission), in Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Kurt-Maetzig Archiv, Nr. 108. 91 Hell, 29 47 rest of German socialism, there is an elite beyond that, one to which Thälmann himself is still subordinate—the Soviet Communist Party. This is supported by Žižek’s assertion concerning the relationship between ‘the Communists,’ the sublime body, and the Party.

Žižek quotes Stalin: ‘We, the Communists, are people of a special mound. We are made of special stuff.’92 This special stuff is that which Žižek terms the “sublime object” or “sublime body;” but he goes on to complicate this position, referring back to the Party: ‘Therein consists the “special mould” of the Communists: they are the “objective Reason of History” incarnated, and in so far as the stuff they are made of is ultimately their body, this body again undergoes a kind of transubstantiation; it changes into a bearer of another body within the transient material envelopment.’93 There is thus a doubling of Thälmann of bearer of the sublime body of the People—as ‘Geburtshelfer’: he has his own, doubled, sublime body; but this is also part of the larger sublime body that the concept of the Party represents. Žižek calls this sublime Party ‘an immediate individual incarnation of these objective laws, a point of paradoxical short circuit between subjective will and objective laws.’94 In the context of the films, Lenin stands in for the Party in this sense—as does

Stalin and his empty chair.

Thälmann or Hitler? Typically, propaganda strategies in the GDR and the Third Reich have been compared in terms of their similarities as attempts to create a fully state-controlled mass media in a totalitarian state and contrasted in terms of the content of that propaganda. Concerning the former, Christoph Classen notes that, in the case of the Third Reich, the Nazi party never

92 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 257 93 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 258 94 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 258 48 achieved complete control of all mass media in the state:95 private companies continued, for example, to produce films and newspapers. The SED, in contrast, achieved more or less full control over all mass media produced in the state. Meanwhile, both Classen and Randall

L. Bytwerk characterize the content of Nazi propaganda and GDR propaganda as distinct from one another. Classen contrasts them thus: ‘in the case of National Socialism we are dealing with a style of communication which can be called ‘mood-directed’, while we can attach the label ‘didactic’ to the Communist variant.’96 Bytwerk’s analysis more or less coincides with Classen’s, although the former uses a comparison of both systems to a religious structure to make his case, examining propaganda as a form of evangelism.97 Part of the didactic strategy of DEFA’s antifascist historical film was to explicitly contrast those who chose fascism with those who chose socialism, as we see in many of the films discussed in the second and third chapters of this thesis. To fulfill its primary purpose of promoting antifascism, an antifascist film had to also portray the Other of fascism. In films such as the Thälmann films, which also deal with the era prior to the Third Reich, this involves a certain amount of rewriting of the history of German communism: these films imply that fascism and Nazism in particular was always understood by the KPD to be its

(and communism’s) greatest enemy, when in reality, they had spent much of the 1920s focusing on opposing the SPD, and the Soviet Union had initially signed a non-aggression

95 Classen, 555 96 Classen, 557 97 Bytwerk 2012, 31: ‘Nazism and Marxism-Leninism resembled state religions, an intermingling of the secular and the sacred. They made claims not only on party members, but on everyone. No corner of culture or society was in theory exempt. For Christianity, everything is subject to the will of God. For totalitarianism, everything is subject to the human will (that is, all is political). The totalitarian party knows that to permit islands of the nonpolitical is to allow breeding grounds of heresy or apathy.’ 49 pact with Nazi Germany.98 As such, the fact that Thälmann really did say the famous line,

“wer wählt Hitler, wählt Krieg,” was a great aid to repositioning Hitler and Nazism as

German communism’s eternal Other.

It is therefore unsurprising that, whereas in the first film, Thälmann is compared to

Lenin, in the second film, he is contrasted with Hitler. The films’ narrative and characters fit into the tradition of antifascist films that had already been prevalent in the DEFA film studios since their beginnings in 1946. However, the Thälmann films were their first attempt to portray a historical communist leader in feature film form. There are multiple elements of the two films which suggest that the project was not only intended to help legitimize the GDR as part of a sustained history of German communism, but also to promote a socialist alternative to Hitler, in the form of Thälmann. If fascism is the Other of communism, to be compared and then demonstrably undermined and delegitimised in film, while communism is simultaneously legitimised, then should not the ultimate fascist leader undergo the same process in contrast to the ultimate (German) communist leader,

Thälmann? The title of the second film, Führer seiner Klasse, hints at this positioning of

Thälmann, but there are multiple aesthetic and contextual clues that imply the same.

Indeed, the attempts to offer Thälmann as an alternative to Hitler had already begun during his lifetime, starting with his standing for election as Chancellor and continuing with the sustained international campaign to secure his release from prison. Equally, the junior division of the FDJ (Freie Deutsche Jugend) was known as the Pioneerorganisation Ernst

Thälmann, correlating to the Hitlerjugend of the Third Reich.

98 On KPD-SPD relations in the Weimar period, see: von Saldern, The Challenge of Modernity: German Social and Cultural Studies, 1890-1960, 78-79; on the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, see: Daniels, ed., A Documentary History of Communism, 117-119. 50

It is therefore not unreasonable to suggest that the Thälmann films might also use aesthetic strategies, not only to cast Thälmann as a positive Führer against the negative of

Hitler but would also borrow such strategies from Nazi propaganda in order to reappropriate effective propaganda tools for socialist ends. I propose that the Thälmann films specifically make use of techniques that had already proven to be effective, to solidify

Thälmann in the mythology of the GDR and legitimize the state. This is not to imply that the

Thälmann films (as well as other GDR films which make use of similar aesthetic strategies) are themselves “fascist”, but rather to examine the potential re-use of propaganda strategies from the previous regime. In her article on the question of a fascist aesthetic in the films of Leni Riefenstahl, Linda Schulte-Sasse asks ‘do various contemporary (non-Nazi) phenomena that live off the same tension between reality and the imaginary and likewise attempt to transgress the boundary between the imaginary and the "real" then qualify as fascist?’99 Schulte-Sasse’s response to her own question is that

‘National Socialism represented the intersection of far too many historical,

economic, social, and psychological factors to permit a simplistic analogy with any

other historical conjuncture. Nevertheless, it is worth considering structural

similarities between National Socialism's attempt to aestheticize political life and

the tendencies in a wide range of discourses in contemporary societies today to

generate a sense of public euphoria and well-being, usually through images and

sounds produced by the electronic media.’100

99 Schulte-Sasse, 124 100 Schulte-Sasse, 144 51

In other words, one can productively consider how fascist aesthetic strategies have been utilized in other contexts without naming those

Figure 2 Figure 1 contexts to be themselves inherently fascist. Indeed, she particularly differentiates Nazi art from other movements as characteristically ‘pervaded by a nostalgic longing for an ideal located in a vaguely defined past.’101 This certainly cannot be applied to GDR film, which even when focused on the past, is centred around progress towards a similarly vaguely defined utopic future. What I thus propose is therefore to examine how the Thälmann films represent an appropriation of Nazi propaganda strategies for entirely different ends.

Before discussing how this manifests itself onscreen in the films, however, it is worth briefly discussing the film’s publicity, which also demonstrates the dual strategies of portraying Thälmann as a positive Führer figure and re-appropriating Nazi propaganda techniques. Figure 1 is the cover that was used for the 1955 publication of Bredel and

Tscheschno-Hell’s Literarische Szenarium. Figure 2 is the cover of a 1936 commemorative

101 Schulte-Sasse, 126 52 pamphlet for a sporting event.102 The visual similarities between the two images are striking: the backgrounds are cool colours (blue and grey) with the warm brown and red in the foreground. Likewise, while Thälmann is not giving the Hitler salute, he is standing in a remarkably similar pose, one that could not fail to remind the viewer of the past. Katja Kan notes the significance of the warm colours used in the foreground of the Hitler image, which are ‘traditionally associated with optimism in Western iconography.’103 Similarly, the

Thälmann image shows the leader and flags in brown and red, against a cool background.

Not only, therefore, does the later image seek to form an optimistic, positive impression of

Thälmann through its use of colour (referencing the positive emotions invoked by the similar, earlier images of Hitler) but also obviously compares Thälmann to Hitler through the use of the word Führer in the film’s title and the leader’s pose.

In the film itself, Thälmann is also contrasted with Hitler. Führer seiner Klasse shows

Thälmann’s famous visit to France and includes a scene of him visiting war graves with a

French comrade and Fiete accompanying him. He gives a speech at the war graves and the camera includes Fiete and the French communist in the shot as witnesses. At the end of the scene, the Frenchman says of Thälmann’s rejection of another war in Europe, “Wir könnten so gut wie Brüder leben.” The camera then cuts directly to Hitler making a speech, in full regalia, surrounded by swastika banners and the full rank and file of the SA. This cut makes it obvious exactly who spoiled the dream of fraternal solidarity between the workers and countries of Europe. It also implicitly refers to Thälmann’s famous assertion: ‘Wer wählt

102 http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2008/july/iron-fists-branding-the-20th-c- totalitarian-state 103 http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2008/july/iron-fists-branding-the-20th-c- totalitarian-state 53

Hitler, wählt Krieg’, since it shows the graves, the injured man, and reminds the spectator of the Second World War, and then follows this up with the cut to Hitler’s speech.

While the Hitler speech scene portrays the Nazis as rather impressively turned out, with multiple flags, banners, and torches, the camera does not close in on Hitler’s face, nor does it show his audience – it only shows soldiers stood behind him. In contrast, speech scenes in both films show Thälmann in close-up, and cut between shots of his audience en masse, their faces, and Thälmann both close-up and medium shots. This technique is similar to that used by Leni Riefenstahl in her propaganda films, Sieg des Glaubens (1933) and

Triumph des Willens (1935). In both the Thälmann films and the Riefenstahl films, the speech scenes are generally edited in a similar way: they begin with a wide shot showing both the speaker and the audience, then cut between shots of the audience’s faces and medium or close-up shots of the leader speaking, ending with a shot focusing on the leader as the speech reaches its climax—a classic shot-reverse-shot technique, which serves to

“suture” the spectator so that we become synonymous with the diegetic audience.104 In addition, Thälmann is filmed from a low angle, alone on the podium, in a manner which in

Triumph des Willens is reserved for Hitler.105 As such, while Führer seiner Klasse deliberately contrasts Thälmann as a positive Führer with Hitler as a negative one, it does so in part by reusing strategies originally used to portray Hitler in a positive light. As Alan

Marcus notes of Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, ‘the director specifically includes shots of people of different age groups, and close-ups of beautiful children’s faces, intent on viewing

104 Aaron, 19-20 105 The only other figure treated in this manner in the film, is Viktor Lutze, the new chief of the S.A.—and as David B. Hinton points out, the filming of Lutze in this way is specifically intended ‘to transfer cinematically the prestige and popularity of Hitler to the little-known Lutze.’ Hinton, 50. 54 and saluting the Führer.’106 This could equally describe the shots of the audience during

Thälmann’s speeches, such as the speech scene in Paris, in which Maetzig includes shots of men and women of different races and ages, as well as men who are clearly injured veterans.

Of course, Führer seiner Klasse does not show Hitler in close-up as well, nor does it show close-ups of members of his audience, since such shots are used specifically to demarcate Thälmann as a leader to be followed not only by the on-screen audience but also by the spectator. Similar shots of Hitler would therefore lead to rather mixed messages for the film’s intended audience!

Another similar pair of scenes occur later in the film. The scene opens with shots of marching socialist youth, singing Brecht’s Solidaritätslied. We then see Thälmann speaking to the singing crowd, from a window, positively responding to the song. He wears an outfit strangely like that of the SA, but with a plain red armband instead of the swastika armband.

Immediately after Thälmann’s speech, the film cuts to a scene of Hitler, wearing the same outfit (but with a swastika), who is hysterical over a perceived loss of popularity to

Thälmann. Thälmann is thus portrayed as positively supporting youth by giving an uplifting speech, in stark contrast to the representation of the Nazis as irrational—a portrayal which recurs throughout the film. The scene of Thälmann at the window, greeted by a rousing response from the crowd below, is remarkably like the photograph in Figure 3 of Hitler in the Wilhelmstraße Reichskanzlei, being applauded by the crowd below on the

106 Marcus, 79 55 night of his inauguration as chancellor,107 or the similar shot from Triumph des Willens, again showing Hitler greeting supporters from a window.

Lutz Koepnick makes an interesting argument about

Riefenstahl’s shots of

Hitler at the window, noting that Hitler himself

Figure 3 preferred to speak from balconies rather than windows, as he ‘hoped to show himself as a sight that exceeded the defining power of any ordinary frame.’108 Koepnick thus seeks to understand why Riefenstahl chooses to ‘place multiple frames around the Führer’s appearance’109 in Triumph des Willens, and argues that the framing of Hitler in the window, without his speaking from it, works to ‘absorb the spectator into the film’s image space.’110

He proposes that Hitler ‘does not do his thing here, namely speak, simply because

Riefenstahl’s shot identifies his body as already the incarnated voice of his subjects.’111 This is in contrast to the scene in question with Thälmann, in which he speaks to the crowd from the window. However, Maetzig’s framing does also work similarly to ‘absorb the spectator’.

107 Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1972-026-11 / Sennecke, Robert / CC-BY-SA 108 Koepnick, 165 109 Koepnick, 166 110 Koepnick, 175 111 Koepnick, 175 56

The sequence begins with a shot of the outside of the building, while the waiting crowd sings the Solidaritätslied. Banners with election slogans span the building between each floor: ‘Gegen Faschismus und Krieg,’ ‘Für Arbeit und Brot,’ ‘Antifaschisten,’ and ‘Wählt Liste

KPD.’ Before Thälmann speaks, we see medium shots of parts of the crowd, who are waving communist flags, and we hear them chanting Thälmann’s name. When he speaks, it is in a medium shot framed by the window. Unlike in Riefenstahl’s shots of Hitler, this is a much closer shot, and one which is dominated by Thälmann’s body; but the window frame matches the edges of the camera’s framing, thus situating Thälmann within the messages we have seen on the building, whilst simultaneously positioning the spectator in position of the singing and chanting crowd, longing to hear Thälmann’s words. Once again, the film explicitly places Thälmann in the position of power previously occupied by Hitler, and then drives the point home by immediately making a negative contrast with Hitler in the following scene.

Führer seiner Klasse also makes use of famous images from Nazi propaganda in other ways, subverting them to support the opposite cause. For example, the film takes the famous torchlight parade of 30 January 1933 and uses it to explicitly connect the Nazi leaders to the burning of the Reichstag. We see the torchlit parade as Hitler speaks to the marching men (again from a window!), followed by Hitler and Goebbels plotting over a plan of the Reichstag, followed by the burning building. The link between the fire, the Nazi leadership, and the burning of the Reichstag is made abundantly clear. In this case, therefore, what was previously an image emblematic of nationalist pride (the torchlit march) becomes the very opposite: a symbol of the destruction of German democracy. 57

A further way in which

the Thälmann films reuse a

Nazi propaganda trope is

through the religious

overtones surrounding the

films’ treatment of Thälmann

Figure 4 and, to a lesser extent, Fiete and Änne. In his book on propaganda in the Third Reich and

the GDR, Randall Bytwerk describes the treatment of Hitler in Nazi propaganda as follows:

‘National Socialism resembled a religious cult whose founder still walked among the

faithful. There was an aura of the superhuman in the way Nazis presented Hitler.’112

Bytwerk argues that much of Nazi propaganda treats Hitler in many ways as a religious

figure, and that the propaganda system, particularly in Nazi Germany over and above the

GDR, worked along similar principles to

religious evangelism. While Bytwerk

sees the GDR’s propaganda system as

far more based in theory, science, and

logic than that of the Third Reich, which

was primarily based on emotional

appeal, the Thälmann films make use of

Figure 5 several religious tropes similar to those used in images of Hitler.

112 Bytwerk 2012, 34 58

One example of this can be seen by comparing a print by Hoyer of Hitler speaking to a group of his followers to a scene from Sohn seiner Klasse in which Thälmann seeks to motivate his “disciples”. The Hoyer print (Figure 4) was ‘titled “In the Beginning was the

Word,” a clear reference to the opening of the biblical Gospel of John.’113 Similarly, in the film, Thälmann motivates his followers in the face of the bad news that some of their comrades have turned traitor. (Figure 5) He leads up to an uplifting speech by first educating the others as to how they can avoid the same errors, and secondly testing their loyalty by giving them the chance to leave. Just as with Hoyer’s characterisation of Hitler,

Thälmann appears Christ-like in this scene, testing his followers’ devotion and then quelling their fear in a way reminiscent of Jesus’ testing of his disciples. However, the

Thälmann films do not entirely align with the way in which Hitler is treated in Nazi propaganda. Taking again the example of Triumph des Willens, Alan Sennett notes that

‘The film situates Hitler physically above, and also apart from, the people and the

party. While the German nation is depicted as a crowd, lacking in individual

properties, Hitler is given a god-like presence through the use of close-up shots of

him speaking. The loneliness and isolation of command is evinced, and his stature

enhanced by camera shots from low angles. The masses are both uniformed and

presented as a uniform body. For much of the film, their leader is the only individual

present.’114

The depiction of Thälmann differs from this in several ways. Firstly, while Thälmann is also regularly depicted as standing above the crowd, he is rarely also “apart from” it: for example, in his first speech in Sohn seiner Klasse, he walks through the crowd to reach his

113 www.bytwerk.com/gpa/ah-art.htm 114 Sennett, 53 59 podium, and in Führer seiner Klasse he walks among the crowd after his speech to the

Parisian war veterans and talks to some of the audience members. Secondly, while

Thälmann is also shot from a low angle, these shots do not evince loneliness, because they usually have members of the crowd in the shot. The only shots in which Thälmann is the sole individual shown are the close-ups of his face, but these are interspersed with wider shots which include the crowd. Similarly, while the masses are sometimes portrayed as uniformed to some extent (for example, when Thälmann speaks to the crowd from the window, as discussed above, in which they all wear very similar clothing and wave communist flags) there are also many speech scenes in which the crowd is not uniformed, and individual listeners are highlighted by the camera—most regularly, Fiete or Änne, but also often “random” crowd members, who are shown avidly listening. Thälmann is not the only individual present—Fiete and Änne, along with other supporting characters, are highlighted in the speech scenes just as much as in the rest of the films, particularly in the second film when both go on to take leadership roles in their own right.

This portrayal of Thälmann, not as a ‘lonely God’, but, rather, as a Christ-like figure, situated among his followers, means that the Thälmann films take the allegory in a different direction than Nazi propaganda did, however, by providing a Christ-figure in the form of

Thälmann, but implying a different “God” in the form of Lenin. This can particularly be seen in the first film, which positions Thälmann as Lenin’s heir and successor, beginning with the previously mentioned scene at the beginning of the film where Thälmann reads aloud from a Lenin text. Here, he reads from Lenin as if the text is a holy book from which he can take guidance and succour. This theme continues with Thälmann’s visit to Lenin. While

Lenin is shown to take special interest in Thälmann, Thälmann’s response to him—that he 60 has simply tried to learn from him—implies the hierarchy of Lenin as the “Father” and

Thälmann as the “Son”—in line with the title of the film. This privileges the ideology above all else, as Thälmann, as the martyred Christ, may lose his material form, but the sublime body, as the embodiment of the ideology, cannot be disincorporated and thus passes on to another vessel—which the film strongly implies is Fiete, as a representative of the people.

Thälmann’s Christ-like, “undying” death at the end of Führer seiner Klasse ensures the survival of the sublime body not only through its symbolic passing to Fiete (as discussed later) but also by doubling the fetish. Where Thälmann himself has fulfilled the role of ideological fetish during the two films, the scene of his (un)death could be, in itself, regarded as fetishistic: the spectator is left knowing that (the real) Thälmann is (really) dead, but nevertheless believing in his Christ-like immortality.

This allegorical portrayal of Thälmann’s death is also similar to a number of images of Hitler. The film closes with Thälmann walking proudly to his death (which is not shown) under a voiceover of his own words: ‘Mein ganzes Leben, meine ganze Kraft, habe ich dem herrlichsten auf der Welt, dem Kampf für die Befreiung der Menschheit gewidmet.’ The guards behind him fade out and are replaced by a waving red flag. It is as if he is walking towards the shining Communist future he has brought about, rather than his death, as a choir sings triumphantly and the film ends. In his book on the “Thälmann myth”, Russel

Lemmons describes Thälmann’s death as ‘sacrificial’, once again providing a similarity between Thälmann’s portrayal and the life of Christ. Lemmons states that Thälmann ‘dies in order to secure the victory of socialism and the defeat of fascism.’115 Of course, this is not the reality of Thälmann’s death – he was secretly shot in Buchenwald well before the war

115 Lemmons 2013, 177 61 ended—but rather is intended to promote the idea that Thälmann lives on. A similar message may be found in posters of Hitler. The first of these is a similar image to the end of the film: Hitler, before a red flag, overlaid by his own words, which also suggest that the path to freedom and peace lies with him. The second is a less similar image but a similar idea: Hitler stands beneath a light cascading from heaven, while an eagle descends towards him, as if ready to raise him up above the rest of humanity. Equally, there is a flag in this image as well—the flag in all three images represents the continuity of the leader’s spirit and influence even when the leader himself is not present. In this sense it functions in a similar manner to the Christian crucifix.

These numerous examples of similarities between Nazi propaganda and the visual and filmic techniques used in the Thälmann films suggest a level of influence or inspiration from the former to the latter on an aesthetic level. On the level of the content of that propaganda, there is a marked difference between the two: as Classen describes, Nazi propaganda tended to be “mood-oriented”, aiming to elicit an emotional response from its audience, while GDR propaganda tended to be more didactic and reason-based, hence the focus of many positive hero narratives on the characters’ Bildung as a socialist, as I argue in the case of Fiete and Änne. Nevertheless, there are clear aesthetic similarities between the two. While this could be explained away by noting that numerous employees of the DEFA film studios had previously worked for UFA, I believe that they add up to a conscious effort to reappropriate Nazi propaganda techniques in order to position Thälmann as the socialist alternative to Hitler. Nazi propaganda techniques had already been reused in other GDR cultural spheres, such as in the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ): Alan L. Nothnagle notes that

‘adoption of the antifascist myth was made easy [for the FDJ] in the late 1940s by the SED’s 62 direct imitation of familiar Hitler Youth organizational forms and symbols.’116 As such, it would be unsurprising if this “re-using” of techniques did not extend to other areas in which Nazi propagandists had excelled, including cinema. It may, on the other hand, also be a result of the fact that both Nazi propagandists (including Leni Riefenstahl) and DEFA looked to Soviet propaganda films of the 1920s for inspiration. In any case, in this way, the

GDR could produce a leader to go along with their view of Germany’s history: that the GDR was rooted in a shared history of antifascist resistance, while the FRG inherited and continued the evil of fascism. The films thus not only propose a true socialist hero and leader, a German successor to Lenin and Stalin; they also rewrite German history by suggesting that the “true” Führer was socialist all along. This is problematic in a number of ways. Firstly, the recycling of propaganda techniques used by the Nazis in portraying

Hitler, in order to portray Thälmann as a strong leader, may be intended to simply portray

Thälmann in a way that is easily comprehensible to the film’s original audience, but equally could be considered to imply that Thälmann is a direct replacement of Hitler, and that the two leaders (and systems) are two sides of the same coin. Moreover, the film’s combination of this with the repeated comparisons of Thälmann to Hitler may be read as demonstrating all that was wrong with Hitler against all that is right with Thälmann, but nevertheless once again implies that Thälmann is simply filling the role that Hitler left empty.

This, indeed, ties into Julia Hell’s reading of the function of father figures in GDR literature of the 1950s: that the death of Hitler left an “empty locus of power” that could not be filled by the real, living leaders of East Germany, and was thus, in Hell’s reading, filled through fictional portrayals of socialist hero and father figures. Hell states that ‘the people’s

116 Nothnagle, 105 63 body was ‘polluted’ by National Socialism and therefore could not serve as a basis for a national narrative of popular resistance.’117 Thälmann, on the other hand, is portrayed in the film as completely unpolluted—not only is he in many ways simply a vessel for Party ideology, rather than a fully fleshed-out character in his own right, but he also spends almost the entirety of the Third Reich in jail, physically separated from the events in the rest of Germany—in other words, “quarantined” from the pollution. However, the film, through its supplanting of Hitler with Thälmann, positions the latter as filling the “empty locus of power” left by the former, which, according to Claude Lefort is what occurs when a king is replaced by a democracy: the sublime body of the king loses its material mainstay

(since the king is not replaced by another absolute leader as successor), and, thus, is destroyed and never replaced.118 As such, by implying that Thälmann fills the same spiritual role for the German people as Hitler (even if as a “better” leader), it is inferred that the sublime body of the Nazi leadership is passed on to the Communist leadership—an entirely different kind of historical continuity than intended by the use of Thälmann’s life to narrate the history of the German Communist movement over three decades!

This gestures to the symbolic role which the fictional version of Thälmann is created to fill. As previously discussed, in a totalitarian state, the body of the dictator (or even the symbolic “body” of the Party itself) is redoubled as the sublime body in the same manner as

Kantorowicz’s notion of the King’s two bodies. Žižek grounds this idea as follows:

“Is not the ultimate proof of this special attitude of Leninist Communists towards

the body the fact of the mausoleum – their obsessive compulsion to preserve intact

the body of the dead Leader (Lenin, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong)? How can we

117 Hell, 29 118 Lefort, 279 64

explain this obsessive care if not by reference to the fact that in their symbolic

universe, the body of the Leader is not just an ordinary transient body but a body

redoubled in itself, an envelopment of the sublime Thing?”119

It may be noted that in Ernst Thälmann – Führer seiner Klasse, Thälmann is also not shown to die, implying that his spirit—his sublime body—lives on. This idea is repeatedly stressed in the second film. In fact, the Thälmann of the films is solely a sublime body; his body only exists in the symbolic context of the films and their positioning of him within the state mythology, since the spectator understands his real, existing body is already gone. For

Žižek, the role of this sublime body is that of a fetish, concealing the essential lack at the centre of the (and of any) political system:

“The emergence of this sublime body is clearly linked to the illegal violence that

founds the reign of law: once the reign of law is established, it rotates in its vicious

circle, “posits its presuppositions”, by means of foreclosing its origins; yet for the

synchronous order of law to function, it must be supported by some “little piece of the

real” which within the space of law, holds the place of its founding/foreclosed

violence—the sublime body is precisely this “little piece of the real” which “stops up”

and thus conceals the void of the law’s vicious circle.”120

The sublime body functions to conceal the origins of the reign of law, which began (in the case of the GDR) with the foundational violence of the removal of Hitler and the Nazi State

(the previous such ‘reign of law’) by the war and, more specifically, the invasion and occupation of Germany in 1945, followed by the corresponding dispersal of its centre of identity from the sublime body of the Führer. As such, the “empty locus of power” produced

119 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 260 120 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 260 65 by this destruction is not eliminated by the construction of the Communist sublime body, but rather is covered over by it. In this sense, the sublime body functions as an ideological fetish. This fetish is necessary to the functioning of the system; Žižek writes:

The Lacanian “plus-One” […] is precisely this necessary surplus: every signifying set

contains an element which is “empty”, whose value is accepted on trust, yet which

precisely as such guarantees the “full” validity of all other elements. Strictly

speaking it comes in excess, yet the moment we take it away, the very consistency of

the other elements disintegrates.121

As such, in order to establish the legitimacy of the GDR as a ‘reign of law’ and political state, it is necessary for the sublime body to be established. However, as previously discussed, the real physical bodies of Germans after the war were “polluted” with fascism—much of the population of the GDR had previously lived there during the Nazi regime and had participated to a greater or lesser extent in its apparatus—and were therefore not suitable vessels for the sublime body. In this case, such ideological fetishes were even more necessary in fiction, particularly because in East Germany the centre of power and identity was doubly removed, firstly in its true position in the Soviet Union and secondly in its essential emptiness. As such, Thälmann as an ideological fetish covers over both this void of the law’s ‘vicious circle’122—the ‘illegitimate violence’123 at the root of the reign of law— but also the doubled “empty locus of power” caused by the absence of a real physical vessel for the sublime body in the GDR itself, which instead resides in the Soviet Union. (Recall

Stalin’s empty chair!)

121 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 250 122 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 260 123 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 204 66

Fiete and Änne as Vorbilder This positioning of Thälmann as a ‘communist God’ on par with Lenin undermines the suggestion that Thälmann is the intended role model in the films. No ordinary person could expect to rise to the level of Lenin or reproduce Thälmann’s utter dedication to his cause, which excludes any kind of emotional life. He fulfills rather a purely symbolic role as an ideological fetish. Instead, the films offer the viewer two other characters to identify with as more accessible role models: Fiete and Änne Jansen, characters who are entirely fictional. They are a couple who, over the course of the two films, meet, fall for each other, get married, and have a child. Members of Thälmann’s inner circle, they are communist revolutionaries in their own right. Indeed, their lives are almost as dedicated to the cause as Thälmann’s is, despite their personal relationship. However, while (particularly in the second film) their relationship is highlighted, Thälmann’s wife and child are barely shown

(only when they visit him in jail)—a particularly telling choice considering Rosa

Thälmann’s participation in the production process of the films. As has been suggested by

Ralf Schenk, Fiete and Änne represent the people ‘aus dem Volk,’124 a decision which proved to be particularly successful. The film positions the couple as figures of identification for the spectator, whereas Thälmann is someone the spectator can admire but never fully emulate. As Russel Lemmons states: ‘In their efforts to create a “communist everyman” who could serve as a model for all East Germans, DEFA and party officials created an ideal to which no one could realistically aspire.’125 There is no way for the spectator to fully relate to Thälmann, as he has no life outside of the cause, whereas Fiete

124 Schenk , 78 125 Lemmons 2007, 104 67 and Änne have a romantic relationship, personal failings, and emotional reactions to the events that take place. Seán Allan succinctly sums up their role in the films: ‘the sub-plot of

Fiete and Änne Jansen offers ordinary East German viewers a point of identification and a means of linking their own memories of history with the greater historical narrative of the

SED embodied in the transcendent figure of Thälmann.’126

Throughout the films, we see both characters’ education as Communists. They are both portrayed as loyal followers of Thälmann from the start, but they gradually learn to be better communists and leaders in their own right. They act as Thälmann’s disciples, actively implementing his ideology in their daily lives. For example, during the scenes of the Hamburg Uprising, Thälmann’s role is clearly that of a leader, uninvolved in the physical melees. The film portrays him as directing events from behind the scenes in meetings, moving around the underground tunnels that the communists are using as their base, and visiting injured comrades to improve their morale. In contrast, Fiete is portrayed as being in the thick of the action: for example, in one scene, he heroically and singlehandedly attempts to hold off the fascists with a machine gun even after his comrades have escaped. Equally, Änne bravely travels to Dresden alone to deliver Thälmann’s message. They are portrayed as being on the ground, actively carrying out Thälmann's requests and risking their lives for him.

Within the hegemonic system headed by Lenin and Stalin and understudied by

Thälmann, Fiete and Änne thus represent the link between the Party and the people: the possibility of the future rebirth of the sublime body by the People themselves, since both characters’ narratives revolve around them learning how to be the best possible

126 Allan 2015, 58 68 communists they can be. Indeed, in the films, they often literally act as the messenger between Thälmann and the masses: prior to Thälmann’s first speech, Fiete announces the news of Karl Liebknecht’s death to some of the other workers before Thälmann speaks, and

Änne sounds the horn to call everyone in to listen to Thälmann. Like Thälmann in his speeches, Fiete and Änne are both positioned physically above the rest of the crowd in this scene, but their role is to prepare the crowd for Thälmann’s message, rather than to pass on the “gospel” themselves. In general, whereas Thälmann is shot in close-up or physically above the crowd, Fiete and Änne are amongst the crowd—although they are usually the only ones who speak out from within the crowd. Particularly in the first film, Fiete’s role is usually to announce the facts of whatever news Thälmann will speak about before the leader himself then makes his speech, interpreting the events and suggesting how the workers and communists should respond.

While Fiete and Änne are portrayed as more human and three-dimensional than

Thälmann, they nevertheless have a symbolic role to fill. They are bearers of a collective, rather than purely individual identity, as Thälmann’s disciples and future members of the

People-as-One (the term Lefort uses to refer to the future People).127 As such, particularly in Änne’s portrayal, there are constant references back to Thälmann, not only in terms of her with him or explicitly referencing him, but also in other ways. He is the vessel of the body of the People to which she (as part of the collective) must one day give birth. Even

Änne’s pregnancy in the second film can therefore be read as such. This is bolstered by a scene during her pregnancy in which Thälmann gives her a book, which she later reads aloud to Fiete as if it were a religious text. Her (and Fiete’s) response to the text is similar

127 Lefort, 24 69 to Thälmann’s reaction to the Lenin text he reads aloud at the beginning of the first film.

This mirroring of Thälmann’s path to leadership foreshadows the increased leadership roles that the couple will take on in the narrative of the second film, particularly once

Thälmann is in jail and they become his emissaries. It also, however, serves to remind the viewer of their connection to Thälmann—that their actions are because of him, and that their path to full embodiment of the ideology is through him. Earlier in the film, we also see

Änne campaigning for Thälmann, in a scene which comes immediately after Thälmann’s visit to the French graves and the contrasting shots of Hitler’s speech—in fact, the Hitler scene is sandwiched between Thälmann’s speech and Änne’s. Using a medium shot,

Maetzig represents Änne in a manner remarkably like some of the Thälmann speeches in the first film—she is shown with a crowd behind her, she is physically raised above the crowd, and the camera shoots her from eye level, before zooming into her face for a close- up at the end of her speech. Her outfit is also like Thälmann’s standard non-uniform clothing—she wears a long wool coat and a folded red scarf. While this on the one hand gives the impression that Änne is following in Thälmann’s footsteps, it also doubles the message of Änne’s speech, in which she is convincing the crowd to vote for him: she is an emissary for Thälmann, not a leader herself. Her final words reinforce the implied choice in the two preceding scenes, explicitly including the spectator in her audience: as the camera zooms in on her face, she turns in the direction of the camera and asks, ‘Hitler, oder

Thälmann?’. In other words, she directly asks the spectator to choose their allegiance—the almost devil-like Hitler, or the Christ-like figure of Thälmann? While this explicit demand that the spectator choose to identify with Thälmann and communism is rather heavy- handed, this scene particularly highlights the hierarchical structure implied by the already 70 established power dynamics between the Soviet leadership, Thälmann, Fiete and Änne, and the masses. It demonstrates a hierarchy implicit to totalitarianism, in which Thälmann’s immortality means that he will never actually cease to be the vessel for the sublime body; he can never become the “Geburtshelfer” he claims to be.

Later in Führer seiner Klasse, Änne gives her child into the care of the wife of a jailed comrade, then meets with their French comrade to swap messages and packages. They climb the Siegessäule, pretending to be sight-seeing, where he hands her messages from

Gorky and Dimitroff to pass on to Thälmann for his upcoming birthday, and she hands him a package containing their red flag. This appears to be the same flag that, when seen earlier in the film, had an image of Thälmann’s face sewn onto it. Änne tells him to take care of it, as it now ‘has no place in Germany.’ The French comrade takes it reverently, and later in the film uses it in the Spanish Civil War, where he encounters Fiete at the head of the “Ernst

Thälmann Battalion”. While this scene represents Änne’s continued bravery and dedication to the cause in the face of mounting difficulties and danger, the passing on of the flag and the sending of her child to a safer place also represent the need to protect the future of the movement and its symbols at all costs. The Red Flag is a frequent symbol for the Party in these films as well as DEFA films in general, and this flag particularly symbolically combines Thälmann and the Party—in other words, the entire spiritual leadership of

German communism. As such, Änne’s role here is, beyond her own activities in Berlin, primarily concerned with securing the future of socialism, while recognizing that this may

(and later does) come at great cost to her own life. In this way, Änne’s portrayal coincides with the common role of women in GDR antifascist narratives of the 40s and 50s, in which 71 female socialists are portrayed primarily as mothers, their role being to secure the future of socialism by raising children within the ideology.128

This is also implied in a brief exchange shortly before this scene, in which Änne attends the trial of a comrade. Another comrade, who is limping and on crutches (due to being beaten during his incarceration) comes to testify on behalf of the defendant. When asked if he is related to him, he responds that ‘wir sind verwandt durch eine grosse Idee.’ In the next scene, his wife repeats this line to Änne, who responds ‘Wir sind alle eine Familie’ as she entrusts her with her daughter. This exchange seems to refer to Thälmann’s line that they are all ‘Geburtshelfer eines neuen Lebens’: it suggests that Änne’s female comrade will raise her daughter the right way, since she is part of the “family of Communism” just as

Änne is. It also reinforces Änne’s role as socialist matriarch, since it is followed by scenes of her securing her child’s safety (the human future of the movement); ensuring the flag with

Thälmann’s face is not destroyed (the symbolic future of the movement and its ideology); and actively trying to spread antifascist sentiment in Berlin, through distributing leaflets in crowded places (recruiting more “children”—new antifascists—to the movement). Finally, the nature of her death and the religious overtones of the scenes preceding it, position her as a martyr for the cause—and thus a saintly figure. Änne’s role as a martyr is discussed in more detail in the following chapter.

Similarly to Änne, Fiete also becomes a leader, first in the Spanish Civil War, and then in the Red Army. Although he is portrayed as someone capable of leading others and carrying out heroic deeds in his own right, just like Änne, he always does so as Thälmann’s representative: his actions are always implicitly related back to Thälmann. Towards the

128 See: Hell, 35-37. 72 end of the second film, when asked what kind of German he is, Fiete still says ‘Ich kämpfe gegen Hitler für Deutschland, im Geiste Thälmanns,’ even though he is apparently now commanding his own troops in the Red Army while Thälmann languishes in jail. In this way, Fiete is primarily shown as the one who will continue Thälmann’s legacy into the future. He is who the spectator can realistically aspire to be: they can act ‘in the spirit of’

Thälmann, but they cannot become him themselves.

Nevertheless, Fiete carries out acts of heroism that mark him out as a good and extremely dedicated communist. For example, during the Hamburg Uprising, while

Thälmann leads from behind the scenes, Fiete is portrayed as being in the thick of the action, heroically leading an attack on the enemy. While the others who are with him end up having to escape back into the sewers to save an injured comrade, Fiete remains behind to man their machine gun alone, staying until his situation becomes completely untenable, with bullets nearly hitting him. As he retreats, he even manages to kill his pursuer in order to cover his comrades’ tracks. As the camera cuts to a close-up of his face, he says: ‘Du wirst kein Arbeiterblut mehr vergiessen!’ The flames behind him create a red reflection around his face. It is scenes such as this which demarcate Fiete as the ultimate, dedicated communist. The colour red signifies his strong connections to communism and the Party, and his words make his allegiance extremely clear. They also ally him with the masses—he includes himself among the ‘Arbeiter’. Where Thälmann, from his very first speech, invokes the ‘Arbeiter’ in order to instruct his audience what they should do next, Fiete’s use of the word strongly positions him among the masses, expressing their opinion of the enemy, rather than his own opinion of what the masses should do or think. 73

This is representative of Fiete’s role throughout both films. He is repeatedly shown in a position of confrontation with the fascist Other, in which he represents the communist

“everyman”, a man of the masses, expressing their opinions and desires to the enemy.

Indeed, it is often Fiete who comes into explicit conflict with the enemy. This is particularly thematized in the second film, where Fiete leads the Ernst Thälmann Battalion into combat in the Spanish Civil War, and also towards the very end of the film, where he becomes an officer in the Red Army. In a key sequence, Fiete captures German officers as prisoners of war, and later tries to convince ordinary German soldiers to switch sides to join him. His role, as in the first film, is to be the face of communism (and implicitly, the Party) to the fascist Other—but always as a representative of Thälmann, rather than as a leader himself, as discussed above. It is Thälmann who has defined the terms of Fiete’s engagement with the fascist Other, since Fiete is acting in his name. As such, this confirms Fiete (and Änne’s) status as the representatives of the collective: Susan Buck-Morss, following Carl Schmitt, states that ‘to define the enemy is, simultaneously, to define the collective,’ and that, therefore, ‘defining the enemy is the act that brings the collective into being.’129 The film symbolically positions Fiete (and, to an extent, Änne) as the proxy for the collective by then having him continually be the one to spearhead these encounters with the enemy.

While Fiete is primarily positioned as Thälmann’s exemplary follower, there are a few moments in which it is implied that Fiete is Thälmann’s heir apparent and could perhaps take over his leadership after he is gone. The first of these occurs at the end of the first film, when Fiete and many of his comrades have been imprisoned for their role in the

Hamburg Uprising. Fiete tries to raise their spirits while they go on hunger strike and

129 Buck-Morss, 9 74 repeats Thälmann’s “Geburtshelfer” line. While this, once again, links a moment of Fiete’s leadership back to Thälmann, it also implies Fiete as one of the “Geburtshelfer”, and thus a communist leader himself. The camera angle during this shot also implies this: Fiete is shot from below, an angle usually only used for Thälmann when he is giving a speech. Similarly, at the end of the second film, it is implied that Fiete will continue to act where Thälmann cannot. The very last sequence in the second film begins with Fiete liberating an old comrade of Thälmann’s from a concentration camp. They shake hands, and the camera tracks in to focus in close-up on the handshake. The film then immediately cuts to

Thälmann, who is about to be taken to his execution. The handshake thus becomes a symbol of the passing of responsibility from the old generation to the younger; from

Thälmann to Fiete—but also, of course, the younger generation's respect for, and cooperation with, the remaining members of that older generation! It is clear from the final shots, following this scene, of Thälmann’s death, that Fiete will not rise to replace

Thälmann, whose spirit will live on even his body does not. This is also implied in Fiete’s words, in his last scene before the concentration camp scene, when he says: ‘Ich kampfe gegen Hitler für Deutschland, im Geiste Thälmanns’. While Fiete may become a communist leader in his own right, it will always be ‘im Geiste Thälmanns’, rather than in his own right—and thus he will never become a symbolic hero, a fetishistic vessel for the sublime body of the People. Instead, Fiete and Änne represent the People—no longer “people”, who must be aided by the “Geburtshelfer” of the holder of the sublime body, but rather those who, among the masses, are already prepared for the “birth”. They are Vorbilder; literally, coming before (vor) the others, to help guide them along the path. Their role is thus 75 primarily as role models, and figures to be emulated, so that the desired ideological perfection represented by Thälmann may one day be possessed by everyone.

The interactions between Thälmann, Fiete, and Änne, are key to Thälmann’s positioning as part of the hegemony of Communist leaders. They represent the possibility of realistic emulation of Thälmann’s ideals. They also embody the idea that ordinary, working class people can be heroes through the guidance of Thälmann. What is interesting is that, while they are both fictional characters, they are the characters that the spectator is invited to feel closest to. The viewer is therefore not encouraged to identify most with any of the historical figures portrayed in the film, but rather with characters of Bredel’s and

Tschesno-Hell’s invention. This certainly reinforces the criticism of the films, which suggest that Thälmann is depersonalized in the attempt to make him the vessel of German communist history, since the fictional elements are more human than the hero himself!

Where Thälmann holds a purely symbolic, fetishistic function, which the viewer does not need to identify with as such, but rather feels drawn to or desires in a hegemonic relationship, Fiete and Änne represent that which the viewer themselves could aspire to be.

They fulfil the role of “everyman hero” (in the Gorkian sense) or Vorbild. As the portrayal of

Fiete and Änne demonstrates, the Vorbild functions as that which connects the masses (and thus, implicitly, the cinema audience as well) to the symbolic level on which Thälmann,

Lenin, and Stalin exist—and on which, as I argue in the following chapters, other, fictional, symbolic representatives of socialist ideology also operate. The Vorbild teases the desire of the people (the masses) for the body of the People (the implied utopic socialist future) and supports their disavowal of the reality of the system and fetishization of the symbolic hero by enacting this on-screen. Simultaneously, they demonstrate how one can undergo a 76 socialist process of Bildung in order to gain access to the symbolic level and the body of the

People held by those who are already there—and thus gain access to the promised future utopia, or at least (like Fiete) come close to it. The Vorbild thus acts to connect those on the symbolic level to the masses in both directions: their Bildung narrative implies that it is possible for an “everyman”, a member of the masses, to rise up to(wards) the symbolic level; but they also transmit the message of the symbolic heroes to the masses, both by quite literally evangelising for them where they themselves are not able to be present (as we see Fiete and Änne do for Thälmann) but also by encouraging the masses to pay attention to the symbolic hero’s message when he transmits it himself. This can be seen even at the very beginning of Sohn seiner Klasse, when Fiete and Änne are instrumental in gathering the crowd to listen to Thälmann’s first on-screen speech. Again, they fulfil this function for both the on-screen masses and the spectator.

As I have shown, together, Sohn seiner Klasse and Führer seiner Klasse position

Thälmann as a symbolic hero, vessel for the sublime body of the People, and thus synonymous with the Party, State, and ideology, in order to cover over the “empty locus of power” inherent in the GDR’s foundational antifascist narrative and corresponding reign of law. In doing so, they build a portrayal of Thälmann as a true Communist leader, on a level with other Communist leaders such as Lenin—one who the spectator can never hope to become or truly emulate, because he exists solely on the level of the sublime. Instead, they provide two alternatives as potential points of identification: Fiete and Änne. These

Vorbilder demonstrate how one might act in order to come close to the great leader, proving that one does not need to be on a level with Lenin in order to be a good socialist, but just follow the guidance of those who are on that level. As such, it is not Thälmann who 77 acts as a role model in the films, as the discussions in the early production meetings intended, but rather Fiete and Änne, who are the role models to Thälmann’s position as the symbolic, fetishistic hero and vessel for the sublime body. Between them, they represent two distinct aspects of the concept of the “positive hero”: on the one hand, fulfilling a legitimative function for the political reign of law, and on the other, providing points of identification and emulation for the spectator.

The Thälmann films, stressed as DEFA’s most important project from the first days of the GDR’s existence, thus represent a paradigm for DEFA portrayals of positive heroes, against which later portrayals of the archetype may be examined. As previously discussed in the introduction to this dissertation, those involved with DEFA were concerned (and somewhat confused) about the representations of positive heroes and heroines in the first decade of DEFA’s productions. Therefore, the Thälmann films represent DEFA’s best effort to produce a model for the positive hero character, and to thus define the archetype for future productions. While the films were criticized for Thälmann’s two-dimensionality, as I have shown, Thälmann, Fiete and Änne represent respectively two aspects or versions of one character type. In the next chapters, I examine how later films bring these two aspects

(the symbolic/fetishistic and the role model/centre of identification) together, by focusing on the archetypes of the Martyr and the Mitläufer in chapters two and three respectively, and by examining more conflicted representations of positive hero figures in films of the

80s and early 90s in the fourth chapter.

Chapter 2: Mothers and Martyrs: foregrounding the Vorbild This chapter examines a particular, but common aspect of DEFA films featuring positive heroism: the martyr. At first sight, it seems somewhat counterproductive for the positive hero, designed to inspire dedication to and identification with the state’s ideology, to die a martyr’s death in film: what is to inspire the spectator to build a socialist future, if the hero dies prematurely for the cause? However, a further investigation of the appearance of the martyrdom trope in numerous DEFA films demonstrates not only the connection between martyrdom and positive heroism, but also the function of martyrdom within that of the positive hero and its role in the representation and dissemination of ideology. While many films dealing with German history of the twentieth century involve character deaths, not all of those deaths may be characterised as martyrdom. Martyr deaths are usually explicitly or implicitly connected to a positive future development: the consequences of their actions or of their deaths result in a brighter socialist future. Paul Middleton describes martyrdom in the most general terms as follows:

‘Usually, there is some form of personal confrontation, which may be between a

believer and an official. However, whether or not this element is present, the death

is normally interpreted within the framework of a far wider conflict, which may

itself be external to the narrative or report. This conflict may be regional, global, or

even cosmic. The martyr becomes a symbol of a community’s desires and hopes, or

for that matter, their terrors and fears, but in either case, the martyr is

representative of a larger struggle. This struggle might be political, spiritual, or often

both. Usually some form of final outcome is envisaged and the martyr contributes in

some way to that larger end.’130

Middleton’s definition, although broad, operates as the basis for the choice of films (and deaths) in this chapter. Despite its expansiveness, it does also rule out some deaths, even in the films discussed below, as martyrdoms: for example, in Hans-Joachim Kunert’s adaptation of Die Toten bleiben jung, which features two deaths which may be considered martyr deaths, another character, a Nazi officer, shoots himself in recognition of his own actions towards the end of the film. However, this death, while perhaps redemptive, cannot be categorized as a martyrdom: the film does not suggest that the officer’s death aids in furthering the socialist cause or even represents a change in ideology, and indeed, it does not even truly redeem his previous actions, which send a communist father and son to their deaths, years apart.

Middleton’s broader conclusion is that a martyr is not so much defined by the manner or (un)intentionality of their death, but rather by their narrative: ‘Most martyrs would not know how they would be remembered, and although they may deliberately die for a cause, they have little control over how their story will be told.’131 In other words, the agent of a martyrdom narrative is not the martyr themselves, but rather, the narrator, who puts the death to use in serving an ideological purpose (be it religious or secular). Martyr narratives are a type of myth: ‘martyrs’ deaths fit into larger narrative frameworks so that they somehow contribute to the winding of a wider conflict.’132 In the case of the Thälmann films, a variety of mythologizing narratives and techniques serve to cover over ideological

130 Middleton, 15 131 Middleton, 17 132 Middleton, 18 80 fissures and stimulate the spectator’s identification with a specifically East German form of socialism. Martyr narratives equally operate as a form of myth, and, as I argue in this chapter, are connected in DEFA films to the archetype of the positive hero in a variety of ways.

Interestingly, many forms of martyr narratives in DEFA films incorporate female, and particularly maternal characters. As Daniela Berghahn notes, 'the chief function of women in the films' narrative economy was to heighten the trope of self sacrifice around which the antifascist genre is structured. [...] There are hardly any couples that survive together.'133 While Berghahn points out that in many cases it is the male partner who dies

'as the agent of resistance',134 as I show in this chapter, this is not always the case: some of the films discussed in this chapter show women (and particularly mothers) who die in service of the cause. This chapter thus focuses on two aspects of maternal characters and their connection to martyrdom in DEFA antifascist films: firstly, narratives which portray mothers as martyrs, and secondly, those which deal with the symbolic connection between mothers and martyrs. Maternal martyrdom narratives highlight the connection between religious iconography and allegory in positive hero narratives in general and martyr narratives more specifically, by portraying both mothers as martyrs as well as films in which motherhood and martyrdom are strongly linked. In part one of this chapter, I examine narratives of maternal martyrdom, this time exploring the connection between these martyrdoms and masculine positive heroism as a form of Oedipus narrative. In part two, I consider more closely how narratives of male martyrdom connect the positive hero with the sublime body of the People discussed already in the introduction and first chapter

133 Berghahn, "Resistance of the Heart", 167-168 134 Berghahn, "Resistance of the Heart", 168 81 of this dissertation. In addition, I explore how male martyrdoms are interconnected with narratives of maternal positive heroism, the extent to which the latter is made possible by such narratives, and the functions and limits of it implied within the films’ overall narratives.

Socialist Mothers The mother has held a significant function in connection to the archetype of the socialist positive hero since the trope’s conception: with Gorky’s 1907 novel The Mother and his subsequent contribution to Essay of a Philosophy of Collectivism in 1909 laying the foundation for the term’s ascension in the 1930s.135 Mathewson notes that Pavel, the mother’s son in Mother, was by the 1940s viewed by many as ‘the first successful image of the positive Bolshevik hero.’136 Mathewson’s description of the two main themes of the novel coincides with the two types of positive hero we encountered in the Thälmann films: the novel ‘contains two formulas often found in later Soviet fiction: the conversion of the innocent, the ignorant, or the misled in the forward movement of society; and the more important pattern of emblematic political heroism in the face of terrible obstacles.’137 The former is what I have already defined in the case of Fiete and Änne as the Vorbild type of positive hero, whose Bildung on the path to socialist heroism may be followed and emulated by the spectator. The latter is that represented by Thälmann—the symbolic, fetishistic ‘perfect’ hero, who embodies the state ideology and aids the Vorbild hero on his or her path to true positive heroism.

135 Encyclopedia of Literature and Politics, 668 136 Mathewson, 225 137 Mathewson, 214 82

Gorky’s novel tells the story of Pelagea Nilovna, the widow of a poor factory worker, and her son, Pavel, who as a teenager becomes interested in socialist literature and forms a study group of like-minded friends. Pavel’s influence on his mother and her positive interactions with his comrades encourage her to also support their cause and gradually take an increasingly active role in their revolutionary activities, particularly after Pavel is jailed. Ultimately, both are punished for their actions: Pavel is sentenced to Siberian exile

(thus, like Thälmann, an undying hero), while his mother is beaten to death for smuggling revolutionary texts (like Änne, a mother dying for her actions for the cause). As such, the novel, considered by many to be the first socialist ‘positive hero’ narrative, connects positive heroism, motherhood and martyrdom. Indeed, we see elements of both kinds of motherhood-martyrdom intersections that are discussed in this chapter: the mother as martyr, at the end of the novel, but also the mother who is inspired to continue the revolutionary cause when her son is threatened.

There is a strong connection, therefore, not only between positive heroism and martyrdom, but more specifically between motherhood and martyrdom or motherhood and (self-)sacrifice in the socialist context. Women have traditionally been connected to death in their shared radical alterity. In the films discussed in this chapter, where a mother holds a key role, that role is in some way shaped by death or deadly sacrifice. The martyrdoms discussed here, whether of a maternal figure, her husband, or her son, all represent a definitive separation of child and mother. My reading of these narratives is shaped by Žižekian, Lacanian, and Kristevan psychoanalytical theory; as Muller and

Richardson note of Lacan’s conception of the Oedipal process: ‘Lacan sees […] a profound evolution from a dyadic relationship with the mother into a pluralized relationship to 83 society as a whole.’138 Even in Konrad Wolf’s Ich war neunzehn (1968), Gregor, the protagonist, must reject (symbolically “sacrifice”) his mother in order to embrace his

German identity and his role in building Germany’s socialist future: in other words, in order to fulfil his heroic potential. In the films discussed in this chapter, mothers are martyred, sacrificed, or must temporarily take on the mantel of the positive hero when their husbands and/or sons die, all in the service of ideological continuity. This ties into a concept explored by Kristeva, summarised by E. Ann Kaplan as follows:

‘If woman culturally is defined as the one at the margin between culture and chaos,

order and anarchy, reason and the abyss, then she typifies abjection. She is the

deject on the brink always of losing herself; but for culture she represents that

dangerous zone against which culture must struggle to retain itself. Hence women

are sometimes reviled as too close to chaos, as outside of culture; but may then be

idealized and elevated as supreme defenders against the wilderness that would

envelop man.’139

In the female characters examined in this chapter, both forms of female representation are present: women as irrational, ‘close to chaos’, ruled by emotions; and women who step into the role of absent fathers to ensure the correct ideological development of their children, often represented as visibly overcoming their emotions as a result. This dichotomy between culture and chaos is a core element of the narratives of the films examined not only in this chapter but in this thesis as a whole: as already explored in the Thälmann films,

DEFA films tend to pit the ‘rationality’ of socialism against the ‘irrational’ (emotional; uncontrolled; chaotic) world of fascism. In Freudian terms, desire for the mother must be

138 Muller and Richardson, 18 139 Kaplan, 43 84 repressed in order to reach civilization. In DEFA this appears as rational adherence to socialist ideology, the culmination of the Bildung of the Vorbilder seen in these films.

Furthermore, in Kristevan terms, this repression is achieved ‘by the child’s making her the abject.’140 It is therefore unsurprising that there is a connection between martyrdom, mothers, and socialist Bildung in these films. In every case, the martyrdom narrative results in the separation of child from mother, and the culmination of a process of developing ideological consciousness.

This is quite different to the role of mothers in early Soviet literature, including

Gorky’s The Mother: Julia Hell notes that the GDR’s early literature differs from it in that

‘Soviet texts from this period “erase” the father, thus participating in a social imaginary that depicts the 1917 revolution as a radical break with the past and this figure in which its traditions were incorporated.’141 The father of Gorky’s novel is portrayed as useless, and is killed off in the beginning of the story: the narrative revolves around Nilovna and Pavel. As we have seen already in the Thälmann films, the GDR was less interested in such a radical break with the past than in establishing continuities from the pre-Third Reich period to the founding of the GDR as a state—as such, patriarchal narratives have an important role in the GDR’s foundational narratives, including the Thälmann films, albeit with Thälmann representing the “fatherly” Party leader rather than with an explicit father-son dynamic.

While father figures were themselves problematic, as Julia Hell has shown in her work on early GDR literature, mothers in GDR symbolism serve a purpose primarily as bearers of the next generation of physical socialist bodies, whose pertinence ends practically at delivery, rather than transmitters of ideology.

140 Kaplan, 43 141 Hell, 30-31 85

This coincides with Žižek’s work on the sublime body of the totalitarian leader and

Lacanian psychoanalysis. In Lacanian terms, the moment that the subject enters language is when the infant for the first time makes a demand of its mother:

‘Demand in itself bears on something other than the satisfaction it calls for. It is

demand of a presence or of an absence—which is what is manifested in the

primordial relation to the mother, pregnant with that Other to be situation within

the needs that it can satisfy. Insofar as [man’s] needs are subjected to demand, they

return to him alienated. This is not the effect of his real dependence… but rather the

turning into signifying form as such, from the fact that it is from the locus of the

Other that its message is emitted.’142

Hell refers to this alienation in her summary of Žižek’s discussion of the sublime body of the totalitarian leader, stating that he construes the sublime body as ‘the Lacanian objet petit a, this “thing” the subject desires in order to fill the lack that characterizes it after its entry into the symbolic, the moment when the acquisition of language (and thus the

“absence” of the thing referred to) coincides with the separation from the mother’s body

(and thus the absence of the imaginary unity of mother and child).’143 In other words, the sublime body of the leader fetishistically accounts for the lack caused by the alienated demand of the child to the mother and the general alienation or disunity of the child from the mother—who is the Other. The mother is thus both inherently connected to, but also diametrically opposed to, that sublime body of the People: indeed, the totalitarian leader becomes the bearer of that sublime body until such a time as the people are ready to birth

142 Lacan, Ecrits, 286. Barbara Johnson makes a similar point in her article ‘Apostrophe, animation, and abortion’, in: Feminisms: an anthology of literary theory and criticism, 641- 42 143 Hell, 32-33 86 it. The (male, patriarchal) leader thus supersedes the mother’s role, recreating the unity between child and mother by unifying himself pregnantly with the foetal People: the

‘Geburtshelfer’ that Thälmann names himself—and Fiete, whose wife (a mother) dies a martyr. As such, in a GDR context, in which representations of a patriarchal lineage of socialism play a key role in the foundational narratives, it is not surprising that the mother is often ‘done away with’—or, as I show, survives only to pass on the ideology to the next generation when no patriarchal figure survives to do so. Indeed, this is even the case for

Gorky’s Mother, Nilovna: it is her son’s imprisonment, and thus his inability to continue to act, which prompts her to move to true revolutionary activity.

It is not only in socialist mythology that the mother fades from (or is violently removed from) the picture after birthing the next generation: this narrative structure appears in religious and secular narratives throughout time. Christian ideology has promulgated ideas of sacrifice and ultimate reward, particularly for women: as Middleton discusses, there are many early Christian female martyrs. Equally, in “Stabat Mater”,

Kristeva discusses the ways that Christian ideology shaped the image of Mary, as the mother of Christ, the ultimate martyr. She too experiences sacrifice—kneeling at the foot of the cross to weep for her child—but then receives the ultimate reward of eternal life: ‘The

Virgin assumes the […] fantasy of being excluded from time and death, through the very flattering image associated with the Dormition or Assumption.’144

While Kristeva argues that Christian ideas no longer dominate in Western society— and certainly in the case of the GDR and socialism, religion was not supposed to form a leading part of people’s ideological formation—as Lisa G. Algazi points out, such ideas still

144 Kristeva 1985, 148 87 underly ‘post-Christian’ societies: ‘such a mythology of motherhood [ie, that based around the Virgin Mary] loses much of its appeal in a society no longer dominated by Christian ideals of sacrifice and ultimate reward, I would argue that this ideology […] remains with us today, pervading our popular culture with representations of self-sacrificing maternal masochism.’145 Although Algazi here is speaking in the context of the ongoing reception of

Rousseau’s novel Julie, ou La Nouvelle Héloíse in contemporary France, this statement could equally apply to any other post-war country in Western Europe, including the GDR. Algazi particularly quotes Kristeva’s “Stabat Mater” in terms of the latter’s concept of ‘père- version’, which Kristeva describes as ‘the self-denial implicit in making oneself anonymous in order to transmit social norms which one may disavow for oneself but which one must pass on to the child, whose education is a link to generations past.’146 The role of this ‘père- version’ (a play on the ideas of perversion and the Father or patriarchal Law), according to

Kristeva,

‘lies coiled in the desire of the law as desire of reproduction and continuity; it raises

female masochism to the status of a structural stabilizer—countering structural

deviations—and, by assuring the mother of a place in an order that surpasses

human will, provides her a reward of pleasure. This coded perversion, this close

combat between maternal masochism and the law, has always been used by

totalitarian regimes to enlist the support of woman, indeed, quite successfully.’147

In this chapter, I examine two forms of ‘making oneself anonymous’ (or, “removing oneself from the picture”—or screen) found in DEFA films with martyr narratives: in the first part

145 Algazi, 138 146 Kristeva 1985, 149 147 Kristeva 1985, 150 88 of the chapter, mothers who become martyrs themselves, and, in the second part of the chapter, mothers who, as part of a male martyrdom narrative, must both (temporarily) fill a fatherly role in the ideological education of the child, and be prepared to step back once the (male) child is ready to take over his father’s role, or once a substitute father is located.

The latter category takes on a number of more complex variations, but in terms of the former it is worth noting already here that in DEFA films, the child of the maternal martyr tends to represent all socialist children/youth, and thus the mother is not simply mother to one child, but also to the nation. This is particularly clear in the case of Änne’s death in the

Thälmann films.

This idea of socialist mothers as mothers of the nation is also present in earlier

Soviet films, in the form of Rodina-mat’, which Elena Baraban translates as ‘Mother

Motherland’, a concept which links the older one of the Soviet Motherland, Rossiia- matushka or ‘Mother Russia’ with ‘metaphoric representations of the country as a bride or a mother’ in the form of proletariat women.148 149 As such, when women in DEFA film give their lives for their offspring (or when their sacrifice is portrayed as the impetus for their offspring to embrace socialist ideology) this sacrifice is not only for their own child but also for the entire next generation of the nation’s youth.

Mothers as Martyrs The portrayal of Änne’s death in the Thälmann films particularly demonstrates the idea of a mother martyred due to her attempts to secure not only her own child’s future but that of

148 Baraban, 122 and whole article 149 Daniela Berghahn equally makes this connection between Soviet forms of 'woman as allegory for nation' and East German representations of women in her analysis of Konrad Wolf's film version of Der Geteilte Himmel (1964). In: Berghahn, "Do the right thing?", 570- 571 89 the entire nation—and thus, simultaneously, the future of the ideology. The three films discussed in this section all deal with mothers whose death coincides with both their child’s and the nation’s path to a socialist future. Änne puts her commitment to Thälmann and the ideology above her commitment to her child, an act which ultimately leads to her death. Yet as I argue, Änne’s actions not only serve to ensure the ideological future of her child better than “selfishly” remaining with her, but also implicitly renew Thälmann’s own resolve, thus enabling his own Christ-like sacrifice and the foundation of a socialist German state. Wolfgang Staudte’s Rotation (1948/49) follows a family from the Weimar years through to the end of the War. Hans and Lotte, the parents, seek to remain apolitical, while

Lotte's brother, active in the communist resistance, and their son Helmut, inculcated by fascist state institutions, seek to pull their loyalties one way or another. By the end of the film, Lotte is dead, and Hans and Helmut only just reconciled. Here, the mother’s death is portrayed as a far more literal case of “becoming anonymous”, since we see her death before we are aware of her relationship to the other protagonists. The connection between her death and the Bildung of the protagonist is also far more ambivalent than in the first example. Nevertheless, I propose that it is Lotte’s death which (narratively) ultimately allows for the possibility of Helmut’s reaching ideological maturity. Konrad Wolf’s semi- autobiographical film Ich war neunzehn follows a young German soldier in the Red Army in a journey across eastern Germany during the last days of the War. In Wolf's film, a mother dies (not Gregor's own) but the sacrificing of his mother (or his relationship with her), is key to Gregor’s own development as an individual and a (German) socialist.

The Thälmann films: Änne as a socialist mother-martyr Änne’s portrayal in the Thälmann films (particularly in Führer seiner Klasse) positions her as the ultimate socialist mother, just as Thälmann is portrayed as the ultimate socialist leader. Nevertheless, her dual roles as a mother and as a socialist resistance fighter cannot be combined without tension, through which Änne’s martyr narrative is figured. Änne alternates between being portrayed as a mother who must stay at home to tend to her child or pregnancy while her husband actively participates in the resistance, and taking action herself, particularly once Thälmann is jailed and Fiete has escaped the country. Indeed, it is at this point that Fiete and Änne truly become Thälmann’s missionaries in the outside world. Änne and another female comrade become seemingly the only activists left in Berlin as their male comrades flee to Spain or are imprisoned or killed. Änne refuses to bow to

Nazi pressure even in the face of threats to her daughter’s life and is forced to send her daughter to stay with a friend as she steps up her activity. She eventually becomes a

“martyr to the cause”, her death foreshadowing that of Thälmann himself. When she is finally arrested, she continues to shout news of the Red Army’s successes to her fellow inmates and the camera draws attention to her face as she is marched to her cell. In her final scene, the jail in which both she and Thälmann are being held is bombed. The camera shows us Änne through the bars of her window as she starts shouting Thälmann’s name.

We cut to his face, similarly peering through the bars, shouting back to her. Unusually, the camera then cuts to his perspective as we see her building being destroyed. The camera then cuts to a shot of him banging on the wall, screaming for them to open the gates. This is one of the only scenes in the two films in which we see a truly emotional reaction from

Thälmann. Finally, the film cuts back to her screaming for him before falling back into the flames. Thälmann is then shown sobbing, clutching the bars of his cell. In this brief shot, we 91 see evidence of Thälmann’s “other” body—Thälmann the man, rather than Thälmann, the sublime ‘Geburtshelfer eines neuen Lebens.’ Indeed, this scene was often cited by DEFA and state functionaries when faced with criticism that Thälmann’s portrayal was of too perfect a man for audiences to relate to. Thälmann’s reaction highlights both the importance of

Änne’s role in the films, as well as the importance of her death to Thälmann’s own narrative, underscoring its sacrificial nature.

These sequences concerning her arrest, imprisonment, and finally her death consolidate the two aspects of Änne’s portrayal as a mother and socialist Vorbild most prevalent in the second film: the religious aspect, with Änne a maternal saint to Thälmann’s

Christ-figure; and the parallels between her and Thälmann culminating in their martyrdoms. I will briefly deal with the latter first, since the former ultimately serves to tie together Änne as Vorbild and Änne as mother. In many ways, she is portrayed as being as dedicated to the cause as Thälmann; moreover, she repeatedly mirrors his appearance and actions, as discussed in the previous chapter. Of all the characters, she most often wears red, a clear sign of her strong connection to the Party and its cause. Like Thälmann, Änne takes risky action in service of the cause, even though she knows it may lead to her imprisonment or even execution; like Thälmann, this ultimately leads to her death.

However, while there are many parallels between the two characters, the manner of Änne’s death demonstrates the key difference between them. While Thälmann’s death is not shown on camera, and his death scene is instead transformed to a moment of triumph, focusing on his words concerning the future for Germany and communism, Änne’s is not an intentional death on the part of her captors—she is killed when air-raid bombs destroy her prison. While her death has therefore been indirectly caused by her fascist enemies, it is 92 portrayed as a cruel twist of fate (since the prison guards do not allow the women to shelter from the bombs) rather than a deliberate execution. Even at the moment of her death, the camerawork privileges Thälmann’s response over Fiete’s or her daughter’s, reinforcing Änne’s position as important because of her support for Thälmann, not in her own right. Nevertheless, precisely because of the parallels between Änne and Thälmann,

Änne’s death is still understood to be a martyrdom by the spectator: her mirroring of

Thälmann means that the spectator understands that her death also mirrors his, and since

Maetzig uses Thälmann’s own words to establish his struggle and sacrifice as instrumental to the foundation of the GDR and the triumph of socialism over fascism, so the spectator understands Änne’s death to be a precursor to the same.

Änne’s death in connection with Thälmann’s may also be understood in terms of

Žižek’s repetition principle, (which I discuss in more detail, in the context of Joachim

Kunert’s Die Toten bleiben jung (1968)). Her death represents a traumatic event which seems arbitrary or avoidable in nature (if there had not been an air-raid, it wouldn’t have happened, for example); but it follows the same narrative structure as Thälmann’s later death, in terms of communist activity, followed by arrest, followed by death and resulting sacrifice for the cause. Thälmann’s death, through its normalising narrative of socialist triumph, simultaneously retroactively subsumes Änne’s death into the symbolic order so that it ceases to seem arbitrary and is instead understood as also necessary for that later triumph.

This, alongside the intercutting of Änne’s final moments and Thälmann’s reactions

(particularly since these are his sole emotional reactions across the two films) suggest more concretely than at any other point that Änne’s dedication to the cause is mediated 93 through Thälmann. While she is shown as a leader of sorts (she gives a speech while campaigning for Thälmann, she is important in the actions of the Communist Party, such as during her mission to Dresden or her Berlin activities) she is never placed in the elite in the way Thälmann is—she constantly mentions and supports Thälmann in her actions, acting as his representative rather than a leader in her own right. The scenes involving her depict her Bildung from engaged worker to active communist in the fight against the fascist regime, and highlight her bravery and dedication to communism, which ultimately mean she must sacrifice her role as a wife and mother.

Änne therefore enacts a double sacrifice: both of her role as a mother in service of the cause and of her life. As such, Änne’s death is narratively necessary in order to fulfil her function as a Vorbild of socialist motherhood: she may sacrifice her role as a mother for the cause only if that sacrifice is the ultimate one. Her portrayal strikes a balance between some of the various understandings of motherhood I have examined so far in this chapter. As we see in the cases of Lotte in Dudow’s Stärker als die Nacht (1954) or Hans and his wife in

Maetzig’s Die Buntkarierten (1948/49), those who put family before politics tend to be punished in DEFA films. However, a good socialist mother must also be dedicated to raising the next generation in an ideologically correct manner. Änne is able to overcome both of these dangers: despite being more politically active than Gerda in Stärker als die Nacht, she is represented as both a better socialist and a better mother. Firstly, while she seemingly

“gives away” her child in order to dedicate herself to political activity, it later becomes clear that in fact, she is making the ultimate maternal sacrifice: ignoring her own emotional connection to her child in order to ensure their safety, as well as simultaneously ensuring her daughter’s political upbringing by leaving her with a trusted comrade. This is 94 established after Änne is arrested, when the police bring in her daughter in a threatening manner to try to get Änne to talk.

The sequence in which Änne shouts out encouragement to the inmates of the jail as she is led to her cell both solidifies her status as a Vorbild (through her continued defiance and dedication to fighting even while in jail) and her status as a mother: Her face is glowing and her eyes are raised skywards in a typical show of faith in the face of adversity, but her blue-grey dress and covered hair (with a red cloth!) also position her as a kind of socialist

Madonna: and thus implicitly ‘without sin’.150 This image is similar to that of Guste at the end of Die Buntkarierten, and it prefigures each mother’s consequent “punishment” at the hands of the Nazis as ineffective and unjust. Guste and Änne represent the most complete female (and maternal) Vorbilder discussed in this chapter, and it is key that each of them is

“sanctified” at the moment that the final step of their Bildung is completed.

Senseless death: (not) dying for the cause in Rotation Rotation, directed by Wolfgang Staudte and premiering just two months after Maetzig’s Die

Buntkarierten, in September 1949, presents a different kind of maternal martyrdom to that of the Thälmann films: something much more akin to the son's death in Die Buntkarierten than Änne’s saintly death. The protagonist, Hans, and his wife Lotte begin the film as apolitical, working-class folk. The film traces their relationship from their early courtship through their marriage, the birth of their son, and his growth to adulthood, as they struggle to get by during the hard times of the 1920s and the rise of fascism. Hans is relieved to find a job once the Nazis take power, and even joins the party (albeit somewhat reluctantly) in order to help his family’s fortunes. Both he and Lotte repeatedly show that they would

150 Kristeva 1985, 134 95 rather remain apolitical and avoid allying themselves with the fascists or the communists, even though Lotte’s brother is active in the resistance. However, the film makes it clear that

Hans' apolitical position is impossible to uphold from very early on—the job he finds is, rather unsubtly, as a printer for the Völkischer Beobachter! As a result, the couple end up in a situation in which their allegiances are pulled in multiple directions: Hans joins the party to avoid losing his job and to ensure his family’s continued financial stability, and their son,

Helmut, joins the Hitler Youth; but Hans and Lotte also shelter her brother, Kurt, when necessary, Hans tries to help his Jewish neighbours and is seemingly uninterested in the racial politics of the Nazis, and he eventually ends up helping Kurt print flyers at his workplace. Kurt, however, is then captured, beaten, and killed in prison, while Lotte and

Hans are brutally interrogated for more information about him. After they are released and find out that Kurt is dead, Hans angrily breaks the portrait of Hitler that hangs on their wall: a symbolic end to his collaboration with the regime. It is this which puts an end to

Hans’ political fence-sitting and proves to be his downfall: Helmut, having been brainwashed by his Hitler Youth leaders, sees this act, and reports his father to the authorities. Hans is imprisoned, and Helmut goes to fight in the army. As Berlin begins to fall, he is left alone to hold his position while his officers flee for their lives—and as they panic, Lotte is killed on the streets of Berlin in the bombing. After the war has ended,

Helmut returns to find Hans as the prodigal son, both of them now convinced antifascists.

Lotte acts as a catalyst for Helmut’s redemption and is an important factor in Hans’

(more gradual) enlightenment.151 Her death acts as a framing story around the main narrative: in the first few shots of the film we see newspapers running through a printing

151 Hans’ and Helmut’s position as collaborators or Mitläufer are dealt with in more detail in the third chapter of this thesis. 96 press, then Hans in his jail cell, followed by a woman dying in the street in a bombing raid.

After that, the film cuts away to the beginning of Hans and Lotte’s relationship. It is only later that we realise for certain that the woman who dies at the beginning is Lotte, while it is obvious that the man in jail is Hans, although there is a clue in the shot of Hans' jail cell, in which the word 'Mutter' is prominently inscribed on the wall. Because of Hans' imprisonment, we know from the beginning that he will eventually turn against the Nazi regime, whereas Lotte’s death is only confirmed for us when the scene is repeated, at the end of the film. It is only after her death that Helmut’s turn away from fascism is affirmed.

The camera cuts from a shot of Helmut dejectedly walking through the ruins with other injured soldiers, to a shot which pans down through the ruins to eventually settle on Lotte’s dead face. Her death is therefore directly linked to Helmut’s cooperation with the Nazis, but that in itself is shown throughout the narrative to be a result of the couple’s (but particularly Hans’) apolitical attitude and collaboration with the regime during his childhood. As such, the film attributes Lotte’s death to both Helmut’s and Hans’ lack of resistance and bad political decisions.

Although Lotte is not portrayed as politically conscious, the film represents her as more resistant to fascism than her husband or son, despite the fact that it is Hans who ultimately actively helps the resistance. Firstly, she is directly connected to communism through her brother and her love and support of him. This also makes her a factor in Hans’ eventual political awakening, since it is through her that Kurt is able to contact him.

However, Lotte does not really seem to understand what Kurt does or believes. Secondly, although she is portrayed as uninterested in politics and unwilling to be involved, she is shown to be sympathetic to her brother’s cause but distinctly cynical of and resistant to 97 fascism. For example, she refuses to say ‘Heil Hitler’ at the end of her interrogation (which

Hans does say at the end of his) and will not admit to knowing anything about her brother’s whereabouts or activities even when confronted with him and seeing that he has been beaten. Lotte is far from being a Vorbild of socialist motherhood, but her connections to communism through Kurt represent a potential for redemption for her husband and son from the beginning of their chronological narrative, just as much as the film’s structure foreshadows that same potential with her death. At first sight, it is tempting to argue that her death represents her failure as a mother, to raise her son as a socialist: she has thus contributed to the downfall of her family and provoked her own futile death. However, a comparison to Die Buntkarierten demonstrates that, at least in terms of the film’s narrative structure, there is a more compelling argument to read her death as a martyrdom than as the inevitable climax of her own bad choices.

Die Buntkarierten and Rotation were both released at around the same time and both contain a similar form of the martyrdom narrative. However, Rotation’s is an inversion of that of Die Buntkarierten: put simply, in Die Buntkarierten, her son's death leads to Guste’s transformation, whereas in Rotation, Lotte’s death leads to Helmut’s transformation. In Die Buntkarierten, a direct link is drawn in the narrative and editing between Guste’s transformation to active antifascist from her son's death, whereas in

Rotation it is less clear-cut as to whether it is Lotte’s death, or the traumatic experiences

Helmut undergoes in the final days of the war which lead to his return to his father. The editing would suggest that it is Lotte’s death, but the dialogue with his father in the final scene only mentions her very briefly, when Hans tries to tell Helmut she is dead, and

Helmut replies that he already knows. In addition, in Die Buntkarierten, Guste is given a 98 second opportunity to correct her failures with her son and to raise the next generation to the right kind of thinking, whereas in Rotation, Lotte fails comprehensively at raising her son the ‘right’ way ideologically, and thus is, by the end of the film, superfluous: not only does Lotte not seem to undergo a Bildung process herself, but she barely speaks. While she maintains some political convictions, it is her silent face which is most often focused on by the camera—including in death. In her discussion of the film, Anke Pinkert also notes

Lotte's passivity: 'the link between maternal generational discourse, war violence, and non- agency—the mother exposed to history but not actively partaking in it—shapes the representational field through which Behnke's wife, Lotte, is constructed.'152 Lotte repeatedly stands as witness to scenes in which, for example, her brother and husband argue politics, or her brother makes a politicised speech at her wedding. Her response, however, is simply one of silence—instead, we see close-ups of her face. Indeed, as Pinkert points out, we never even see her response to her son's betrayal and her husband's consequent imprisonment. One might, therefore, take away from this that those who only think their opposition, and do not act are the ones who will die. While Hans more actively participates in fascism, he also more actively rebels. Lotte is in some ways more like the

Hans’ wife in Die Buntkarierten: she silently goes along with her husband and ultimately dies. Where, as we will see in the case of Stärker als die Nacht, ideologically admirable mothers actively raise their children with the correct values and then step back into silence once this work is complete, Lotte is silent throughout and anonymous in death.

In the face of this comparison, the question is, therefore, is she really a martyr? Does she have a martyr’s narrative? I propose that the answer is yes, and that the film’s structure

152 Pinkert, 96 99 means for her death to be linked to Hans’ and Helmut’s redemptions. As a contemporary analysis of the film stated: ‘Der Sohn sucht endlich den Vater auf, weil ihn seine Tat quält, der Vater nimmt ihn auf, weil er sich nicht von Mitschuld freisprechen kann. Die Frau und

Mutter bleibt als Opfer.’153 Her death is linked to Helmut’s crisis of faith in Nazism and implied to be a consequence of his actions. Her death also represents a call to action for the spectator: to avoid complacency, to raise one’s children in the correct manner, and to act as good socialists so that one’s own family do not meet such a fate. However, unlike Die

Buntkarierten or the Thälmann films, Lotte is not viewed as a martyr by her own husband or son, but rather primarily by the spectator. Her martyrdom is made most obvious by the framing story and the editing, rather than by the reactions of other characters or by dialogue.

However, Lotte's death, or at least unavailability, is also necessary for her son to

'come of age' and reconcile with his father. Pinkert describes how this is hinted at even at the beginning of the film, in the shot of Hans' prison cell: 'the word "Mother" on the prison wall is also the projection of the unconscious mother as the forever lost, forever desired fantasy object.'154 In psychoanalytical terms, while the son still desires the mother and believes that desire may be fulfilled, he cannot reach psychological maturity. Only once the mother is vanquished from the picture can he make peace with his father. Tellingly, Helmut has also found a girlfriend now that his mother is dead, and the war is over—a clear sign that he has now achieved (sexual) maturity. This connection between motherhood, death, and (ideological) maturity is thematized all the more in Ich war neunzehn.

153 Bunkowski, 9 154 Pinkert, 95 100

The German Vaterland and ‘Mother Russia’ in Ich war neunzehn Ich war neunzehn (1968) represents a more symbolic form of maternal martyrdom, in which Gregor’s mother does not die, but is nevertheless "sacrificed" for the sake of both

Gregor’s and Germany’s socialist future. The semi-autobiographical film, based on Wolf’s own experiences as a young soldier at the end of the Second World War, follows Gregor

Hecker, a German-born soldier in the Red Army, as he takes part in the 1945 march into

Germany, his homeland or “Vaterland”. The film brings to the fore Gregor’s conflicted position as a German among Russians through a sequence of encounters as he crosses the

German landscape towards Berlin, thus structuring the film along the lines of a typical

Bildung narrative. During this journey, Gregor is forced to confront his conflicted relationship with Germany (and Germans) and make a final choice between remaining there after the war and returning to Russia.

Inextricably linked to this choice is Gregor’s relationship with his parents. The choice between his remaining in Germany or returning to the Soviet Union also becomes a choice between his father and his mother. The film implicitly connects Germany to ideas of manhood, masculinity, and Gregor’s father, while connecting the Soviet Union to Gregor’s mother and his childhood. As such, his struggle to understand his national identity can be read as an Oedipal struggle, in which he ultimately breaks away from his mother (and

Russia) and aligns himself with his father (and Germany). His journey forces him not only to confront his national identity, but also to come of age, from a nineteen-year-old ‘boy’ to a

German man. This negotiation of the process of growing up, his struggle to overcome his attachment to his mother and Russia, and his ultimate ‘choice’ (or fate) of reconciling himself with Germany and his father, are forced to their conclusions by the catalyst of war. 101

I focus here on five key sequences in the film, through which I demonstrate how

Gregor’s parents are aligned with the two national identities of Germany and Russia, and how the process of his growth is represented through his various encounters with different

“kinds” of Germans. I interpret Gregor’s process of growth throughout the film in terms of a

Lacanian Oedipus complex, which, when resolved, not only leads to his development of personal maturity, but also his reconciliation with his German heritage and his acceptance of responsibility as a socialist in post-war Germany.

The first of these sequences is at the very beginning of the film. The first spoken words of German establish Gregor’s primary conflict. Having not yet been introduced,

Gregor makes an announcement over a loudspeaker to German soldiers declaring that the war is over and that they should surrender. As he does so, he asks them not to shoot, thus establishing his otherness to the German soldiers. Despite this, his final line to the soldiers is ‘Ich bin Deutscher’ in a flat, unemotional tone. This sets up the dichotomy between

Gregor’s two halves as simultaneously German and “not-German” (i.e., Russian). During this announcement, the viewer sees a wide shot of a desolate, lifeless river landscape, where the only person visible is a hanged deserter on floating gallows. By then cutting the camera to Gregor speaking into the microphone, Wolf makes the juxtaposition between his protagonist’s young, innocent visage and the brutal face of the Wehrmacht, represented by the hanged man. Already the film shows us two types of German: Gregor, and those who fought for Nazi Germany. This is, however, not a distinction that Gregor himself recognises at this early point in his journey.

This comparison is even made aurally through a contrast in how his voice is processed. The opening sequence of the film alternates between having him speak through 102 a microphone, and as a voice over, in which he speaks more intimately to the viewer about himself. Equally, the camera cuts between scenes of a nighttime battle and travelling shots of the landscape. It is after the first of these cuts that Gregor tells the viewer: ‘Das ist meine

Heimat, sagt man. Ich war acht Jahre alt, als meine Eltern sie verlassen mussten.’ This shows his alienation towards his place of birth in that he only refers to it as his homeland in a second-hand reference. His tone of voice gives off an air of indifference. He goes on to say:

‘Ich bin in Moskau aufgewachsen. Dort lebt meine Mutter.’ Gregor explicitly states which city he identifies as being from: Moscow, neither the Berlin that he is seeking to “liberate” with the rest of the Red Army, nor Cologne, where he was born. Moreover, despite having mentioned both his parents moving to Russia, he only identifies his mother as living there now, thus setting up one of the underlying elements of his identity conflict. Later, we discover his father is still alive. However, Gregor never associates him with Russia. This scene is the first of many occasions in which he aligns his mother with Russia. Later, it becomes clear that he does the same with his father and Germany.

The shots of the night battle cut between Gregor’s personal monologues underscore the psychological nature of Gregor’s identity crisis. They show tanks firing, explosions, and a brutal hand-to-hand fight between Gregor and a German soldier. One of the initiating factors of the Oedipus complex as defined by Freud is the father as an obstacle to intimacy with the mother.155 After another cut away from the battle scenes, during which the viewer hears Gregor’s announcements to the German soldiers, Gregor comments: ‘Täglich spreche ich solche Sätze. Schüsse sind die Antwort. Überläufer kommen selten.’ For Gregor,

Germany is full of obstacles at the beginning of the film: the broken-down van in the

155 Freud, The Ego and the Id, 26 103 opening shots, the river, (rivers are symbolically shown as impossible or difficult to cross throughout the film) and the German soldiers themselves who shoot at him. Indeed, the war—and by extension Germany—is keeping him from his mother, here represented by

Russia.

After saying he grew up in Moscow, Gregor continues, ‘Ich ging an die Front wie alle dort.’ The importance of this is twofold: firstly, by including himself with all of the other

Russians who fought on the front, it further strengthens the ties he feels with Russia.

Furthermore, Lacan believed the Oedipus complex, on a symbolic level156, to be a universal experience: everyone goes through it during the passage from childhood to adulthood— just as “every Russian” went to the front. We can see, then, the Oedipus complex represented here by Russia and Germany.

The second key sequence comes immediately after the opening scenes. Gregor is posted to Bernau, a small, mostly deserted town. The first thing he encounters is the corpse of a mother who has committed suicide because of the death of her son. With the link between mother and son severed, the mother sees no reason to continue living. As Gregor enters the room alone, the camera gives us a first-person perspective. It focuses first on a text in a frame with the heading ‘Mutter.’ Then it pans along the wall to a crucifix, down to the dead woman’s feet, and then settles on a photograph of her son in uniform on the mantle. The camerawork here thus further emphasises the Oedipal link between mother and son, by moving from the dead mother to the grown, absent son in the picture.

156 Muller and Richardson note, citing Lacan: ‘Even in those cultures where the role of the real father may have been misunderstood, there is still a place assigned to the function of a father. “It is certainly this that demonstrates that the attribution of procreation to the father can only be the effect of a pure signifier, of a recognition, not of a real father, but of what religion has taught us to refer to as the Name-of-the-Father.’ Muller and Richardson, 212 104

Gregor then turns to a girl who has told him about what has happened to the woman. He coldly questions the girl, asking ‘Ihre Mutter? Sie wohnen hier? Warum ist das passiert?’ Her response is to wryly suggest that ‘vielleicht sollten wir uns alle aufhängen.’

Gregor, however, can only offer weak platitudes, which do not seem to comfort her: he tells her that the war will soon be over, that life will go back to normal, and that the ruins of the

Nazi past will be swept away. At this point, however, the girl now questions him, saying

‘und was wird aus mir? Soll ich hier bleiben? Soll ich zurück? Oder weiter nach Westen?’

Gregor turns away and stares out of the window instead of answering. Her last question hits him the hardest: ‘Bist du Deutscher?’ These are all the key questions that Gregor faces throughout the film. Indeed, these are the questions that he does not want to face about his own identity at this point. Will he stay in Germany or go back East? Will he go further West

(to the capitalist world)? Is he German?

That the girl poses these questions to Gregor in close proximity to the dead mother is also important. The forced separation of son from mother (whether by death or distance) is a catalyst not only for his own questions of identity, but also for his growth from a boy to a man. Moreover, the dead mother represents Gregor’s own fears that his position in

Germany could result in a permanent separation from Russia and, thus, his mother and childhood. His Russian comrades continually reference Germany as his home, suggesting that this is where he will remain after the war. (We see this explicitly later on, but it is already implied in Gregor’s earlier comment: ‘das ist meine Heimat, sagt man.’) He is not yet able to face up to the idea of his future and adulthood and, thus, is unable to know where he will go or what he will do now that he is far from his mother and Russia. 105

The third key sequence in my analysis comes immediately after the soldiers reach

Sachsenhausen. The camera cuts from documentary footage of the concentration camp, to the interior of a comfortable and well-furnished home, where Gregor’s comrade Wadim is questioning a landscape architect who continued to live near the Concentration Camp throughout the war. Wadim, who was a teacher of German in Russia before the war, wants to try to understand how the man could have lived so close to such atrocities. The architect, however, would rather speak in intellectualised abstractions, citing Kant and discussing the

‘inevitability’ of National Socialism for Germany. He is portrayed as all that is wrong with those who chose to avoid taking a political position. It is the architect’s statements about the German character, which lead Wadim to gesture to Gregor, and say: ‘Er ist auch

Deutscher. Sein Vater ist emigriert.’ This specifically aligns Gregor’s German-ness to his father. We know already that both his parents moved to Moscow, but just as in the opening scenes, where only his mother is aligned with Russia, here only his father is aligned with

Germany. Gregor is still not happy to identify himself as German or with his father. The camera cuts to his face after Wadim has spoken, showing his tense expression. As with the girl he met in Bernau, he responds abstractly, saying: ‘Es wird Leute geben, die die

Verhältnisse ändern.’ He does not include himself amongst those people, but he does show some development from the opening scenes: it implies that there will be Germans who are different. As such, it seems that Gregor is beginning to realise that the world is not simply black-and-white: there can be more than one ‘kind’ of German. The continuation of the conversation reinforces this. The landscape architect tells Gregor that his idealism shows that he is a German. Gregor responds in Russian, with a proverb that roughly equates to: “A bad workman blames his tools.” In other words, to say that Nazism was inevitable because 106 of the pre-existing qualities of the German character is a lazy excuse. While Gregor may not yet accept his own German-ness, nor react positively to mentions of his father, he is now open to the idea that Germans do not have to be Nazis, and thus do not have to be seen as threatening.

Wadim has two further interactions with Gregor in this sequence, both suggesting that he is trying to push Gregor to accept Germany as his homeland. Wadim is a lover of

German culture as well as a German teacher. Gregor is rather flippant about his friend’s interest in Germany, asking him: ‘Suchst du das Deutschland, das nur in Büchern steht?’

Wadim, however, unnerves Gregor, by replying: ‘Ich suche das Deutschland, in dem du leben wirst.’ He has already realised the possibility of a different kind of Germany, even though Gregor has not: the possibility of something beyond the apathy of the landscape architect or the fascist collaboration of the German soldiers. Wadim’s third interaction with

Gregor in this sequence also seems aimed at pushing him to accept Germany as his homeland. From shots of the bored and sleepy soldiers in the architect’s house, the camera cuts to Gregor standing outdoors. This time, rather than the viewer seeing the landscape, we instead see Gregor’s face, gazing past the camera. Wadim quotes Heine to him: ‘Ich hatte einst ein schönes Vaterland...’ However, when he gets to the final stanza, Gregor interrupts him to hastily finish the poem, and then shouts at him to stop, pushing him away angrily.

The use of this particular poem recalls the Germany that existed before Hitler, but it also recalls the realm of childhood, in which, in Lacanian terms, the child experiences a ‘dual relationship—a quasi-symbiotic tie that psychologically prolongs the physical symbiosis in the womb, in terms of which the mother is the infant’s All.’157 However, once the child first

157 Muller and Richardson, 21 107 recognises his separateness from the mother—when he experiences “want” for the first time—he also experiences conflict with the (symbolic) father for the first time, the law(s) which prohibit that which he desires: ‘to recapture its lost plenitude by being the desired of its mother.’158 He must leave this ‘schönes Vaterland’ behind, because the symbolic father is now an obstacle, a threat to his desire. In Gregor’s case, the Vaterland (or Germany) is both a threat and an obstacle in the sense of the ongoing war, in that his life may be in danger from German soldiers, and his role in the war prevents him from being in Russia with his mother.

The turning point for Gregor’s identity conflict finally occurs when he meets

Germans who do not fit into any of the categories of perpetrator, collaborator, or apathetic bystander. This takes place in the fourth and most important sequence in my analysis.

Several more days have passed, and it is now 1 May, 1945, International Workers’ Day.

Russian soldiers are shown sitting in a grand ballroom, where they are making and cooking

Russian food, singing Russian songs, and drinking vodka. As the camera cuts between shots of the soldiers, the viewer can see that Gregor is enthusiastically joining in. He seems just as

Russian as all the others. However, just as the soldiers are seated and ready to eat, the

General enters the room, and introduces a group of starved and weary-looking men. They are German antifascists who have just been freed from imprisonment. The soldiers give up their seats to allow the Germans to eat and drink. This is the first moment in the film where

Gregor encounters Germans who are unequivocally positive figures. The men’s skeletal features and worn clothing speak to their antifascist credentials.

158 Muller and Richardson, 23 108

Nevertheless, Gregor’s feelings towards Germans and towards his father are still ambivalent. As the meal draws to a close, Gregor is invited to the head of the table by the

General. One of the antifascists has asked about him, and it turns out that the man is an old friend of Gregor’s father. He excitedly asks Gregor if he remembers him. The camera cuts to show Gregor as he replies. He does not remember the man, and his expression makes it clear that he would like to escape the situation: he bites his lip and looks off to one side.

The General hands him a glass of vodka and tells him to make a toast. It is clearly expected that he will toast his father or his father’s friend, but Gregor cannot bring himself to do so.

The camera remains fixed on him as he uncomfortably fiddles with the glass, looks at the floor, and finally weakly toasts his mother—first in Russian, and then in German. In

Žižekian terms, this encounter is an encounter with the Real for Gregor. Žižek conceives of the Oedipus complex as ‘an “unhistorical” traumatic kernel (the trauma of prohibition on which the social order is based).’159 Despite having traversed his Vaterland for some time now, for the first time Gregor is inescapably presented with the trauma of prohibition— with figures who stand in for his “real” father.

Thus far, Gregor has had the opportunity to realise that not all Germans are the same; that there is the possibility of a different kind of Germany; and that it is possible to positively identify with some Germans. However, his final barrier to resolving his Oedipus complex and entering adulthood is still his attachment to his mother and his consequent reluctance to see Germany as anything more than an obstacle to his Russian identity. It is therefore key that the scene immediately following this one represents a final split from his mother.

159 Žižek, For they know not what they do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 102 109

The scene after his toast represents the turning point of the film in this respect.

Gregor drunkenly wanders out onto the balcony and climbs onto the railing. He wobbles along as if it is a tightrope before falling into the bushes. The camera cuts to an extreme close-up of his face as he lays on the ground. We see him from the chin up, and the background is dark and unclear. It is almost as if he is lain in someone’s lap. Gregor begins to remember, hallucinate, or imagine his mother’s voice. The viewer hears her voice, chiding him for always doing everything too early, and Gregor’s voice, although he is not speaking on-screen, sounding small and childish, and saying that he must have fallen down.

She does not seem to hear him, but rather continues to list all the things he did too early in life: such as smoking cigarettes at eight and drinking Schnapps at fifteen! Gregor manages to find his footing to climb back up the wall, and, as the viewer hears him say, ‘Ich muss wieder aufstehen,’ his mother’s voice disappears.

This is the moment when Gregor begins to understand his German identity and identify with (male) Germans. He realises that he cannot return to his childhood, and, in fact, does not want to: he can pick himself up on his own, even though his mother ignores his pleas for help. In any case, all his mother’s voice does is tell him all the ways he has grown up too soon. It is as if she wants to keep him as a child forever. In Žižekian terms:

‘Before the reign of law, Mother (the “primordial Other”) appears as the “phantom of the Omnipotence”; the subject depends totally on its “whim”, on its arbitrary (self-)will, for the satisfaction of its needs; in these conditions of total dependence of the Other, the subject’s desire is reduced to the demand for the Other’s love—to the endeavour to comply with the Other’s demand and thus gain its love. The subject identifies its desire with the 110 desire of the Other-Mother, assuming a position of complete alienation: it finds itself totally submitted to the Other-without-lack, non-subjected to any kind of law.’160

In Gregor’s dream, his subconscious calls for him to remain in this pre-Oedipal state.

By deciding to ignore her criticism and climb back up the wall, Gregor has finally made a decisive break from his attachment to her, and, thus, his attachment to Russia—brought about by his encounter with the German antifascists. Žižek continues: ‘The advent of the symbolic Law breaks this closed circle of alienation.’161 By the end of the film, it becomes clear that not only has he broken away from this attachment but indeed, sacrificed it altogether, since he ultimately decides to stay in Germany permanently. However, this choice also is the result of the threat the dream represents: in Žižek’s terms, to expose the

‘Real of his desire’:

‘First he [the subject] constructs a dream, a story which enables him to prolong his

sleep, to avoid awakening into reality. But the thing he encounters in the dream, the

reality of his desire, the Lacanian Real […] is more terrifying than so-called external

reality itself, and that is why he awakens: to escape the Real of his desire, which

announces itself in his terrifying dream. He escapes into so-called reality to be able

to continue to sleep, to maintain his blindness, to elude awakening into the Real of

his desire.’162

The ‘Real of his desire’ is that threat to the subject that the symbolic mother ultimately represents, and which resolving the Oedipus complex enables the subject to cover over. If the violence at the root of the reign of law is the violent invasion and occupation of East

160 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 265 161 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 265 162 Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, 45 111

Germany by the Red Army—which Gregor is actively participating in!—then in order to sustain the GDR’s foundational narrative of German antifascist resistance, this violence must be covered over. Gregor must, therefore, awaken and escape his mother, symbolic representative of “Mother Russia”, in order to avoid recognising this Real of violence.

From this point on, Gregor finds (male) mentor figures in the German antifascists; indeed, mothers cease to be thematized at all. In order to ‘maintain his blindness’ he now turns to symbolic heroes (fathers): those who fill the role of fetishistic proxies for the sublime body of the People (the Party), which, as previously discussed, serves to cover over this violence and which ‘conceals the void of the law’s vicious circle.’163 For example, he shakes the hand of an antifascist before leaving him to become the mayor of a small town, a gesture which implies his respect for the man. The camera gradually zooms out from the antifascist until he is far in the distance. At the same time, the famous Jarama-Lied plays.

The shot is almost uncomfortably long; the combination of camerawork and music here solidifies the idea of a positive future for Germany in antifascism and highlights the importance of the interaction between Gregor and the antifascist, foregrounding the latter as not just “an antifascist” but indeed synonymous with the song’s ideological message.

However, since the camerawork also often clues the audience into Gregor’s thoughts and emotions, it also implies Gregor’s new understanding of his place in Germany’s future.

More explicitly, Wolf cuts from this long shot to Gregor talking to another of the antifascists in the back of a truck. Rather than avoiding him, Gregor is now very interested in what he has to say, asking him about his plans after the war, and if there are more people like him.

The conversation is a stark contrast to Gregor’s interactions with Germans before the

163 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 260 112 events of 1 May: here, he looks to the antifascist as a substitute father figure, showing interest in the man’s future plans for himself and Germany.

The final scene represents the final separation of Gregor from Russia and his mother, and identification with his father. Along with his friend and comrade Sascha,

Gregor tries to convince some remaining German soldiers to walk across marshland towards them and surrender. Unlike at the beginning of the film, many German soldiers begin to march towards them, leaving a pile of their weapons next to the Russian’s truck.

When the SS begin to attack the surrendering soldiers, one German officer grabs a gun and helps Gregor and the Russians defend their position, forging a friendship with Gregor in the process. However, after the fight has ended, Gregor realises that Sascha has been shot and killed. He screams across the marsh at the SS officers in grief: 'Schweine! Ihr Schweine!

Warum hört ihr nicht auf mit schießen? Ihr Idioten! Warum könnt ihr nicht aufhören? Wir kriegen euch. Wir finden euch. […] Ich vergesse euch nicht!’ In the next scene, Gregor is at the rear of the convoy of prisoners of war, alongside his new friend, the German officer. He agrees to take a letter to the man’s family for him, thus making it clear that his intention is now to remain in Germany. Gregor's use of the word 'we' in his outburst, alongside his newfound ability to differentiate between 'good' and 'bad' Germans represented through the contrast of his outburst with his friendly demeanour towards the captured German soldier demonstrates a more nuanced understanding of his German identity and his role within a future Germany. This sequence represents the third aspect of the Gregor’s sacrifice of his relationship with Russia: first, the dead mother he encounters in Bernau; secondly, his rejection of his mother in the party sequence; and finally, Sascha’s death for the cause.

We thus see a full range of sacrifices: self-sacrifice in the form of suicide; rejection of the 113 mother by the son; and a martyr death. Since, as I have shown, the film aligns Russia with

Gregor’s mother, Sascha’s death represents the final element of the sacrificial narrative and the final key to Gregor’s overcoming of the Oedipus complex.

It is clear that Gregor has been able to accept his German identity, and thus identify with his father (or those who represent father-substitutes). Gregor’s final voiceover, at the end of the film underscores this. He says: ‘Ich bin Deutscher. Ich war neunzehn Jahre alt.’

‘Ich bin Deutscher’ is now said definitively, with confidence, and without hesitance or shame. He is no longer a nineteen-year-old boy: he is now a German man. However, this

Oedipal resolution is not as clear-cut, ideologically, as it seems. Žižek describes the Oedipus complex as follows:

‘The so-called “normal” resolution of the Oedipus complex—the symbolic

identification with the paternal metaphor: that is to say, with the agency of

prohibition—is ultimately nothing but a way for the subject to avoid the impasse

constitutive of desire by transforming the inherent impossibility of its satisfaction

into prohibition: as if desire would be possible to fulfil if it were not for the

prohibition impeding its free rein…’164

Gregor wants to be Russian, but that is impossible because he is German. His acceptance of that, couched in Oedipal terms, implies that his coming-to-terms with his (socialist)

German-ness is representative of his (ideological) maturity. However, Žižek unmasks what is beneath this “maturity”: a recognition that what underlies Gregor’s acceptance of this prohibition is the continuation of his desire for that impossibility (true symbiosis with the

Party (the Soviet Union)), and, furthermore, the exposure of the disavowal of that lack in

164 Žižek, For they know not what they do, 266-67 114

German socialism at the same time. (“I know very well that I am German and not Russian, but nevertheless…”).

By reading Gregor’s identity struggle (which simultaneously represents his Bildung as a Vorbild) in terms of an Oedipus complex, I have tried to unpack how the film attempts to portray the idea of becoming “the right kind” of German—a positive hero—as a process of growing up. This is important, because the film, at the time of its release in 1968, was aimed particularly at East Germany’s youth. The film depicts multiple examples of “the wrong kind” of German, but just as Gregor, a youth easily identifiable within his search for his own identity, can only be swayed by truly admirable examples of German-ness, so the film asks its viewers to aspire to the same. The war forced Gregor, and his generation, to question their own identity, and the film suggests that the youth of 1968 should look to the adult “Gregors” still amongst them for guidance. Until Gregor can disconnect himself from his mother and therefore his childhood, he remains stuck in an awkward, uncertain limbo, unable to feel truly Russian or German. In order to find his identity, he has to find his

Vaterland—the new Germany being built by antifascists after the war—and therefore, he has to identify with his father. As in Rotation, therefore, the symbolic reconciliation of father with son can only occur after the martyrdom of the mother—martyrdom in both cases due to the purpose served by her loss—and this reconciliation also represents the potential for a future, socialist Germany, to be built by the sons with the guidance of the

(substitute) fathers.

Films in which a husband or son is martyred offer a potential for representations of

Vorbilder of socialist motherhood. In films in which the mothers themselves are martyred, however, the mothers fulfil a different function. While the mother herself (as, for example, 115 in the case of Änne) may be a Vorbild, the death of a mother in the films discussed so far represents a central turning point in the narrative, which causes a shift in the actions or convictions of the protagonist and positive hero. As a result, the martyrdoms of mothers equally serve to shore up the patriarchal lineage of socialism, just as much as the mothers discussed in the next section. These maternal deaths, however, also serve a second purpose, which enables this solidifying of conviction for the (male) positive heroes of the films. As Anke Pinkert notes in the case of Rotation, 'representations of the dead female body allow a culture to repress and articulate its knowledge of death, which it fails to foreclose even as it cannot express it directly.'165 Just as the fetishistic male heroes of these films (Thälmann, the antifascist hero in Ich war neunzehn, Kurt in Rotation) act to cover over the gaps in their ideological spaces, so these maternal martyrdoms act as a vessel and fetish for the shared traumatic past dealt with in these narratives: a death which may be resolved through the processes of the Oedipus complex, thus enabling the heroes (and spectator) to move on to the narrative of a bright socialist future.

Mothers and Martyrs Where maternal martyrs thus operate to cover over the traumas of the past in historical antifascist films, so the next set of films I discuss also act to normalise the traumatic past, through themes of repetition and doubling in which the role of the mother is to facilitate the transfer of ideological adherence from one generation to the next. In exploring the trope of mothers who become maternal Vorbilder as their children or husbands become martyrs, I examine several films in detail: Hans-Joachim Kunert’s Die Toten bleiben jung

(1968), based on the Anna Seghers’ novel of the same name; Kurt Maetzig’s Die

165 Pinkert, 103 116

Buntkarierten (1948/49); and Slàtan Dudow’s Stärker als die Nacht (1954). The films are linked by the concept of the maternal progression of socialism. They do not specifically deal with “powerful women” or the typical matriarch (at least not from the very beginning) but rather each traces a development towards a maternal positive heroine whose Bildung is specifically informed by the death(s) of her family members and whose primary role as a heroine is to pass on the ideology to the next generation.

Each film deals with a period of time spanning two decades or more—as with the

Thälmann films, these serve to connect a pre-Third Reich (or even pre-Weimar) past of shared socialist belief and resistance with the socialist German present. The earliest of the films, Maetzig’s Die Buntkarierten, predates the founding of the GDR by a few months, and also covers the largest span of time. It narrates the story of four generations of a Berlin working family, primarily focusing on the matriarchal figure of Augusta (“Guste”), who is born illegitimately to a housemaid in the 1880s and who goes on to experience first-hand all the key events of the first half of the 20th century. While Guste begins life ignorant of any sense of politics, by 1945 her political consciousness has been awakened and she ends the war imprisoned for her beliefs. The deaths of her son, his wife, and some of her grandchildren as a result of the (fascist) war are what finally push her to active resistance and awakening. At the end of the film, Guste encourages her surviving granddaughter to build a better future, rather than fearing another war.

Dudow’s Stärker als die Nacht, on the other hand, features a family who are politically active from the beginning of the film. The Hamburg couple Hans and Gerda are convinced communists even prior to 1933, but Hitler’s rise to power pushes them into active resistance, despite Gerda’s pregnancy. As a result, Hans is arrested and imprisoned 117 in a concentration camp. Meanwhile, Gerda raises their child alone. When Hans is released, they know that if he is caught in active resistance again, it could be fatal. However, ultimately, Hans decides to return to action, distributing flyers. He is once again arrested, and this time, executed. Gerda and their son read aloud his last letter to their friends, demonstrating that Hans’ legacy will survive. Again, it is the death of a family member which pushes Gerda to encourage the next generation—their son—to active participation against fascism as a communist—prior to this point in the film, she is supportive of and agrees with his efforts but is not shown taking active part in the resistance herself or pushing their son to do so. This is perhaps why, unlike Änne in the Thälmann films, the police are never shown as interested in arresting her; only her husband.

Kunert’s Die Toten bleiben jung, deals with a mother, Marie, who loses both the father of her child, (while she is pregnant) and, eventually, her son to the cause: her husband during WWI, and her son during WWII. History repeats itself for her daughter-in- law, who is also pregnant when her husband dies. As with Die Buntkarierten, the film implies a matriarchal, rather than a patriarchal progression of socialism. Marie’s primary role for most of the film, however, is to raise her son with the same values as his father— and she is aided in doing so by a substitute father figure, his father’s comrade, Martin. Here, more than in Die Buntkarierten, the role of the mother is primarily to raise the next generation of (male) socialists—similar to Gerda’s role in Stärker als die Nacht. While Die

Toten bleiben jung did not appear in film form until 1968, it is based on the 1949 novel of the same name by Anna Seghers. As such, this theme of reproduction-oriented, patriarchally driven socialist motherhood is connected to early GDR culture, and less so to the later decades, in which (particularly with the advent of Alltagsfilme and 118

Protokollliteratur in the 1970s) motherhood and productive work became far more connected, and representations of single-motherhood as a result of divorce became increasingly common.

In this section, I examine the role of the women whose husbands or sons die in these films, exploring not only how the narrative represents these deaths as martyrdoms, but the key role played by wives and mothers in establishing their martyr narratives. In particular,

I demonstrate how mothers in these films are required to ensure the ideological education of their children, primarily through their choice of an appropriate father or substitute father, but also through positioning themselves as an active ideological role model. In other words, these films put their primary focus not on the Oedipal role of the father as embodiment of the Law, nor on the (Oedipal and ideological) maturation process of the

(potential) Vorbild, but on the mother’s part in facilitating these.

In Stärker als die Nacht, Gerda is emboldened to take on an active role in the antifascist resistance through her husband’s example, but once Hans is martyred, she steps back in order to allow her son to take up his place in the social order. In the case of Die

Toten bleiben jung, Marie seeks out multiple father substitutes for her son, first in the form of her husband, a social democrat, and then in the form of Martin, a former comrade of her son’s communist father. However, since her son is martyred for the cause like his father before him, Marie, at the end of the film, must once again act to ensure the ideological lineage continues by convincing her son’s girlfriend to go on without him. As such, when the future of the ideology becomes uncertain, “good” socialist mothers step forward to ensure its continuation. This is thematized even further in Die Buntkarierten, in which

Guste fails to provide an ideologically sound father for her children, since Paul is a unionist 119 but not a communist. As such, her son also fails to provide an ideologically sound education for his own children, implicitly leading to his and their deaths—and which the film suggests are both his, and also Guste’s, fault. As a result, Guste must also step in in the next generation, like Marie, convincing her granddaughter of the necessity of working towards a socialist future. It is significant that Guste’s final words hark back to her own birth, as they foreground the role of women as ‘source of life’—166thus hinting at Christa’s own part to play in building a socialist future. In each case, the role of the mother is to ensure the future of the ideology, only “stepping out of the picture” once her son is capable of filling his father’s role—or once her (grand)daughter can take over her didactic purpose. In keeping with the Kristevan concept of ‘père-version’ previously discussed, these mothers must enact the ‘self-denial’167 of dedicating their selves to the correct ideological development of their children—or suffer the consequences of choosing more selfishly, as we see in the example of Guste.

Stepping forward, stepping back: generational transition in Stärker als die Nacht Stärker als die Nacht is straightforward in its portrayal of the protagonist, Hans, as a positive hero and socialist martyr, and Gerda, his wife, as a socialist mother. Appearing only six months after Ernst Thälmann - Sohn seiner Klasse, and directed by Slàtan Dudow, who had been consulted at various stages of the Thälmann production process and had, in its earliest stages, been touted as a possible director for the project, Stärker als die Nacht features a communist leader who is rather ‘Thälmann-like’, if on a much smaller scale.

Hans, despite a stint in jail in the 1920s and again in a concentration camp following the

166 Kristeva 1985, 144 167 Kristeva 1985, 150 120 burning of the Reichstag, does not cease to see the necessity of antifascist resistance, and

Gerda fully supports his actions, raising their son through his long absence and even taking on active roles in the resistance herself. However, Gerda is no Änne—she is portrayed as being motivated first and foremost through her love for Hans, and her role as a mother is her primary occupation, rather than her dedication to the cause. Nevertheless, she is not portrayed negatively: indeed, her role as a mother is of the utmost importance, because it prepares her son to step into his father’s role when Hans is executed at the end of the film.

From the beginning of the film, Hans is established as a positive hero and Vorbild.

The film opens with documentary-esque shots of an idyllic Germany, alongside a male voiceover, who slowly and solemnly repeats the word ‘Deutschland’ over shots of the chocolate-box countryside, factories, and streets. The first character we see in the film is

Gerda, who is pregnant, alone in the couple’s apartment. She is seemingly supposed to burn letters and documents involving their communist activity, but she finds a love letter from

Hans’ time in prison and cannot bring herself to burn it.

This scene serves multiple purposes: firstly, it establishes Gerda as a mother and the film’s protagonist from the very beginning, but it also confirms Hans’ communist credentials before we have even met him, thus pre-colouring the viewer’s attitude to him as positive from the start. However, the letter burning also contrasts to the idyllic vision of

Germany in the landscape shots. The editing here demonstrates that all is not well beneath the surface of such a nostalgic portrayal of the country; indeed, as discussed in the previous chapter, this serves to undermine the ‘nostalgic longing for an ideal located in a vaguely defined past’168 established in Nazi cinema (ie, cinema contemporary to the setting of this

168 Schulte-Sasse, 126 121 film) by visually uncovering the tension beneath the surface. This scene also highlights the essential difference between the protagonists, Gerda and Hans: due to her emotional response to the letter, she cannot bring herself to burn it, and thus hides it in a book instead. While Hans is primarily motivated by his dedication to the cause, Gerda, while portrayed as no less ideologically convinced, is primarily motivated by her emotions.

Our first glimpse of Hans in person is at the Hamburg communist party headquarters’, thus establishing him as both a working class communist and as a leader among his peers. This is reiterated as Hans calls for a strike against Hitler, giving a speech to his colleagues. Through the first part of the film, Hans is shown as a dedicated communist, despite the fact that many of his leftist colleagues are not willing to take definitive action, and it requires him to spend long hours away from his pregnant wife.

Gerda is supportive, but doubtful that his efforts will succeed. In a scene in their apartment, the first of several in which Hans acts as a “teacher” to Gerda to quell her doubts, Hans says he can find strength in their eight years of party activity. Again, Gerda is portrayed here as more guided by her emotions: she says that the most important thing is that she has Hans.

The camera makes it clear that Hans’ words are the most important in this scene—first, the camera zooms in to a close-up on his face as he speaks, and he looks upwards, rather than at Gerda. Gerda is not shown in close-up, only in medium shot with Hans always taking up more of the frame, and her eyes are always on him. We may identify with her emotional position, but her own gestures imply that the spectator, too, should learn from and respect

Hans, as she does.

The first part of the film ends when Hans interrupts a workers’ meeting to announce that the Reichstag is burning—a meeting which is then brutally put down by the police. 122

Significantly, the famous Thälmann quote, “Wer Hitler wählt, wählt DEN KRIEG!”, is painted on the wall behind him. After this, Hans goes into hiding, but is ultimately tracked down and arrested—just as Gerda goes into labour. In this first part of the film, therefore, Hans’ credentials as a socialist and as a Vorbild are established: he is a committed socialist, who, despite opposition, stands firm in his beliefs where others falter; he is identifiable with, as a father and husband who lives the life of an ordinary worker; and he motivates those around him, such as his wife and his coworkers, to take an active stance against fascism and for communism. The second part of the film, which consists of the period from Hans’ arrest, through his imprisonment in a concentration camp for his activities, alongside his closest friend, Erich, an equally dedicated communist, to Hans’ release seven years later, is a fairly short montage sequence comparing Hans’ experiences in the camp, with the rising fortunes of their ostensibly apolitical neighbours under fascism.

The final, longest part of the film commences with Hans’ return from jail, when he is able to meet his son for the first time. On his release, Hans is warned that if he is caught again undertaking any communist activities, it will result in his execution. As a result, Hans initially tries to keep his head down at his new job and simply enjoy domestic life with

Gerda and their son, despite being greeted by former coworkers (who seemingly have now seen the error of their earlier passivity). However, two events occur close to one another which convince Hans he must resume his political activity. Firstly, Erich is also released, only to discover that his wife, Lotte, has a new boyfriend living with her in their apartment.

Once Erich and Hans meet, Erich’s despair at the level of support for fascism and war in the city prompts him to tell Hans he is thinking about giving up. This in turn pushes Hans back into action: he shows Erich the map of the world, showing him that the Nazis may have 123

Germany, but they will never take Russia—and, he says, to take back Germany, ‘das ist unsere Aufgabe.’ Nevertheless, Germany invades Russia, and this seals Hans’ conviction that he must act. The remainder of the film portrays Hans’ rise from Vorbild to a quasi-elite figure, as he takes on leadership of the active communists in Hamburg and plans out means of antifascist resistance, while tending to and encouraging the development of Gerda and

Klaus-Peter as active communists. By the end of the film, when Hans is once again captured and, as predicted, sentenced to death, Hans’ portrayal has a Thälmann-esque quality to it: like Thälmann, he writes a letter before he is taken to his death; like Thälmann, he is executed for his communist leadership; like Thälmann, he earns the grudging respect of his prison guard (“euer Löning—das war ein Kerl!”) and like Thälmann, the action of the film ends with his final words being read aloud alongside an image of a communist future.

While Thälmann is only given an implied heir, in the form of Fiete, Hans is, in contrast, portrayed as having not only a direct heir but also as being one of many such leaders. After his letter is read aloud by Gerda and Klaus-Peter to a group of their friends—a scene I examine in greater detail later on—the film then cuts to shots of his imprisoned comrades.

It is at this point that the guard compliments Hans with the ‘das war ein Kerl!’ line, to which one of the communists responds defiantly ‘Davon haben wir Tausende!’. This is the final line of the film, not from one of the protagonists but from an unknown, and it is followed by shots of the rebuilding of (East) Germany after the war, echoing the opening shots of a picturesque pre-war Germany with shots of students walking to Berlin’s Humboldt

University, building sites, and agricultural machinery. While these final shots lack the

‘Deutschland’ voiceover, the spectator cannot help but recall it. As such, these final scenes represent the culmination of Hans’ rise from Vorbild to symbolic hero, through his 124 martyrdom: his spirit now, like Thälmann’s, still lives in the thousands who continue the work to build the GDR—both the masses on-screen, and the spectator.

This transition of Hans to a symbolic hero is emphasised in a number of ways: firstly, through the linking of Hans to Russia. Earlier in the film, Hans shows Gerda and

Erich the map of Europe, pointing out Russia and Germany, and his death is linked to the invasion of Germany by the Soviet Union as discussed below. Secondly, Hans is, shortly before his death, granted a similar kind of immortality to that of Thälmann—and thus with it, access to the sublime body of the People and Party. At his capital trial, Hans defiantly tells the court: ‘Auch Tote können siegen.’ In other words, he will be part of the victory of communism over fascism even if they kill him—the sublime body is immortal.

Visually, Hans’ final scenes are, equally, quite similar to the portrayal of Thälmann.

In the courtroom, the camera repeatedly shows him from below, thus amplifying his

(already tall) stature and positioning him both symbolically and physically (he stands on a podium) above the judges. Similarly, shots immediately before this scene, of him in his jail cell, giving a defiantly motivational speech to his fellow inmates in the face of the Nazi guards, resemble those of Thälmann’s speeches: he is again shot from below, whereas his audience are both seated and shot from above, and the camera cuts between close-ups of his face and reaction shots of his listeners. This is quite different camerawork to the beginning of the film, when he tries (and fails) to get his colleagues to strike. During this earlier scene, while the shots of Hans are still comparable to those of Thälmann in his speech scenes—shooting him from below, with the camera gradually zooming in on his face—the reaction shots come before his speech, not after, and show his listeners shrugging and turning away. Equally, the camera cuts away to his speech to his audience 125 walking away into their workplace, rather than allowing him the final, victorious word, as happens later in the film or in the Thälmann speeches.

That Hans must become a symbolic hero, a fetishistic embodiment of ideology rather than an identificatory Vorbild before he is martyred is important: it ties into the idea, also expressed by Thälmann in Sohn seiner Klasse, of the communist leadership as

‘Geburtsträger’ of a new people—the Žižekian leader who holds the body of the People until such a time as the people are able to birth it themselves. Symbolically, the Russians cross the border into Germany just as Hans is executed; indeed, it is at the point when the officials who are responsible for his arrest hear the news that Russian soldiers have entered Germany that they decide to carry out his execution, thus drawing the connection between Russian power (i.e., the Party/communist ideology) and Hans himself. While

Gerda has physically borne and birthed their son, Klaus-Peter, early on in the film, he only symbolically separates himself from her during the reading of Hans’ final letter, when

Gerda breaks down and is unable to continue reading. She reads the part of the letter that is about their personal life and love, but when she reaches Hans’ hopes for a new Germany, she sits, crying, and passes the letter to Klaus-Peter. This is the point in the film at which

Klaus-Peter fully accepts socialist ideology and takes on his role as a new German communist. He steps into adulthood by taking over the reading of the letter and thus symbolically breaks away from his mother who physically bore him; but he also is, at the point of his father’s martyrdom, symbolically borne into the ideology—and Hans’ words

‘carry’ (tragen) him through that birth (Geburt). He reads his father’s final words: ‘Und wenn ich jetzt, in meiner letzten Stunde, den Blick nach vorne richte, so [??] sich meine

Brust. Denn vor mir sehe ich greifbar nah dieses, unser Ziel […], die strahlende neue Welt, 126 die frei sein wird vom Hass und Krieg.’ As such, his father has to have become part of the elite bearers of the body of the People: those whose synonymity with the Party and ideology allow them access to the body of the People. As Daniela Berghahn notes, 'Gerda is shown literally to pass on the legacy of antifascism to the next generation.'169 She calls

Gerda's role that of 'mediator between the GDR's heroic antifascist past and the bright future of socialism.'170 It is therefore key that Gerda literally ceases to (loses the ability to) speak in this scene and must pass the letter to her son: Gerda's role is a transitional one, which ends as soon as Klaus-Peter is capable of assuming his father's role. As soon as that happens, she steps back into silent anonymity and the camera shows us Klaus-Peter in close-up instead.

While Hans is, certainly by the end of the film, a symbolic hero, and Klaus-Peter his familial and ideological heir, the film ultimately revolves just as much around the figure of

Gerda as around Hans. From the beginning of the film, the spectator is presented with clues that Gerda is their point of identification in the narrative: she is the first character to whom we are introduced; she is established as having strong political convictions from the start, when her apolitical, gossipy neighbour interrupts her burning of the letters; and while we rarely see moments of private emotion from Hans, we are privy to Gerda’s emotional responses to many situations in the film, both alone and in conversations with other women. Equally, although (like Änne) she is shown to be a convinced socialist from the beginning, we see her growth as a communist through her interaction with her husband and son, and with her female friends.

169 Berghahn, "Resistance of the Heart", 168 170 Berghahn, "Resistance of the Heart", 168 127

One of the key aspects of Gerda’s characterization is her comparison in the narrative to two other women: Erich’s wife, Lotte, who is driven solely by love, who is not a mother, and who would rather ignore politics altogether; and Gerda’s neighbour, Frau Globig who calls herself apolitical but is, along with her husband, rather opportunist and initially profits from the rise of fascism. The first comparison, with Lotte, is particularly interesting in that, by the end of the film, the two women’s functions for socialism seem to be almost reversed. At the beginning of the film, unlike Gerda, Lotte is utterly uninterested in politics, and very unsupportive of Erich’s dedication to the cause, despite her love for him: she even goes so far as to try to dissuade him from continuing his activities, due to her fear of life without him. Gerda often plays the role of both friend and councillor to Lotte, one way in which the film establishes Gerda's credentials as a vorbildlich socialist wife. However, Lotte, ruled solely by emotion, pays her no heed, and even finds a new boyfriend when Erich is imprisoned with Hans—Eddi, a former comrade of Hans and Erich who chooses to avoid politics and keep his head down to stay safe once the Nazis come to power. While Gerda steadfastly waits for her husband and raises their child, being rewarded with a happy reunion once Hans is released, Lotte finds herself in both an unstable emotional and political situation: when Erich is released, she is clearly troubled by her betrayal of him and still has feelings for him, even though Eddi is now living in their apartment with her; but she also finds herself unable to stay unaffected by politics, as Eddi is threatened by the

Gestapo into informing on Hans' activities. When his information ultimately leads to Hans' final arrest and threatens Erich again, she realises where her true feelings lie, and rushes to warn Erich—resulting in her own arrest, along with another friend of hers and Gerda's. Our final view of the two women is of their jail cell. Lotte, therefore, represents how not to be a 128 socialist woman: she is ruled solely by emotion, and even though she makes good in the end, it is still primarily an emotionally driven action, and she pays for it with jail time. As already discussed in the first chapter, there is a frequent connection drawn between emotionality and irrationality and fascism in DEFA’s antifascist films. Lotte’s role in the film is thus not only to function as a foil for Gerda, but also to highlight that privileging one’s emotions over rational action has the danger of leading one directly into the arms of fascism; in Lotte’s case, quite literally.

Gerda, meanwhile, raises her son to love and respect his father even though he does not meet him until he is seven years old. She supports her husband and pushes aside her own emotions in support of his actions for the cause (such as when he cancels their longed- for vacation in order to restart his political actions after he is released from jail), and even, when necessary, takes political action of her own, undertaking a dangerous journey to

Berlin to deliver flyers to their comrades there, in a scene which is similar to Änne's baptismal mission to Dresden in Sohn seiner Klasse. Perhaps the most defining difference between Gerda and Lotte is that Gerda has a child, and Lotte does not—indeed, Lotte seems somewhat like a child herself for much of the narrative. As such, the repeated comparisons between Lotte and Gerda not only serve to demonstrate model socialist womanhood against a failed path, but also represent the most important component of it: raising the next generation for the cause.

This is, equally, one of the bases of the other comparison made in the film, of Gerda and her neighbour, Frau Globig. This comparison is established at the very beginning of the film, when Gerda's burning of the documents is nosily interrupted by Frau Globig, whose judgemental attitude immediately outlines her apolitical, self-serving worldview. While the 129 depression has not significantly affected Hans and Gerda, since Hans' workplace is also portrayed as the hub of his socialist activity, the Globigs have been unemployed and suffering as a result of the economic downturn. As such, their star begins to rise once Hitler seizes power, and a montage sequence demonstrates the struggles of dedicated socialists like Hans and Gerda as the Globigs' 'apoliticism' gives way to an increasing dedication to the Nazi party and Hitler. The sequence cuts between shots of Hans and the Globig family, contrasting the brutality he experiences in the concentration camp with the increasing success of the Globig family: we see their apartment gradually become grander after Herr

Globig secures a job at an armaments factory; their son joins the Hitler Youth, and then the army as a tank driver, and finally, Germany goes to war. Here, the montage sequence ends with a repeat of the ‘Deutschland’ voiceover from the beginning of the film, over shots of a tank battle, followed by a shot of the Globigs listening to the radio. While the film demonstrates the advantages they have gained through collaboration with the regime, it thus also already hints that their security may be short-lived: At the end of the sequence, our impression is that Frau Globig is now worried about her son’s safety, whereas Gerda, who we then see in the next shot, can now look forward to Hans’ release, since he has served his sentence. Anne Barnert considers this scene to be particularly significant for establishing the 'Eindeutigkeit' of the film's 'ideologische Argumentationslinie.'171 As in the films discussed in the first half of this chapter, it points to the importance of the next generation for the ideological future of the state: the Globig’s son, part of the fascist war machine, is at risk, whereas Gerda’s son is not.

171 Barnert, 192, 193 130

This sequence thus also serves to compare Klaus-Peter, who himself begins to take part in political activism soon after Hans returns from the camp and meets his son for the first time, and the Globigs’ son, who we have already seen, fully participates in the Nazi war machine. However, while Gerda ultimately loses her husband and finally her home, the final sequence, and particularly the reading of the letter, represents the future of socialism and of Germany, lying with Klaus-Peter: the surviving, socialist, next generation. Meanwhile, the

Globigs' son is killed in the war, and in the end, Frau Globig is left alone and destitute alongside Gerda, when their building is destroyed. We see that her selfish attitude may have served her in the short term, but has ultimately led to her downfall, while Gerda's patience and dedication has led to her ability to leave the cause, and Hans' legacy, in the hands of the next generation.

A vicious circle of martyrdom? Doubling and repetition in Die Toten bleiben jung Joachim Kunert’s 1968 film adaptation of Die Toten bleiben jung, based on the 1949

Anna Seghers novel of the same name, places its female protagonist into the opposite situation to Stärker als die Nacht's Gerda, in that, due to the death of both her husband and her son and in the absence of any other patriarchal Vorbild, at the end of the film she must step in to ensure the continued ideological formation of her as-yet-unborn grandchild. The film contains the most typical martyrdom narrative of the films discussed in this section, particularly since the first martyrdom occurs at the very beginning of the film and becomes the root of every aspect of the plot. Structurally, the film is different to the others I discuss in this chapter, which all have relatively conventional linear narratives. In contrast, the narrative of Die Toten bleiben jung remains chronological but jumps between the plotlines 131 of multiple different characters, some of whom never meet through the course of the film.

Instead, each of these plotlines spans outwards from a single moment: the shooting of

Erwin, a Spartacus militant, by five German officers. This structure closely follows the original structure of Seghers' novel, to the extent that, as Ian Wallace notes, 'critics were struck by [the film's] faithfulness to Seghers' text'—ultimately something that is hardly a surprise, given that Seghers was closely involved in the script development and production process and rejected most deviations from her novel.172

Although the shooting of Erwin provides the impetus for the story's multiple narratives, aside from a single line during his murder scene—he looks directly into the camera and defiantly tells the officers, ‘Ihr kommt auch noch dran’ before they shoot him— we learn almost nothing about Erwin personally as the narrative progresses. Instead, the film follows the consequences of this event for both Erwin’s murderers as well as for his girlfriend, Marie, a domestic servant who begins the film pregnant with their son. Erwin’s martyr narrative is primarily advanced through the sequences dealing with Marie, her husband Geschke (whom she marries out of mutual practicality—he is a widower with children, she is a single mother, and they are friends), and their respective children, particularly Marie and Erwin’s son, Hans. I therefore focus on these sequences in my analysis.

Marie’s narrative, which is the main plotline of the film, can be summed up through the implied continuation of the title of the film by its ending: the dead stay young… and their mothers and wives outlive them. While both Erwin and Hans ultimately end up martyrs to the cause, it is up to Marie, as well as, at the end of the film, Hans’ girlfriend

172 Wallace, 71, 72-74 132

Emmy, to try to pass on the ideology of the father to their fatherless sons, in the hope that the next generation will be the ones to succeed, thus breaking the vicious cycle of martyrdom.

Like Guste in Die Buntkarierten, which I discuss below, Marie begins the film a working-class girl who considers herself to be socialist or at least left-wing, but is fairly passive when it comes to politics. Indeed, all she really knows about the father of her son is that he is a ‘red marine’, but she has not been actively enough involved to know any of his comrades by more than sight. However, her naturally left-leaning instincts lead her to marry an SPD supporter, Geschke, and to mostly associate with other left-leaning people.

As such, she passively provides Hans with an upbringing inclined towards socialism, without being very active herself. That Hans does, indeed, grow up to emulate his father and become a fully-fledged socialist results, however, more from coincidence that intention on Marie’s part: throughout his childhood, she repeatedly tries to locate former friends and associates of Erwin, to find out what happened to him. For Marie, this course of action is rooted primarily in a desire for emotional closure, but the result is that she finds Martin, a former comrade of Erwin’s (although he denies his identity to Marie) who ends up taking

Hans under his wing. Because of this, Hans has the opportunity to begin his ideological formation—thus, while his mother is not actively political, she does inadvertently secure the ideological transfer from father to son through the symbolic hero figure of Martin, and when she discovers his activities towards the end of the film, she is supportive of him even though she is afraid for him. His death at the end of the film pushes her to take her own action, in the form of convincing his pregnant girlfriend, Emmy, not to give up and to continue looking towards the peaceful future in which her child will be born. In the initial 133 plot sketches for the film, Hans and Marie are described as 'die Identifikationsfiguren für den Zuschauer,' something Seghers took some issue with.173 As I argue, while Hans undergoes a typical Bildung to become a Vorbild, instructed by a symbolic representative of the Party and ideology in the form of Martin, Marie's actions in the film's final incarnation remain ambiguous as to how much of a Vorbild she can be viewed as, until the very end, when she begins to take a more active role in ensuring the ideological future of her family.

The film ends how it began: with the death of a communist militant, who leaves behind his future child in the womb of his girlfriend. The plot of the film is not only cyclical, however; doubling of characters and situations also forms a core part of the narrative throughout the film. Hans repeats his father’s fate; his girlfriend, Emmy, repeats Marie’s;

Erwin’s role as father and communist is doubled by his friend, Martin; and in an inversion of Hans and Erwin’s heroic martyrdoms, the officer who is responsible for their deaths shoots himself as Hans is killed. These doublings form the core of the film’s martyr narratives and demonstrate how Die Toten bleiben jung—more so than any of the other films discussed in this section—fully represents both types of positive heroism: Vorbild and symbolic, fetishistic hero.

Erwin and his comrade Martin represent the latter aspect of positive heroism. We know nothing about Erwin aside from the fact that he died fearlessly for the cause; his personality, interests, or indeed his family beyond Marie and Hans are never discussed.

Similarly, all that we learn about Martin is that he is an active communist who holds some kind of leadership role in the resistance movement against fascism. In terms of their function in the narrative, Martin and Erwin may as well be the same character. Initially, this

173 Wallace, 79 134 vagueness concerning Martin's character and background was something the Künstlerische

Arbeitsgruppe "Berlin", responsible for the film, sought to alter, suggesting that his background be fleshed out more than in the novel and observing that in the latter his character was 'eher symbolisch denn realiter zu verstehen: Martin repräsentiert die unaustilgbare und fortwirkende Kraft des revolutionären Marxismus.'174 Consequently, they suggested that Martin's backstory and narrative should be fleshed out in order to make him more relatable. However, Seghers ultimately rejected these suggestions, resulting in a portrayal of Martin that actually provides less of his backstory than even the novel does, and thus making him even more of an impersonal and allegorical/symbolic figure.

After encountering Marie and Hans in the street while Hans is still a child, Martin tries to push them away in order to protect the resistance movement, both Marie and Hans are drawn to him; Marie, because she thinks she recognises him from his association with

Erwin, and Hans, at first, out of pure curiosity, and later out of his desire to be more active in the resistance. As a result, Martin becomes a substitute father to Hans, but in a purely ideological sense—he is the Father in the Lacanian sense, in that he inducts Hans into the

‘true’ reign of law. As Hans spends time with him, he learns about the Soviet Union and communism—Martin even takes him to the cinema to see Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, after Hans begins to ask him about Russia. With Hans, the spectator sees the famous steps sequence, interspersed with close-ups of Hans’ face, and followed by a shot of a troubled- looking Hans walking away from the cinema with Martin’s arm comfortingly over his

174 Wallace, 75, citing Rolf Schneider of the Künstlerische Arbeitsgruppe "Berlin"— Schneider later resigned from the project due to the difficulties of working on the script with Seghers! 135 shoulders. In other words, Martin fulfils a didactic role not only for Hans but also for the spectator. As with Stärker als die Nacht, Martin’s connection to the Soviet Union implies his status as connected to the sublime body of the People and Party.175 Both characters exist only to serve an ideological function, to the spectator and to the other characters in the film: they, like Thälmann, operate fetishistically, as transmitters of ideology, which the film treats synonymously with the Party.

After the Nazis gain power, Martin disappears, and one of his comrades is captured and beaten in the officials’ hunt for him. Nevertheless, Hans continues to be active in the resistance: in other words, he continues to act “in Martin’s name”, although this is not stated as explicitly as by Fiete and Änne in the Thälmann films. Later, Hans encounters

Martin again, proves his loyalty to the resistance, and is offered the opportunity to go to

Spain to help in the war there. Hans, however, refuses, saying ‘ich muss hier bleiben’— demonstrating his resolve to fulfil his obligations to the resistance at home. It is this scene which cements Hans’ conclusion of his Bildung as a socialist, and his status as a Vorbild.

While Martin, as a symbolic hero, is connected to the ideological heart of the Party, represented by Russia, Hans represents that with which the German people should themselves identify and seek to emulate; and thus must choose to remain in Germany to fulfil that function. In other words, a good German communist must work to build a better socialist Germany, rather than leave—a theme which I have already discussed in this

175 Hans’ stepfather is also a substitute father to him, but more in the sense envisioned by Jaimey Fischer, in that Geschke is portrayed as somewhat lacking in political conviction. During the course of the film, he inches towards affiliating himself with the communist movement from his somewhat apolitical support of the SPD, but ultimately dies in a bombing raid before he can commit. 136 chapter, in the context of Konrad Wolf’s Ich war neunzehn (coincidentally released the same year as Die Toten bleiben jung).

While Hans doubles his father by becoming a socialist and eventually a martyr, the film also posits two inverse doubles for him: his stepbrother, and the army officer responsible for the deaths of both father and son. His step-brother, Franz, despite both

Marie and Geschke’s leftist political outlook, not only ends up disagreeing with them politically but even joins the NSDAP. At the wedding of their sister, Franz triumphantly announces that Hitler has won the election, which prompts Hans to run to find Martin, only to find he has disappeared. As such, Hans’ decision to become independently active in the communist resistance, without Martin’s continued guidance, is contrasted to Franz’s activities for the fascist regime.

The simultaneous deaths of Hans and the officer who also killed his father provide a more complex contrast than that of Hans and Franz. While Erwin’s martyrdom serves the narrative purpose of causing Hans’ dedication to the cause (not so much due to his desire to follow his father, of whom he knows little, but because, as described above, it leads to his relationship to Martin and thus to the Party), as well as demonstrating to the spectator the cruelty and inhumanity of those on the side of fascism and capitalism, Hans’ death seems at first sight rather more futile—just as pointless and lacking in effect as the officer’s suicide.

Of course, Hans dies as an honourable communist, having been caught attempting to defect to the Red Army after being conscripted into the War, whereas the officer kills himself seemingly out of guilt at his part in Erwin’s father’s death. Indeed, Hans even repeats his father’s words before he is taken away: ‘Ihr kommt auch noch dran.’ 137

At first, therefore, it seems as if Hans’ death represents an inevitability in communist resistance: generation after generation of young men, who will be slaughtered for the cause; a circle which cannot be broken, even if they have died bravely and honourably. Seen from this perspective, the officer’s death appears more to end the vicious circle than that of Hans, since he removes himself, the perpetrator, from the equation. How, then, do we read Hans as a second martyr, and the officer’s death as, at best, retribution?

Firstly, a short scene involving Marie and Emmy, which immediately precedes Hans’ death scene, already sets up the martyr narrative before we see him die. Marie arrives at her apartment building, only to discover it has been destroyed in the bombings. She screams—Geschke is dead inside. With Emmy, who is pregnant with Hans’ child, she finds a temporary shelter. However, despite Marie’s grief, Emmy is the one who is falling apart: she does not see the point in raising her child if Hans will not return. This, despite the fact that she has been far more active in the communist resistance movement than Marie has ever been. Marie, however, convinces her that there is a future: one which lies with her child. As a result, before the spectator sees Hans’ death, it has already been implied that the circle of martyrdom can be broken with the next generation—and indeed, the contemporary GDR audience would recognise this scene as implying that Marie, Emmy, and the child would be able to help build the new country. Emmy’s child, born during the war, would be approximately the same age as the youth in that audience, proving Marie’s words to be prophetic rather than merely an empty comfort. It is thus through Marie and Emmy’s reaction that Hans’ death becomes constructively narrativized—a martyrdom, rather than a senseless death. This simultaneously undermines any strength the officer’s death might have had, by demonstrating that it is not through the death of one member of the enemy 138

Other which ultimately causes socialism to prevail, but rather the hard work of women like

Marie and Emmy, and the sacrifices of men like Hans and Erwin. In her discussion of

Seghers' novel, Julia Hell succinctly describes the two forces at work in the plot, which underscore the death of Hans and the necessity for Marie and Emmy to continue the struggle: 'In Die Toten bleiben jung, two different imperatives are at work: the paternal law of order and discipline, and what Seghers constructs as the (albeit repressed and contained) feminine imperative of change.'176 It is the former which requires the deaths of both Erwin and Hans; their dedication to communist ideology and position as Vorbild

(Hans) or symbols (Erwin) of its moral law require them to die for the cause. The

'repressed feminine imperative of change' only comes to the fore for Marie at the end, when Emmy is at the brink of giving up: with no patriarchal figures remaining to ensure her unborn grandchild's ideological future, Marie is able to tap into this imperative.

Similarly, as I show below, in Die Buntkarierten, Guste's "imperative of change" only comes to the fore after the death of her son and, most strongly, in the final scene of the film in which she convinces her only remaining grandchild, Christel, of the necessity of working towards a better future.

Secondly, Slavoj Žižek offers a convincing argument for the necessity of repetition to establish a normative state of things. In his analysis of how misrecognition plays a crucial role in the construction of or entry of an event into the Law, he demonstrates that repetition is an essential factor:

‘A certain act through which breaks historical necessity is perceived by the

consciousness (the 'opinion of the people') as arbitrary, as something which also

176 Hell, 67 139

could not have happened; because of this perception people try to do away with its

consequences, to restore the old state of things, but when this act repeats itself it is

finally perceived as an expression of the underlying historical necessity. In other

words, repetition is the way historical necessity asserts itself in the eyes of

'opinion'.’177

Erwin’s death is, within the film’s narrative, ‘arbitrary’ in this sense: because we do not see any of his story prior to his death, we do not feel any sense of inevitability in connection with his death, unlike that of Hans, which appears narratively as the culmination of his

Bildung and the only logical outcome of the situation he has found himself in. In other words, we do not know if Erwin could have honourably avoided his death; but we know that Hans could not have. Those who try to ‘restore the old state of things’ include the officers who shot his father, who variously attempt to continue the state of things they had known prior to 1918, as well as Marie, who does try to keep Hans away from active resistance out of fear for his life (although she does not try particularly hard and is ultimately supportive). Marie's attempts to prevent Hans from joining the active resistance mirror Gregor’s mother in his dream in Ich war neunzehn (indeed, both films were released in the same year); in Oedipal terms, she represents the desire for the ‘old state of things’ that Hans clings to. As such, Hans’ death represents the culmination of his ideological maturity, and confirms his status as Vorbild, because it demonstrates that he, like Gregor, has been able to break away from his mother and resolve his Oedipus complex.

Erwin’s death, though seemingly ‘arbitrary’, becomes a necessary (but

‘misrecognised’) first step in the process completed by Hans: the transition from the old

177 Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, 64 140 reign of law (capitalism, fascism, imperialism) to the new (communism), as per Žižek: ‘In other words, the repetition announces the advent of the Law, of the Name-of-the-Father in place of the dead, assassinated father: the event which repeats itself receives its law retroactively, through repetition. That is why we can grasp Hegelian repetition as a passage from a lawless series to a lawlike series, as the inclusion of a lawless series—as a gesture of interpretation par excellence, as a symbolic appropriation of a traumatic, non-symbolized event.’178 Marie’s response to Hans’ death confirms this transition: where previously she has been non-committal or passive towards full communism (Geschke even says of himself and Marie at one point: ‘Wir sind ja schließlich keine Kommunisten’), now she actively seeks to convince Emmy that there is a point to continuing, even if Hans is dead, and the point is to help build a future—implied here, a socialist future. What was arbitrary has now become Law: Hans’ commitment to and finally his martyrdom for communism have retroactively demonstrated the full symbolism of his father’s death.

The further repetition of the events of the two Wars through their (fictional) representation in film provides an interesting further effect. While Žižek's theory can be applied to the logic of the narrative to demonstrate how socialist resistance moves from traumatic, atypical event to Law in the course of the film, Julia Hell describes (referring to the novel, but in a way that can equally be applied to the film) how the narrative serves to in itself cover over trauma—the trauma experienced by the reader (spectator) in the war.

She calls it 'narrative fetishism,' which she defines as 'the construction and deployment of a narrative consciously or unconsciously designed to expunge the traces of the trauma or

178 Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, 65 141 loss that called the narrative into being in the first place.'179 What we see in Die Toten bleiben jung, therefore, is not only a doubling of characters, but also a doubling of internal narrative structure to external narrative function: through 'repeating' these events in a fictional form, the spectator can process them as normalised and part of the Law, rather than arbitrary and traumatic. Indeed, this can be applied to most of the films discussed in this chapter, although few also have the internal repetition found here and, to an extent, in the Änne/Thälmann doubling discussed earlier.

What we see in both Stärker als die Nacht and Die Toten bleiben jung is the mother’s role when the father is lost: the mother must ‘stand in for’ (or seek a substitute for) the father in order for the son to still later complete his entry into the socialist order, despite his father’s death. Here, Marie finds Hans a substitute communist mentor; in Stärker als die

Nacht, Gerda fills the role herself until such a time as Hans can be released from jail. Once

Martin leaves, Hans is then able to take over his father’s (and substitute father, Martin's) role in the resistance himself; once Hans is executed, Klaus-Peter takes over the reading of the letter and symbolically enters socialist adulthood and takes on the corresponding responsibility with that act. What Die Toten bleiben jung also shows, however, is the mother’s different role when she loses her son. In this case, instead of simply ‘filling in’ for the father, the mother must find a new ‘child’ to whom to pass on the ideology. In this case,

Marie rises from passivity to ensure that Emmy and her grandchild continue Hans’ and

Erwin’s legacy. In the next film to be discussed here, Die Buntkarierten, Guste must also ultimately pass on her ideological conviction to her granddaughter after the loss of her son

179 Hell, 86 142 and husband—similarly to Marie, it is the loss of her son which finally spurs Guste into real action.

Becoming a maternal Vorbild: Die Buntkarierten Made five years prior to the release of Ernst Thälmann - Sohn seiner Klasse, Kurt Maetzig’s second feature film, Die Buntkarierten, follows a working-class woman, Guste, from her birth in 1884, to an unmarried maidservant, through to the immediate post-World War

Two years. The film has an episodic structure, portraying Guste’s progression from childhood, in which she is raised by her grandmother, through her marriage, separation from her husband during the First World War, through her survival of the depression years, and life as a widow during the Third Reich. Every aspect of her story, particularly her childhood and young adulthood, emphasizes her ordinariness and her working-class status.

She is, as Kasjanowa and Karawaschkin rather bluntly point out, ‘alles anders als attraktiv,’180 and she has no particular talents or abilities which mark her out from her peers. Indeed, it seems to be more a matter of chance than anything else, that Guste begins to rethink the “facts” of class, poverty, and the necessity of war at all. Her gaining of life experiences during this turbulent period is paralleled by her gradual development of a political consciousness—a development which is precipitated to its climax by the deaths of her son and grandchildren. This loss of her family causes her to ascend to full antifascist consciousness, a transformation which results in her simultaneous transcendence to a kind of socialist ‘sainthood’. As such, while her son is himself not a socialist, and indeed, becomes desperate enough for a job that he begins working in a munitions factory, his

180 Kasianowa and Karawaschkin, 20 143 death (and particularly that of his innocent children) is the catalyst for Guste’s transformation and thus may be considered to fulfill the criteria for a martyr narrative.

Guste’s political transformation follows a Bildung-narrative representing her path from ignorance and naiveté to her establishment as a Vorbild at the end of the film. For

Guste, it is not economic or societal concerns which lead her away from her apolitical attitude, but rather personal tragedies and traumas. While her childhood is portrayed as far from idyllic, she nevertheless grows into a carefree young woman. As a child, Guste is beaten in school for sleeping in class, because her drunkard grandfather cannot work and her grandmother, who raises her, must sew all night in their one-room apartment to earn money to support her family. Guste’s female schoolteacher realizes the plight her pupil faces only after having given her the cane but appears helpless to do anything for the poor children in her care. This impression is only heightened by the following scene, in which she is scolded by the headmaster of the school for being too soft on the children in a speech in which he stresses that he is a Prussian. This is the first of many scenes establishing the film’s difference from similar DEFA narratives of 40s and 50s: in Die Buntkarierten, female characters are often the ones who recognize the ills in society, even if they feel powerless to act, whereas male characters are more rigid and unsympathetic in their views.

Guste’s first job as an adult is as a maidservant like her mother, for a rich family with a large house. She appears to enjoy her work, even if she does not think too critically about it—she passes the time while washing up by singing, and by flirting with the painter, Paul, whom she eventually marries. It is Paul, a dedicated union member, who introduces her to the idea that workers are oppressed by the rich, and in doing so lays the groundwork for her eventual antifascism. It is only, however, when Paul is conscripted for the First World 144

War that Guste really is forced to critically think about the situation for workers in society.

With Paul no longer around to bring in income, Guste must go out to work in an armament factory, like many other women. A conversation in a streetcar with a soldier, home from the

Front, makes her recognize that war is profitable for companies such as Krupp, for whom she works, and this realization pushes her to leave her job at the factory and find other work instead. The First World War scenes once again establish the idea that women are the

“engines” of society, without which it would not function. In one particular scene, the purpose of which is primarily to establish a move forward in time to 1917, Guste and numerous other women huddle together for warmth in a queue for rations. While the women discuss all that they must do alone now—work, manage a household, and raise their children—two injured soldiers walk past. Not only are the consequences of war starkly demonstrated here—the lack of men means that the women must neglect their children in order to keep up with work and chores—but the reverse is also demonstrated, that women can still manage perfectly well without their husbands around.

With the end of the war, Paul returns, and the narrative shifts forward in time to the early 1930s. By now, Guste’s grasp of politics is beginning to outstrip her husband’s: when she tells Paul and their son that Hitler wants another war, they laugh at her. Her words echo Ernst Thälmann’s famous statement: ‘Wer Hitler wählt, wählt Krieg,’ and indeed, a scene shortly afterwards shows a group of unemployed workers, then cuts to Thälmann’s full quote, graffitied on a wall—which a group of NSDAP members then cover over with a propaganda poster. Guste’s son, Hans, is also affected by unemployment, and because he is now married, feels that his inability to provide for his family makes him worthless and less of a man. When he finally, after two years, finds work, it is in an arms factory, so he tries to 145 pretend to Guste that it is a toy factory. However, his wife accidentally reveals the truth, and Guste is devastated: her son seems to be utterly apolitical, concerned only about his immediate family and (what is heavily implied) his pride. In this part of the film, Guste is, again and again, the only voice speaking out against Nazi injustices and war-making; however, while she is deeply pacifist, she does not participate in any form of active resistance against the Nazi regime. Paul’s doctor chastises the dying man for rejecting the

Nazi Party, and Guste attacks his willingness to be complicit. Hans’ wife accepts his new job, while Guste tries to convince him of the evil of the armament factories. Guste’s Jewish neighbours have been taken away or gone into hiding, and when her other neighbours begin auctioning off the Jewish family’s possessions, Guste launches a passionate attack against them, requiring her to be dragged away by her son.

It is clear that, by now, Guste has fully developed her political opinions—although she still has one tragedy to endure. She finally reconciles with Hans, even though he has not changed his opinions, but an air raid siren causes them to return to their respective homes.

Hans’ building is struck by a bomb, killing his entire family except for his daughter Christel, who is living away from home. Guste is distraught and ends up in a bar run by her friend,

Emma, who tries to comfort her. A number of families made homeless by the bombings are sheltering in the bar, and Guste forces herself to recover enough from her sorrow to start helping those around her, by serving food to and feeding their children. When the police enter the bar and try to speak with her, however, she resists, is arrested, and imprisoned for the remainder of the war.

Once the war is over, Guste is able to return to live in her apartment in Berlin, and

Christel is accepted to the Humboldt University to study. The film ends with a conversation 146 between Christel and Guste, in which the former expresses her fear that studying is pointless because there will just be another war. Guste tells her that she herself started as a maid, who had learned nothing, but now she knows that if everyone works together, they can make sure that there will be no more war.

While it is primarily the female characters in the film who recognise the problems of the world and sometimes even express a willingness to act, it is clear that Guste’s progress from ignorance to active resistance is still primarily prompted by her encounters with various interlocutors, who are usually male: Paul, the soldier on the tram, (implicitly)

Thälmann, and finally her son and his death—even if the latter is rather the inverse of her previous instructive encounters. Indeed, these are the two types of factor throughout the film which provoke her to think about the circumstances in which she lives and works: traumatic events, and male intervention. I have already outlined the former in some detail in the above summary of the film’s plot, but it is worth highlighting the cause and effect of the various traumas and tragedies Guste experiences. The death of her mother causes her to witness her grandmother’s struggle to keep her family together as a child, giving her her earliest ideas of the inequalities of the world when she later sees the lifestyle of her rich employer. The onset of the First World War means she must raise her child and earn money, much as her grandmother did, without the help of her husband—and results in her employment in the armaments factory, where she realizes the connection between capital and war. Paul’s death and the Depression causes her to realize that hiding her convictions is just as bad as being a fascist. Her family’s death results in her finally standing up to the authorities—and ends in her arrest. 147

It is, nevertheless, the intervention of various male characters which set Guste’s biggest realizations in motion in the first half of her life. As I discuss later, the film appears to divide male characters into three categories: those who are a drain on society; those who are sympathetic to or tolerant of fascism; and those who are sympathetic to socialist or antifascist views. It is the latter category who influence Guste the most. First and foremost, it is Paul who causes the beginning of her transformation from apolitical maidservant to antifascist Vorbild. When he takes her out dancing on Sundays, he explains to her what a union is, sitting her down on a bench and standing over her to explain in a teacher-ly manner. It is this conversation which marks the start of Guste’s ability to think critically about what happens around her. Equally, she is only able to find voice for her dissatisfaction with her work in the armaments factory after an encounter with a returned soldier on a tram. The soldier claims loudly that he does not agree with women working, which causes an argument to break out. The other women on the tram angrily retort that there would be no grenades or bombs for the front if they didn’t work. The soldier’s response is what influences Guste: he says that the soldiers would have a better time if fewer grenades were produced! Immediately after this scene, Guste stops working so hard, is reprimanded by her boss, is haunted by her imaginings of the sound of bombs falling as she manufactures them, and finally quits. Without these two male interventions, it is heavily implied that Guste would not have so dramatically changed her political opinions. It is only through the soldier’s outburst that she connects the bombs she is manufacturing to the dangers on the Front—and implicitly, for Paul. It is male intervention which causes

Guste to think, and tragedy (or fear of tragedy) which causes her to act. This is certainly the case at the end of the film, when Hans and his family are killed immediately after he has 148 told Guste: ‘wir können ja nichts ändern’, and that there is therefore no point in taking action. It is this statement, and the tragedy following it, which causes Guste’s final transformation.

The deaths of Hans, his wife, and their children operate in inversion to the martyr- mother dynamics encountered in the other films discussed in this chapter, in which the martyr is a positive hero, often even a Thälmann-esque symbolic hero figure, and the mother’s role is more passive and reflective, primarily requiring that she ensures the ideological transition to the next (male) generation takes place. While Guste also does the latter, Hans is not a positive hero in any way. He is, at best, apolitical, putting his family above wider interests and taking the munitions job. Instead, Guste, as the mother, also becomes the Vorbild here, not only of socialist motherhood, since she still passes on ideological conviction to the next generation (unusually represented by her granddaughter) but also of political action. Guste’s final transformation, into a Vorbild of both active antifascism and idealized motherhood, only occur as a result of the trauma of the family’s deaths. Her son’s death leads her, as she arrives at the shelter for those whose homes have been destroyed, to—for the first time—publicly and bitterly indict the Nazi regime. It is this tirade which leads to her arrest and imprisonment and represents the conclusion of her political awakening. However, her grief at her innocent grandchildren’s deaths also leads her to put aside her anger after this speech, and instead take positive action, sitting amongst hungry children and feeding them soup. The camerawork here positions Guste as the ultimate mother figure or Madonna, surrounded by little children and selflessly putting aside her own cares in order to help them. At this moment, she is arrested. Even as she is dragged away, she tries to convince the others there to act: she 149 shouts to them to be brave and help her, and to end the Nazis and fight for peace. The film therefore uses Hans’ and the children’s deaths not only to complete the portrayal of Guste as an antifascist, but also connects this ideal of antifascist, socialist motherhood to older cultural tropes of motherhood, particularly saintly, Christian ideals of motherhood.

Kasjanowa and Karawaschkin, writing originally in Russian for a Soviet audience, pick up on this combination of motherhood, martyrdom, and positive heroism, and compare Die Buntkarierten to Gorky’s 1907 novel The Mother.181 Once again, Mathewson’s description of Mother is relevant here: that it ‘contains two formulas often found in later

Soviet fiction: the conversion of the innocent, the ignorant, or the misled to a richer life of participation in the forward movement of society; and the more important pattern of emblematic political heroism in the face of terrible obstacles.’182 Where the latter is most applicable to Maetzig’s later work in the Thälmann films, the former could easily also be a description of Die Buntkarierten. Indeed, Kasjanowa and Karawaschkin explicitly compare

Guste to the titular mother, Pelageja Nilownas, who similarly begins the novel in a state of political ignorance, suffers poverty and violence (in this case, at the hands of her husband), and learns about political (in this case, revolutionary) action through her son, whose work she ultimately takes over when he is arrested. Finally, she is beaten to death for her actions.

Guste has fewer explicit political role models—as we have seen, she does not ‘continue the work of’ any of the male characters in the film—and is not killed, only imprisoned.

Nevertheless, there are obvious parallels between the two characters. These may be intentional ‘echoes’ of Gorky’s work on the part of scriptwriter Berta Waterstradt, since

Gorky’s work was the inspiration for Brecht’s 1932 play Die Mutter and was thus known in

181 Kasianowa and Karawaschkin, 20 182 Mathewson, 167 150

Germany, in addition to its status as the first socialist realist novel. However, where in the

Thälmann films the former is more or less lacking altogether, at least in any of the main characters—Fiete and Änne both begin the film as politically conscious—and in The

Mother, Mathewson notes that ‘the two themes are interwoven, with Pavel acting as the principal agent in restoring his mother to a life of dignity and purpose,’183 in Die

Buntkarierten, Guste both fully embodies the first formula, and, of all the characters in the film, is also the one who could most be described as carrying out acts of ‘political heroism,’ in that she stands up for her beliefs and is imprisoned for them. Gina Herrmann describes

Nilownas as a ‘transformed working-class housewife who sacrifices herself completely for her “children,” the socialist collective.’184 Guste does not undergo such a complete sacrifice

(she loses her family but not her life). Nevertheless, the scene of the moments after her loss and before her arrest does position her as a “Madonna” figure, the archetypal mother.

The didactic imperative of socialist motherhood Whether the martyred figure is a Vorbild or even a symbolic hero, we see that the figure of the socialist mother (as opposed to just female socialist) plays an important role in the formation of a narrative which transforms a death, which may even be causally accidental or unavoidable, as in, for example, Die Buntkarierten—and thus not a martyrdom in the sense of ‘putting oneself in danger’—into a martyrdom. This transformation of death highlights the duality of death already seen in the culminating scene of Ernst Thälmann -

Führer seiner Klasse: that the death of the physical body does not represent an ideological death; the sublime body of the People lives on in the narrative. The purpose of such

183 Mathewson, 167 184 Herrmann, 50 151 martyrdom narratives is thus to transform these deaths for an ideological purpose: to shore up the reign of law by fetishistically covering over the lack caused by the violence at the root of the system. By figuring the deaths of fathers and sons in the violence of resistance and war as martyrdoms, the films turn death into eternal life (of the sublime body) and draw a line of coherent narrative continuity from those deaths to the contemporary GDR of the spectator.

In doing so, these narratives not only shore up the positive heroic qualities of the martyred figure, but simultaneously establish a female equivalent to the male positive hero; one which centres around motherhood, and the transmission of ideology to the next generation (and thus, equally, to the spectator). The mother-martyr constellation in these films plays a dual role: to establish the qualities of a good socialist, in the form of the

Vorbild, whether male or female; and, through representations through not only the learning of socialism but also the Erziehung of socialist children, to transmit ideological values and allegiances to the spectator.

In this section, we have seen that the mother literally (temporarily) covers over the lack of the father, due to his death or absence, until such a time as the child reaches adulthood, when he takes on his father’s role, successfully resolving the Oedipus complex, and steps into his ideological position. This is particularly true in Stärker als die Nacht and

Die Toten bleiben jung. In Die Buntkarierten, we are presented with a slightly different scenario. Since Paul is ideologically suspect through his support of the SPD, Guste cannot prevent Hans’ apathy towards the correct ideology. Instead, his martyrdom acts to spur her into taking action with the next generation—but she is still filling in for a lacking father. The difference is that she is a rare example of active positive female heroism (rather than 152 simply raising children and more passively supporting the cause). Few later antifascist films offer further examples of this form of female Vorbild, with the Thälmann films’ Änne representing one somewhat rare exception.

Conclusion This chapter is not intended to be an exhaustive analysis of representations of motherhood in DEFA film, but rather examines how motherhood, (self-)sacrifice, and positive heroism intersect. Through this analysis, I have highlighted some aspects of idealized GDR motherhood and the relationship between mother and child. Most importantly, the cause comes above all else; to ensure its continuation, emotions and other concerns must be put aside. This can be seen both in cases where the mother herself dies (e.g. Änne) or where a husband or son dies in particular (e.g. Marie, Guste, Gerda...). In order for the next generation to reach maturity, civilisation, and the realm of the Law, the ideal socialist mother must be prepared to step back from her child after a certain point (Gerda, or to an extent, Änne; Marie, once she finds an appropriate substitute father figure for Hans) or the child must themselves be able to separate from her, physically and emotionally (Gregor,

Helmut). However, the mother must also be prepared to step out of her usual supporting role to her husband's or boyfriend's antifascist resistance and temporarily take on a more active role in ensuring the ideological formation of her child, if the father is absent and no suitable substitute can be found. In either case, the ideal socialist mother must be prepared to put aside her emotions for the greater ideological cause.

Ultimately, however, the mother must be prepared to step back and once again

'make herself anonymous'. Less ideal socialist mothers, who either fail to raise their 153 children in an appropriate way (Lotte) or fail to let go when necessary (Gregor's mother), are sacrificed for the cause; the ideological future must be assured, one way or another. The repression of desire for the mother is the price of civilisation and entrance into the reign of law. Mothers, as we have seen in this chapter, are (or should be) concerned primarily with the future of socialism—but their role is inherently in its past. The action of antifascist resistance—the ideological "present"—is represented by male positive heroes. Equally, for the spectator, the mother cannot be the object of desire—this desire must be repressed and fetishistically transferred onto the agents of socialism's present and future: the male

Vorbilder and symbolic positive heroes. In these films, the maternal functions to transition this object of desire from the past generation (those directly involved in the resistance against fascism) to the future (those who are or will be active in the contemporary GDR).

They thus not only serve to reinforce the fetishistic nature of the symbolic hero, but also to strengthen the historical narrative of antifascist resistance during the Third Reich and

Weimar periods leading to the founding of the GDR, as well as the continued necessity of antifascist activity (in other words, the continued presence of the Other, the absolute enemy) for the contemporary spectator. The repression of desire for the mother and the consequent resolution of the Oedipus complex is intertwined with the beginning of antifascist resistance; to reach maturity within this political reign of law is to join the fight.

Chapter 3: Mitläufer and conversion narratives: founding a socialist state on fascist ground In the first two chapters of this dissertation, I examined portrayals of two aspects of the positive hero: the symbolic hero, and the Vorbild. As discussed in the context of the

Thälmann films, the symbolic hero functions fetishistically, covering over the illegal violence at the foundation of the ideological system and thus legitimising the State. The symbolic hero is fetishistic because he draws the desire of the people (the masses) to one day possess the sublime body of the People which he holds in perpetuity for them until they are ready to birth it; he is the “Geburtshelfer.” Meanwhile, the Vorbild represents those of the people who are already ideologically prepared for the “birth”; they are the role models who the masses (the spectator) are encouraged to emulate, since only when all of the people have undergone a similar socialist Bildung process will they be ready to birth the body of the People and become holders of the sublime body themselves.

Films such as the Thälmann films (1954/55), Slátan Dudow’s Stärker als die Nacht

(1954), or Joachim Kunert’s Die Toten bleiben jung (1968) feature Vorbilder whose socialist

Bildung begins from a position in which the character already tends towards socialist thinking or is potentially already a member of the communist party. These formational narratives serve to demonstrate the development of vorbildliche characters from naïve but

“correct” thinking, to active ideological service. However, these narratives are not the only type of Bildung narratives present in DEFA films dealing with the recent past. Another form of these narratives begins from a position not of inactive (but antifascist) naïveté but rather passive, or even active, collaboration with the enemy.

155

These Mitläufer narratives, as with the martyr narratives of the previous chapter, enact a religious trope: that of the conversion narrative. My analysis in this chapter is thus structured and informed by the work done on religious conversion by Lewis R. Rambo, particularly his ‘sequential stage model’ of conversion.185 However, far more than the films dealt with in the previous two chapters, these films seek to delineate the boundaries of antifascist and socialist ideology, and thus also the boundaries of East German identity, by bringing those without a personal history of resistance ‘’into the fold,” and positioning them within the reign of law. The structuring device of the conversion narrative thus intersects with the Žižekian concepts of the reign of law and the sublime Leader explored previously in this dissertation, as well as the Kristevan concept of abjection in terms of the positioning of fascism as at the ideological boundaries of the State.

The protagonists of the Mitläufer narratives discussed here are all male, and their stories, as with the films of the previous chapters, are set primarily during the two decades preceding the foundation of the GDR, although they are most often set during the war itself.

Typical Vorbild narratives such as those of Thälmann's Fiete, Gregor of Konrad Wolf’s Ich war neunzehn (1968), or Guste of Kurt Maetzig’s Die Buntkarierten (1949) deal with characters who never side with fascism, and whose personal growth takes them from an inactive or follower role to a position in which they become involved in actively passing along the ideology as Vorbilder, both to their peers and usually also to the spectator. These narratives play a key role in establishing the GDR as the heir to an existing antifascist and socialist community in Germany. However, the reality of the GDR/SOZ immediately after the war, just as in the FRG, was that many citizens had participated to some extent in

185 Rambo, 17 156 fascism, whether through fighting in the war, joining the Nazi party, turning a blind eye to the persecution of Jewish friends or neighbours, or by simply keeping their heads down and avoiding politics as much as possible. In a state in which men were still returning from prisoner of war camps through the 1950s, and in which many fathers and husbands never returned at all, it would be impossible to pretend that its heritage was rooted solely in active antifascist resistance. Indeed, this is already noted by one reviewer of Dudow’s

Stärker als die Nacht: ‘ein solches Schicksal [war] typisch […] nicht für das deutsche Volk, auch nicht für die deutsche Arbeiterklasse in ihrer Gesamtheit, sondern für die Tapfersten,

Konsequentesten, und darum Vorbildlichsten ihrer Vorhut und der Besten des Volkes

überhaupt.’186 For example, Weckel notes that Wolfgang Staudte ‘himself cited his personal experience as the source of his preoccupation with the Mitläufer’187 in his films Rotation

(which is discussed in this chapter) and Die Mörder sind unter uns (1945). Weckel goes on to ask ‘whether Staudte’s audience also identified with his protagonists, and if so, what they perceived and acknowledged in their own viewings of these protagonists and what they ignored and overlooked.’188 While this question is impossible to answer with any certainty,

I propose in this chapter that DEFA’s Mitläufer films do seek to provide points of identification for the viewer, in order to shore up a GDR national identity. The conversion narratives of Mitläufer films provide an opportunity to reconcile the realities of the pasts of many East Germans (and their parents), while still reinforcing the state's foundational antifascist narrative.

186 Blankenfeld, “Stärker als die Nacht” 187 Weckel, 68 188 Weckel, 69 157

Stephen Brockmann highlights this concern in his article on Anna Seghers’ “Der

Mann und sein Name”: ‘... No other work addressed as explicitly and as exhaustively the central concern of Seghers’ novella—how to transform an SS man into a socialist—and, by extension, the problem of changing Nazi Germany into a socialist Germany.’189 Brockmann notes that this was a central concern for the East’s ‘literary and cultural intellectuals’ from

1945 onwards. ‘Seghers explicitly shared this goal. In a 1956 speech she proclaimed that writers should, “durch die Mittel ihres Berufes… helfen, ihr Volk zum Begreifen seiner selbstverschuldeten Lage zu bringen.”’190 That representations of single transformations could be more broadly connected to the fate of a people is even addressed in Seghers’s novel itself, as Brockmann cites: ‘“So kamen sie im Laufe des Gesprächs von dem Schicksal des einzelnen Mannes auf das Schicksal des Volkes.” Thus, the narrator gives early readers a hint about how they should approach the novel itself—a hint that many of them readily took.’191 In other words, Retzlow’s story (the protagonist) should act as a parable for the reader to follow.

While the transformation depicted in Seghers’s novella is in some ways different from those portrayed in the films in this chapter—for one thing, none of the Mitläufer discussed here are in the SS, whose members are always portrayed in DEFA films as utterly unredeemable—Retzlow’s conversion to socialism, at first faked in order to save his own skin but later sincere, is another example of a conversion narrative, one which both

Seghers and GDR intellectuals explicitly connected to the ideological project of the State.

Brockmann goes on to cite a GDR literary scholar: ‘Ungezählte Deutsche… sind erst [nach

189 Brockmann, 297-98 190 Brockmann, 298 191 Brockmann, 298 158

1945] das geworden, was sie sein können. Anna Seghers … deutete ungezählten Menschen den Prozess ihrer ideologischen Entwicklung.’192

It is clear that the GDR’s cultural and intellectual elites recognised the necessity to portray not only already fully committed socialists and resistance fighters, but also to represent a transition to socialism that would connect the majority of Germans’ real lived experiences during the Third Reich to an embracing of socialist ideology. In other words, conversion narratives represent a means of both legitimising and confirming the real conversions of those who had already embraced the institutions and ideology of socialism, but also provide a point of identification for spectators who perhaps were as yet uncertain of their own ideological allegiances. As Brockmann notes, Seghers’s novella ‘articulated socialist re-education as both a collective and a personal project, both exterior (work) and interior (psychic and spiritual conversion), as well as the central paradox of the GDR itself—how to create a non-Nazi, progressive state out of the ruins of a Nazi state.’193 As we is evident in the case of the films discussed in this chapter, this connection between representations of personal ‘spiritual’ (or ideological) conversion, work, and the necessity of a common identity between State and masses, is key to understanding the role conversion narratives play in the context of building an East German identity, as well as in the context of DEFA’s positive heroes.

The antifascist films discussed in chapters one and two tend to divide their characters into three rough ideological categories: at one end of the ideological spectrum, the positive heroes; at the other, the convinced fascists; and in the middle, those who are apolitical and uncritical of fascism. (A prime example of this is Lotte in Stärker als die

192 Brockmann, 299 193 Brockmann, 314 159

Nacht). The reality for the German people between 1933 and 1945 was, of course, far more complex: many worked in active roles within the Nazi state apparatus without being irrational and evil; many uncritically supported fascism; and even many of those who were apolitical or even by conviction antifascist still did nothing to undermine fascism or even worked (and fought) in support of it. The citizens of the GDR shared this past just as much as the citizens of the FRG. Julia Hell succinctly describes this: ‘in the German context […] the people’s body was “polluted” by National Socialism and therefore could not serve as a basis for a national narrative of popular resistance.’194

The Mitläufer is the on-screen embodiment of this “pollution”. The films to be discussed in this chapter put the Mitläufer at the centre of their narrative, rather than at the sidelines as in the case of Stärker als die Nacht’s Lotte. This thematizing of the Mitläufer is necessary to uphold the legitimisation of the State and its reign of law, just as much as the two types of positive hero described so far. This is because the Mitläufer represents the possibility of “cleansing” or “redemption” of the real “polluted” bodies of the masses (the spectator), through the conversion-to-socialism/antifascism narratives that these films portray. Whereas Vorbilder represent the path of Bildung the spectator (the people) might emulate in order to ready themselves to birth the sublime body of the People, Mitläufer narratives represent a prior step in this process: through their conversion, these characters make themselves eligible to enter the ideological system altogether. As such, for their spectator, the films serve a dual purpose. Firstly, they represent a redemption narrative with which the spectator may identify, one which serves to solidify and reconfirm the spectator’s own ideological adherence. In addition, they imply that, since a conversion to

194 Hell, 29 160 socialism means entrance into the reign of law bounded by the ideology and legitimised in the foundation of the State, then, since the spectator is already part of that reign of law, they must already have the appropriate ideological “credentials” and be an “accepted” convert. Those who collaborate with fascism are dealt with in two ways in the films discussed here (and in antifascist films generally): either they undergo a conversion and become antifascists or socialists, thus being inducted into the reign of law, or they are deemed ‘abject’ and expelled or purged. The latter are those who represent the Absolute enemy; the supporters of fascism portrayed as irrational and irredeemably evil.

Mitläufer narratives are still positive hero narratives: they are, in effect, a subset of

Vorbilder narratives; a representation of socialist Bildung which begins not from a point of belief in socialism (or at least antifascism) but lack of action, but rather from the opposite—from active collaboration with the fascist enemy. By the end of the Mitläufer narrative, however, the protagonist has not only chosen the 'correct' ideology and/or awakened their (socialist) ideological consciousness, but also has generally participated in an act of active antifascist resistance. What is different from the Vorbild narratives discussed in the earlier chapters is that, while the Vorbilder we have seen so far always reach a point in the narrative where they not only express their beliefs but also act to influence somebody else ideologically, Mitläufer narratives do not always follow their protagonist beyond the point of his decision to convert. I examine the reasons for this difference in the penultimate section of this chapter.

This chapter outlines a model narrative which at least partially applies to all of the films I will discuss here: Rotation (1949, dir. Wolfgang Staudte), Sie nannten ihn Amigo

(1959, dir. Heiner Carow), Sterne (1959, dir. Konrad Wolf), Leute mit Flügeln (1960, dir. 161

Konrad Wolf), Königskinder (1962, dir. Frank Beyer), Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt (1965, dir. Joachim Kunert), Die Russen kommen (1968/87, dir. Heiner Carow), Meine Stunde Null

(1970, dir. Joachim Hasler), Mama, ich lebe (1977, dir. Konrad Wolf), and Ich zwing dich zu leben (1978, dir. Ralf Kirsten). In contrast to the martyr films discussed in the previous chapter, which were all made before 1970, films featuring Mitläufer narratives only begin to appear more frequently in DEFA's repertoire ten years after the GDR's founding, but continue to be made through to the late 80s.195 The reason for this can be traced back to the audience response to typical antifascist films in the mould of the Thälmann films, or Stärker als die Nacht. By the mid 1950s, reviewers were beginning to openly note that, while DEFA made very high quality and artistically (and ideologically) valuable antifascist films audiences were beginning to tire of the theme and would rather see “entertainment films” made to a similar high quality. In one article on Carow’s Sie nannten ihn Amigo, Carow is asked: ‘Hat die DEFA nun nicht eigentlich genug Filme gedreht, die sich mit dem

Faschismus auseinandersetzen; warum also noch einmal dasselbe Thema?’196 However, antifascist films were central to DEFA’s mission of ideological didacticism; the feature film studio could not simply stop making them. The report of Carow’s response to the question says exactly this: ‘Ja, es hat eine große Zahl DEFA-Filme über den Faschismus gegeben, das ist Carow klar. Trotzdem werden immer wieder derartige Filme gedreht werden müssen— solange nämlich, bis der Faschismus wirklich Vergangenheit geworden ist.’197 As such, films featuring Mitläufer can be understood as responding to this dilemma, by structuring antifascist narratives around central figures who better correspond to the real lived

195 Chapter 4 of this dissertation deals in part with Mitläufer films made in the 1980s and examines how they differ from the earlier films discussed here. 196 Junge, “Warum dieser Schluß, Heiner Carow?” 197 Junge, “Warum dieser Schluß, Heiner Carow?” 162 experiences of their audiences, while simultaneously redeeming them.198 The turn towards the telling of such conversion narratives, as opposed to focusing on “socialist from the start” resistance fighters, was encouraged not only within DEFA but also in other realms of

GDR cultural production. Brodsky cites the example of literature: ‘At the Writer’s

Conference in 1956 an appeal was made for GDR authors to write about the war, but in the

“right way,” emphasizing its social character, demythologizing it and focusing on the conversion of simple propagandized soldiers into “new men.”’199

Using Lewis R. Rambo's sequential stage model for conversion as a basis for my analysis, I thus demonstrate that Mitläufer films are in fact conversion narratives, with strong similarities to conversion narratives of the (Christian) religious tradition, both in their structure and in their didactic purpose. This comparison of ideological conversion narratives to religious (and specifically also a Christian) conversion narratives is not without precedence: for example, Kabi Hartmann, in her article on conversion narratives written by suffragettes in the early 20th century, notes that they ‘are marked by Christian, often specifically biblical, language and metaphor.’200 As this chapter demonstrates, this is often equally true of the Mitläufer films.

Alongside this, I utilise a Lacanian understanding of the Oedipus complex to demonstrate how these films imply that such a conversion is a necessary and inevitable

198 Along these lines, Angel Wagenstein, speaking at a 1958 conference, is quoted as follows: ‘Wir befreien uns vor dem falschen Heroisieren, wobei wir in dem Wunsch, die Schönheit der tatsächlich bei uns existierenden heldenhaften Menschen zu zeigen, sie auf so einen hohen Sockel erheben, daß sie der Umwelt entfremdet werden, die sie geschaffen hat, ihre menschlichen Umrisse verlieren und, infolgedessen, nachdem sie auf der Leinwand die Verbindung zu den Maßen verloren, auch keine Fühlungnahme mit den Maßen im Vorführungssaal hatten.’ Quoted in: Junge, ““Sterne” / Wie haben nichts vergessen.” 199 Brodsky, 254 200 Hartmann, 35-36 163 conclusion on the path to (masculine) maturity, thus positioning those GDR citizens with similar backgrounds as inevitable socialists. I underpin this argument with Julia Kristeva's concept of the abject, in order to explore how these narratives also simultaneously belie the problematic nature of the GDR's legitimising discourse of antifascism. Ultimately, I demonstrate how these films make use of the conversion narrative structure to underscore the importance of the positive hero (and particularly the symbolic hero) for the masses, to legitimise the GDR as a state, and to shore up the spectator’s ideological adherence.

Moreover, I explore the paradox inherent to antifascist films, but particularly exposed in the films discussed in this chapter: that fascism is made abject, not Other, due to the necessity of its continued “presence” in some form as an underpinning of the foundational narrative of the State—antifascism.

Why examine Mitläufer narratives through the lens of religious conversion? Conversion is typically a term applied to a major, personal shift in religious or spiritual conviction. Traditionally, the term was used for conversion to Christianity, but in more recent scholarship, it has been applied more widely to any kind of religious conversion—or even ideological conversion. Rambo and Farhadian describe conversion as follows:

‘Religious change characterises an enduring quality of the human predicament.

Whether it entails converting from one religious tradition to another, changing from

one group to another within a tradition, or the intensifying of religious beliefs and

practices, instances of conversion can be found in many cultures, historical periods,

economic conditions and social categories.’201

201 Rambo and Farhadian, 23 164

While Rambo’s focus is on religious conversion, scholars such as Randall Bytwerk, Emilio

Gentile, and Hans Maier have both compared socialist ideology (and other political ideologies) to a religion and have used the term conversion in its theological sense to consider changes in ideology and politics. As discussed in the first chapter of this dissertation, Bytwerk specifically compares both National Socialism and the socialism of the GDR to religions. He states that:

‘Both Nazism and Marxism-Leninism claimed to have truth. Lacking a god to stand

behind, their truths could triumph only if their adherents fought for them. Christians

may assume they have done their duty by acting as their faith commands and their

God will act should he wish. Nazis or Marxist-Leninists depended on their own

efforts or on those of the party to realize truth. […] Nazism and Marxism-Leninism

resembled state religions, an intermingling of the secular and the sacred.’202

Furthermore, he explicitly compares Marxism-Leninism to a form of Christianity:

‘If Nazism was a cult whose founder was still among the faithful, Marxism-Leninism

in the GDR was an established religion with a reasonably settled theology, more

Catholic than Protestant in structure. The pope was in “the Third Rome,” Moscow

[…]. The head of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) was a cardinal, supreme

in his realm yet subject ultimately to Moscow. The authority of Marx, Engels, Lenin,

and Stalin had passed to the party, and its word was now sacred.’203

The symbolic heroes found in positive hero films, with their sharing of the sublime body of the People with Lenin and Stalin, and their synonymy with Party and State, thus transmit this sacred word. Bytwerk’s work has been criticized for a lack of reference to Emilio

202 Bytwerk 2012, 31 203 Bytwerk 2012, 60 165

Gentile and his work on what he terms ‘political religion’,204 but their conclusions are not mutually exclusive; Bytwerk focuses more specifically on the German context, while Gentile seeks a to apply the concept of ‘political religion’ to all forms of totalitarianism and beyond.

While not the first to use this term, his work on defining and understanding the concept forms the basis of much of the present-day scholarship on the concept. In his overview of the term’s history, he notes that:

‘Although the expression ‘political religion’ was born before totalitarianism, only

after it was associated with Bolshevism, fascism and Nazism in early comparative

analyses of those regimes, did the concept of political religion became [sic] more

prominent. It was employed to define the absolute exaltation of the party and

of the state, the cult of the leader, mass fanaticism, rites and symbols of

collective liturgies, which were fundamental aspects of the new totalitarian

regimes.’205 (Bolding mine)

Many of these hallmarks of political religions are recognisable as having previously been discussed in the first two chapters of this dissertation. While Gentile goes on to discuss how the term ‘political religion’ might be employed to describe present day American society and other non-totalitarian societies, for which others have used the term ‘civil religion’, it is clear that the term ‘political religion’ is an established concept in the context of totalitarian states and their ideologies.

In this vein, and following on from Gentile’s work, Hans Maier discusses in particular the personality cults around Lenin and Stalin in the Soviet Union, noting the recycling of rituals and beliefs from Orthodox religious practices in service of the Lenin

204 Flood, 517-18 205 Gentile, 25 166 cult. In particular, the embalming and display of Lenin’s body after his death meant that

‘Bolshevik political leaders actually restored the old forms of the relic cult by presenting the dead heroes of the revolution for public veneration in Red Square.’206 Lenin ‘was to endure, ageless and intact, for all time.’207 This embalming and veneration of Lenin’s body

(particularly the stress on its remaining ‘intact’) is a symptom of the indestructible nature of the sublime body; it cannot be destroyed, nor damaged, because it is the locus of the power of the State, Party, and ideology.208

If a political ideology can be a form of religion, then it follows that political religions may have their own forms of conversion, which may indeed look very like other religious conversions. Indeed, Tamir Bar-On explicitly compares political conversion to religious conversion in his article ‘Understanding Political Conversion and Mimetic Rivalry’, stating that: ‘ideological/political ‘conversion’ is at least partly a quasi-religious experience based on mimicry and syncretism inherited from dominant traditional religions.’209 Bar-On defines ‘mimicry’ as ‘the conscious or unconscious adopting of traditional religion’s method of developing and representing a total system of beliefs and myths, defining dogma and

206 Maier, 268 207 Maier, 268 208 Žižek discusses this in the context of Lenin’s ‘obsession’ with the good health of his fellow Bolsheviks, particularly Gorky. (258) He concludes: ‘the mind of a true Communist cannot deviate, because it is the immediate self-consciousness of historical necessity— consequently, the only thing that can go wrong and introduce disorder is his body, this fragile materiality charged with a mandate to serve as a transient supporter of another body, “made of special stuff”. Is not the ultimate proof of this special attitude of Leninist Communists towards the body the fact of the mausoleum—their obsessive compulsion to preserve intact the body of the dead Leader (Lenin, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong)? How can we explain this obsessive care if not by reference to the fact that in their symbolic universe, the body of the Leader is not just an ordinary transient body but a body redoubled in itself, an envelopment of the sublime Thing?’ Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 260. 209 Bar-On, 244 167 ethics, and structuring liturgy,’210 and ‘syncretism’ as ‘the incorporation of traditions, myths and rituals inherited from traditional religions, but in a manner that transforms and adapts them according to the needs of its own “mythical and symbolic universe”.’211

It is the mimicry aspect of political conversion that primarily concerns us in this chapter, in which I show how DEFA’s Mitläufer films portray ideological conversion in a manner which may be mapped onto Rambo’s seven stages of (religious) conversion.

However, these filmic representations of conversion narratives are also syncretic, both in that an inherited tradition (Christian conversion) is adapted to serve the “mythical and symbolic universe” of socialism, but also, as discussed in the first chapter of this dissertation in particular, through the trope of the symbolic hero as a Christ-like figure, and of Vorbilder as disciples.

The purpose of these ideological conversion narratives is equally syncretic. In religion, conversion narratives are often made public, either orally or in print. This serves three purposes: first, as a form of confession, it serves to “purge” the convert of the past and legitimise their “rebirth” in their new religion. This has a long tradition in Christian religion in particular: for example, John Lynch notes that ‘Puritan churches in the mid-

1600s and again during the 1730s required members to recount how they were born again into God’s grace to attain church membership.’212 This act of narrating a conversion separates the protagonist from their former identity and establishes their new identity as a member of the new religion, as Dumanig, Khemlani, and Dealwis note in their study on

Christian converts in Malaysia: ‘The discourse in the narrative reflects the two contrasting

210 Bar-On, 244 211 Bar-On, 244 212 Lynch, 3 168 identities of the speaker. The lifestyle that is not acceptable according to Christian values is presented first, followed by the process of conversion and finally the impact of conversion, which aligns and conforms with the values of a particular Christian religious group.’213

Secondly, it strengthens the religious commitment of their audience, by reminding them of their own conversion and by strengthening commitment to the group. Lynch discusses how, ‘although the implied audience of the conversion narrative is the unconverted individual, the conversion narrative serves social and rhetorical functions for those who already believe and those searching for the truth.’214 He goes on to state more explicitly that ‘conversion narratives reaffirm the commitments of the already- converted.’215 Kabi Hartman, in her article on suffragette conversion narratives from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, similarly notes that ‘the conversion narrative serves as the overarching narrative which unites suffragettes, granting them the authority to tell their stories and constructing them as martyrs, saviours, spiritual warriors and pilgrims.’216

Thirdly, of course, conversion narratives serve as propaganda for the unconverted, encouraging them to consider the benefits of conversion for themselves (and their own souls) as well. As Donatella Palotti, referring to published conversion narratives in seventeenth-century England, states plainly: ‘a conversion narrative generates further conversions.’217 218 For comparison to ideological conversion narratives, however, the first

213 Dumanig et al., 320 214 Lynch, 3 215 Lynch, 3 216 Hartman, 45 217 Pallotti, 74 169 two are the most important, particularly in the context of DEFA films, which were primarily aimed at the at least nominally converted, as discussed in the introduction to this chapter.

These two purposes—purging of the old identity and ideological allegiance and strengthening of the group identity with and commitment to socialism—are both equally served by the DEFA Mitläufer films, both for the body of the people as a whole and for the individual spectators in their subjective identification with the films’ protagonists. Indeed, this purpose corresponds to the cultural-political guidelines set out by the Soviets during their initial occupation of East Germany. Thomas Heimann cites Befehl Nr. 51, from

September 4th 1945:

‘Der Film als “Massenkunst” solle seinen Beitrag zum demokratischen Aufbau

Deutschlands und zur “Ausrottung der Reste des Nazismus und Militarismus aus

dem Gewissen eines jeden Deutschen, das Ringen um die Erziehung des deutschen

Volkes, insbesondere der Jugend, im Sinne der echten Demokratie und Humanität”

leisten und für Frieden und Völkerverständigung werben.’219

As I argue, the films thus seek to strengthen the ideological conviction of the spectator while also positioning those who did not participate in the resistance themselves (and perhaps collaborated with the Third Reich) but who were now citizens of the GDR, within the framework of the new reign of law, and within the dynamic of masses-Vorbild-symbolic hero (and State, Party, and ideology). The films, by delimiting the Mitläufer’s fascist past and repositioning him within this triad, enact the process described by Žižek as connecting the sublime body of the Leader and the reign of law: ‘once the reign of law is established, it

218 That this was also a key concern for the cultural production of the GDR has already been discussed above, in the context of Stephen Brockmann’s analysis of Anna Seghers’ “Der Mann und sein Name”. 219 Heimann, 51. 170 rotates its vicious circle, “posits its presuppositions”, by means of foreclosing its origins; yet for the synchronous order of law to function, it must be supported by some “little piece of the real” which within the space of law, holds the place of its founding/foreclosed violence.’220

As I show, Mitläufer narratives serve to cover over this “founding violence”.

Where the previous two chapters of this dissertation have primarily focused on symbolic heroes and Vorbilder respectively, this chapter focuses far more on the third element of the triad, in which the spectator is most often implicitly positioned: the masses.

Our first glimpse of many of the protagonists of these films is as one child or youth among many others; for example, Werner Holt in his schoolroom in Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt,

Amigo among the children in the courtyard in Sie nannten ihn Amigo, or Günter among the youths hunting the Russian boy in Die Russen kommen.

These characters are still positioned as inside the reign of law, not outside of it: they are not aligned with the absolute enemy of fascism, in that they are not portrayed as being actively part of the SS, the Gestapo, or specifically anti-socialism.221 Even in cases where the

220 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 260 221 The SS and Gestapo are aligned with the Absolute enemy, with crimes that utterly undermine the reign of law, in a way that ordinary soldiers of the Wehrmacht are not in DEFA films, and this may be explained through Žižek’s comparison of regicide to the trial of and execution of a King. Žižek states that ‘this difference concerns the relationship between form and content: although regicide violates legal norms in an extremely grave way, it does not affect the form of legality as such—it retains towards it the relation of an excess to the norm. If, however, the insurgents organize a trial and sentence the king to death, this presents a far greater threat to the State, since it subverts the very form of legality and sovereignty—the legal execution of the king (of the person who embodies supreme power, who serves as the last guarantee for the legal order) is not just the death of the king as a person, it equals the death of the royal function itself—an “act of suicide by the State”. The king’s death sentence is an abominable travesty in which crime assumes the form of law and, so to speak, undermines it from within; in it, the very subversion of the legal order puts on the mask of legality.’ (Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 207) 171 protagonist initially acts against socialists or representatives of socialism (in particular, in the case of Günter in Die Russen kommen), it is made clear that he does not understand the meaning of his actions; for example, Gunter does not seem to realise that the Russian boy will actually be killed. The Mitläufer thus occupy the position, as discussed in the first paragraphs of this chapter, of many East Germans immediately after 1945; neither already aligned towards socialism nor irredeemably swallowed up by fascism. Knut Hickethier states in his analysis of Mama, ich lebe: ‘Kein positiver Held stellt sich vor, mit dem sich der

Zuschauer identifizieren kann und aus dessen Verhalten er für sein eigenes Leben lernt.’222

As I show, however, the films discussed here (including Mama, ich lebe) do serve a didactic purpose for the spectator: they demonstrate a path into the reign of law, and through their use of a conversion narrative, seek to strengthen the spectator’s ideological conviction.

From the perspective of the GDR as the reign of law, soldiers in the Wehrmacht or Mitläufer of a similar nature amount to regicides in this analogy; their actions in some way aided fascism, which sought to destroy communism, but the individuals themselves (in these portrayals) do not seek to destroy the very existence of socialism—they kill individual Russians (i.e., individual representatives of socialism), or, in the case of the teacher in Ich zwing dich zu leben, encourage others implicitly or explicitly, to do so, but they are not portrayed as doing so for ideological reasons or with an ideological purpose in mind. On the other hand, the SS and the Gestapo are portrayed throughout DEFA antifascist films as specifically seeking to destroy communism, be it the resistance or the Soviet Union as a whole. As such, they are aligned with those who have the potential to bring about the downfall of the entire reign of law, and cannot therefore be subsumed into it. They can only be fought against, as that threat which cannot be allowed to exist, or the system would collapse—but also which must exist to be fought against, to ensure its continued integrity. In Buck-Morss’ terms, this absolute enemy ‘challenges the very notion by which the identity of the collective has been formed’ (Buck-Morss, 34) but also ‘defining the enemy is the act that brings the collective into being’ (Buck-Morss, 9), and thus the enemy’s continued existence is necessary for that of the collective/the reign of law. Of course, to be clear: this analogy is not referring to the historical events described in the films—the historical roles of the SS, Gestapo, or Wehrmacht—but rather their representations and roles in DEFA film, and specifically in the antifascist and Mitläufer films. 222 Hickethier, 171 172

As I discuss later on, this inherent ambivalence at the root of the masses and excised through the representation of the conversion of Mitläufer to socialism implies a problem inherent in the GDR doctrine of antifascism and thus in the identity based around it; this ambivalence points towards that “founding violence” at the root of the reign of law, which must be disavowed—covered over by the presence of the sublime body of the leader (the symbolic hero), that ‘“little piece of the real” which “stops up” and thus conceals the law’s vicious circle’—in223 order for the collective to remain whole. Before we can explore the implications of the prevalence of such conversion narratives, however, it is necessary to examine the form that such narratives take, and how they connect the masses to positive heroes in a way not seen in the films discussed in the first two chapters of this dissertation.

Rambo’s ‘sequential stage model’ of conversion As Lynch notes, ‘many critics identify a tripartite structure to conversion.’224 He outlines a number of different stage models proposed by various scholars, which all roughly correspond to the same three stages: recognition of a problem with one’s beliefs; change; and entrance into a new system of belief.225 Lewis R. Rambo, on the other hand, outlines seven different stages of conversion in his book Understanding Religious Conversion: context, crisis, quest, encounter, interaction, commitment, and consequences. While

223 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 260 224 Lynch, 3 225 ‘James Golden and Goodwin Berquist delineate three stages to conversion narratives: awareness of a contradiction or problem in one’s beliefs; repentance; and education into one’s new belief system. McLennan describes three stages: tension and dissonance; symbolic death purging the old identity; and redemption after the adoption of a new identity. Branham frames the conversion narratives of the antiabortion films Eclipse of Reason and The Silent Scream as issues of knowledge—moving from ignorance to awareness—and increased political activism through a singular moment of confrontation and recognition.’ Lynch, 3 173

Rambo’s ‘sequential stage model’226 is equally intended to apply to religious conversions and the study of conversions in “real life”, his model’s greater specificity than those mentioned by Lynch makes it a good starting point for examining how DEFA films featuring

Mitläufer are structured around tropes of conversion. Indeed, his model coincides in a number of ways with the ‘10 prerequisites’227 for conversion proposed by Bar-On for political conversions.228 However, since Bar-On’s perspective is more applicable to the conversion of group, communities, or societies as a whole, it seems more appropriate to use Rambo’s model as a basis, particularly since it focuses more on the stages within the process of conversion. Nevertheless, Bar-On does note two prerequisites that are of particular relevance to this discussion: that within the new ‘faith’ there may be ‘strains of the old ideology perhaps lingering in the new ideological framework’,229 and that there must be ‘dynamic proponents of the ideology able to attract a mass or key elite following’.230 As I show, both of these elements may be found in the DEFA Mitläufer narratives; I demonstrate how they show antifascism/socialism as reusing or repurposing

226 Rambo, 17 227 Bar-On, 244 228 Bar-On, 244-45: ‘My argument is that successful political ‘conversion’ in the context of a ‘sacralisation of politics’ is a complex process that requires 10 prerequisites: (1) a series of major crises and collapse (i.e. political-institutional, socio-economic, ideological, cultural, spiritual, generational or external invasion); (2) a crisis of faith in the prevailing hegemonic ideology (i.e. the ability to inspire faith and enthusiasm wanes due to time, the emergence of new circumstances without the past’s revolutionary fervour and generational change); (3) the ideologue’s ‘conversion’ to the new faith (with strains of the old ideology perhaps lingering in the new ideological framework); (4) political space for the new ideology; (5) dynamic proponents of the ideology able to attract a mass or key elite following; (6) a cultural-civilisational milieu that promotes the new ideas like a ‘mimetic contagion’; (7) the willpower of devoted ‘true believers’ against great odds; (8) organisational cohesion driving the ideology to new heights of success; (9) the collusion or semi-collusion of established authorities; and (10) a dose of what Niccolò Machiavelli called fortuna.’ 229 Bar-On, 244 230 Bar-On, 244 174 fascist rituals, and explore how encounters with socialist heroes and Vorbilder function as a catalyst for the Mitläufer’s successful conversion.

In this chapter, I examine how these films make use of conversion narratives, using

Rambo’s model as a basis for my analysis. Rambo stresses that his model ‘must not be seen as unilinear or as universal,’231 and that the stages ‘are not intended to be seen as always occurring in the same order.’232 He adds that ‘converting is frequently characterised by a spiralling effect—a going back and forth between the stages.’233 This is equally true of the occurrence of the stages in the films discussed in this chapter. As I demonstrate, certain of

Rambo’s stages are more prevalent than others in their narratives, and often they occur out of order, repeatedly, and/or concurrently.

1. Context The context of the conversion narrative, in Rambo’s terms, is ‘not strictly a stage, but rather the total environment of religious change.’234 Rambo further divides context into three types: macrocontext, microcontext, and mesocontext. The first of these concerns the context of political systems or economic systems; the second concerns ‘the aspects of a person’s life which have a direct impact on the person’s thoughts, feelings, and actions,’235 such as their family, friends, or career; and the third concerns ‘those aspects of the context which mediate between the macrocontexts and microcontexts,’236 such as local government or regional politics.

231 Rambo and Farhadian, 24 232 Rambo and Farhadian, 24 233 Rambo and Farhadian, 24 234 Rambo and Farhadian, 24 235 Rambo and Farhadian, 25 236 Rambo and Farhadian, 25 175

In the films discussed in this chapter, as in the films discussed in the first two chapters of this dissertation, the macrocontext is always the historical period between the

1920s and 1945; the rise of fascism and the Second World War, in which the characters’ microcontexts involve active roles of participation in institutions of fascist society, be it the press (as in Rotation) or fighting in the army. This context is made very visually clear in many of the films: as Ulrike Weckel notes, ‘the props of National Socialist theatricality are omnipresent in Rotation: uniforms, leather overcoats, party badges and medals, flags, swastikas, and photographs of Nazi bigwigs on the walls.’237 This is similarly the case in the other films which thematize youth indoctrination to Nazism, such as Ich zwing dich zu leben, with its uniforms and shots of marching feet, or Sie nannten ihn Amigo, in which the theft of a Nazi uniform jacket plays a key role in Sine’s crisis of ideology and path to conversion. On the other hand, other films avoid showing the Nazis as much as possible, instead focusing on the Russian side of the front or the liminal spaces in between. This is particularly the case, as Ute Wölfel notes, in Mama, ich lebe: ‘The film leaves out all reference to life under the Nazis and likewise to war action: war violence in general and the atrocities of the “Russian Campaign” in particular are best hinted at so that the four soldiers do not come into view as part of the Nazi regime and its war.’238 Nevertheless, the war itself and its effect on the protagonists is still the main context of the film, even if the visual trappings of fascism are not thematized. As discussed below, the fact that the war is the context is what is important.

The microcontext of family often also plays an important role, particularly in the relationship between father and son. Context in these films is often particularly highlighted

237 Weckel, 72 238 Wölfel 2012, 24 176 through portraying the character as a child or by featuring childhood, and thus featuring the characters initial brainwashing or entrance into fascism, before tracing their process of conversion. The Mitläufer is also almost always explicitly portrayed as working class, another element of context which implies the inevitability of their eventual conversion to antifascism or socialism.

Context: The Mitläufer as working class Whether the Mitläufer is shown to explicitly struggle under difficult economic conditions or not, he is usually portrayed as working class--one way of prefiguring him as simply temporarily deluded by fascism, so that his 'coming home' to socialism becomes inevitable.

Particularly in Mitläufer films, it is rare for somebody who is working class to be portrayed as having become a Nazi out of pure ideological conviction. Reviews of Königskinder, for example, note Jürgen’s situation: ‘Ulrich Thein hat als Jürgen keine leichte Aufgabe

übernommen: Er gibt einen Jungen anständigen Menschen, der zwar nicht aus

Überzeugung mit den Nazis geht, sondern aus Angst und Not. Die volle Qual und Pein des

“unpolitischen” Mitläufers wird in Theins Darstellung deutlich.’239 Equally, characters who are portrayed as being in the SS or the Gestapo are usually represented as upper-class, or, in cases where they still seem to be working-class, as exceedingly selfish and uncaring about others. For example, Sine’s father in Sie nannten ihn Amigo is portrayed as brutish and cruel, caring only about his own social status and reputation with the Gestapo officers rather than his own son.

Even in films where we do not see the Mitläufer prior to their collaboration, their working-class background is usually established in dialogue towards the beginning of the

239 Mennerich, “Königskinder.” 177 film. For example, both Meine Stunde Null and Sterne begin with their protagonists as

Wehrmacht soldiers, but both mention their pre-war background early on: Kurt, the protagonist of Meine Stunde Null, has a working-class, Berlin accent and mentions that his father was a mason, while Sterne's Walter mentions he was a painter. The teacher in Ich zwing dich zu leben is shown to live in a small apartment and does not seem to be particularly well off. The four protagonists of Mama, ich lebe each explain their backstories at various points in the film, none of which suggest a wealthy background--one was a postman, another was a carpenter. Even in Werner Holt, in which Werner's lifestyle seems to be fairly wealthy prior to the war, Werner's father is explicitly shown to be living in

"reduced circumstances" and to be ideologically opposed to the war. The films in which we see the protagonist prior to their collaboration all represent him as working class.

This portrayal is important because it provides a basis for easy identification by the spectator with these protagonists and positions them as potential citizens of the Arbeiter- und-Bauern-Staat. They are eligible to be considered one of the masses—part of the body of the people—even if, at the start of their narratives, they have erred ideologically.

Context: The Mitläufer as a child In one way or another, most of the films discussed in this chapter portray the Mitläufer as innocent or naive, either before or during their association with fascism. Several films go so far as to begin his story in childhood, exemplifying his untainted innocence. In particular,

Beyer's Königskinder plays up the 'innocence of childhood' theme, by not only beginning his protagonists' story with their childhood friendship, but also visually contrasting the trauma of their adulthood with this innocent past through montage sequences of fairground swings 178 in motion at key moments. Jürgen, the Mitläufer, splits apart from his childhood friends,

Michael and Magdalena, in part because of his position as the third wheel to their deepening relationship--but it is also this childhood friendship which ultimately draws him away from fascism and ultimately pushes him to desert to the Red Army with Michael, who has, in contrast, been part of the antifascist resistance from the beginning.

Konrad Wolf's Leute mit Flügeln also includes a somewhat similar use of the

Mitläufer as child trope. Its protagonist, the aeronautical engineer Ludwig Bartuschek, leaves his child in the care of friends when he leaves to fight on the side of the communists in the Spanish Civil War, during which time his thoughts regularly turn to his son, Henne, remembering their good times as father and young son. As such, when the spectator discovers, along with Ludwig, that Henne has become part of the Wehrmacht while Ludwig has been in a concentration camp as a communist, our view of him is coloured by our knowledge of him as an innocent child. His behaviour is therefore easier to attribute to external influences or brainwashing rather than an innately fascist character. Similarly,

Staudte's Rotation demonstrates how the son, Helmut, becomes brainwashed at school due to his parents' lack of ideological direction--but we also see him as a small child, innocently playing with his loving parents.

Two other films deal with Mitläufer who remain children for the duration of the film

(and which also, like Rotation, portray father-son pairs of collaborators): Sie nannten ihn

Amigo and Ich zwing dich zu leben. Amigo's Sine undergoes almost all the steps of a typical conversion narrative, whereas the boy Wolfgang in Ich zwing dich zu leben only reaches the stage of crisis, realising that fascism might be wrong, in the last few minutes of the film.

Both boys, however, exist in a more complicated space in terms of childhood innocence: 179

Sine desires, on the one hand, to play with his friends and gain their approval, but on the other, wants to please his father, who gives him a Hitler Youth uniform that the other children tease him about, and who wants him to comply with the fascist state and its institutions, leading to his father beating him and the Gestapo interrogating him. Rather than falling into collaboration as he grows out of childhood innocence, then, Sine's exit from that phase of his life is forced through the necessity of his moral choice between helping Amigo and Pepp, the escaped communist, or pleasing his father and collaborating with the state. Sine gives up his “childishness” fully once he develops an ideological consciousness and consequently acts to help Pepp: this is demonstrated by the fact that, when Pepp leaves, he takes with him the paper puppet that Sine and Amigo’s brother,

Hotta, had played with. Sine and Hotta happily wave him off and laugh when he makes the puppet wave—not because of the playful action, but rather because Pepp does it to demonstrate how well they are fooling the Nazi guards on the train platform. Having taken positive ideological action, Sine (and Hotta) cannot return to purely innocent childish play, although, physically, they are both still clearly children. On the other hand, Wolfgang of Ich zwing dich zu leben is both fully inculcated into fascism while simultaneously remaining completely child-like, even at fourteen years old. He plays at soldiers moments before his father is shot by his 'best friend'. In this case, childhood innocence is something which has been maintained for too long: like Rotation's Helmut, Wolfgang's father has failed to pay attention to his son's development, and ultimately reaps the consequences. His lack of moral guidance for his son has left Wolfgang in a state of overly extended childish irrationality (something that is usually also aligned with fascism, as we have seen in the previous two chapters). Even at the very end of the film, when his friends hunt his father 180 with loaded guns, Wolfgang is utterly uncritical of the situation, believes it is a game, and even tries to join in.

Context: Fathers and sons Childhood, as a microcontext, is thus closely connected to family and familial relations. In

Mitläufer films, as in many of the other films discussed in this dissertation, there is often a particular emphasis on the relationship between father and son. As is made clear in the above examples, this relationship is often complicated and conflicted; the son’s identification with the father is disrupted, incomplete, or undesirable, either due to the father’s own actions or due to the macrocontext of the political situation. Father-son relations are a key aspect to many GDR foundational narratives, in both film and literature;

Ute Wölfel notes that ‘the father-son relationship helped to legitimize the GDR as a state in which the young continued the antifascist fight of the old communists against the Nazi dictatorship. From the 1950s on, DEFA films contributed to the visualization of this relationship, codifying it not only as heroic but also as “natural”: the assumed innocence of the communist son was meant to naturalize the father’s antifascist/communist cause.’240

The Mitläufer usually entirely lacks a father from the film’s outset, or his father is a fascist sympathizer or weakly apolitical, in such cases as Rotation, Sie nannten ihn Amigo, and Die

Abenteuer des Werner Holt.

In the second chapter of this dissertation, I examined Konrad Wolf’s film Ich war neunzehn through the lens of an unresolved Oedipus complex. Gregor, the protagonist, must cease to identify with his mother and Russia, and learn to identify with his father and

Germany before he can truly reach adulthood and ideological maturity. However, in

240 Wölfel 2013, 326 181 comparison to the situations of the protagonists in the Mitläufer films, Gregor’s case is relatively simple; his Oedipus complex is clearly likely to resolve itself by the end of the film.

For one thing, while he has a problem with identifying himself as German at the beginning of the film, he already fully identifies with socialist ideology. Indeed, it is the fact of German fascism which prevents him from wanting to accept his own Germanness, and as soon as it becomes clear to him that a new, socialist Germany might be possible, he is able to accept that part of himself, and identify with his father as a German, socialist man.

In comparison, the films discussed in this chapter usually feature much more complicated examples of father-son conflict, and unresolved Oedipus complexes. These generally are of two types. The first type features Oedipus complexes in which, through the events of the film, the son learns to identify with his biological father (or in which this should happen, but due to the death of the father this remains at least partially unresolved). Examples of this include Rotation, in which the son, Helmut, is initially lured away from his politically passive father by the propaganda of fascism, but is only portrayed as having reached rational maturity (and thus resolved the Oedipus complex) at the end of the film (including beginning a sexual relationship) after the death of his mother, when he reconciles with his father, who has meanwhile found ideological strength. Similarly, in

Leute mit Flügeln, the absence of the father, Ludwig, leaves the son, Henne, to easily become caught up in fascism. It is only after the death of his mother, when father and son meet again, that Henne finds in his father a strong ideological role model and identifies with him, seeking to emulate him through his choice of career and thus setting himself finally on the correct ideological path. Die Russen kommen and Ich zwing dich zu leben also both fall under this first type; however, in both cases, the father’s death before he can adequately express 182 his antifascism to his son results in an unresolved Oedipus complex for the son, and consequently, madness. In an interview with Erika Richter, published in Kino DDR in 1987 at the time of the film’s long-delayed release, Heiner Carow describes Günter’s descent into madness as corresponding to his own autobiographical experiences: ‘So war dieser

Zusammenbruch für mich einfach fürchterlich, einmal wegen der objektiven Tatsachen und zweitens wegen dieser unglaublichen Einsamkeit, dieses gestörten Verhältnisses zu Eltern und besonders den Vätern. Denn nichts, was sie uns erzählten, hatte gestimmt.’241

The second type of Mitläufer films features sons who are lacking an ideologically strong father—indeed, in many cases, their biological father does not even appear in the film—and thus, in order to resolve their Oedipus complexes and reach maturity, they must learn to identify with a substitute father figure. This is usually a positive hero figure who represents the State and/or the Party.

These substitute fathers sometimes play a large role in the plot of the film; for example, in Sie nannten ihn Amigo, the main subplot of the film is Sine’s choice between his biological father, a weak and irrational supporter of fascism, and Pepp, a communist resistance fighter who has escaped from a concentration camp. In other cases, the substitute father only appears at key moments. For example, in Meine Stunde Null, the grandfatherly Russian general appears near the beginning of the film to convince Kurt to switch sides, and only appears again at the very end of the film to congratulate him on his success. Alternatively, there may even be multiple substitute father figures, such as in

Mama, ich lebe, in which the four youths meet, among others, a Russian officer, who convinces them to switch to the Russian side and fight against their own countrymen and a

241 Richter, “Filme des Monats” 183

Russian general, who motivates them to go behind German lines. In addition, two of them also have previously encountered, while still prisoners of war, antifascist Germans who encouraged them to think critically about fascism and consider the merits of socialism.

The primary conversion narrative in each of these films thus focuses on the son

(although sometimes the father undergoes some form of conversion or ideological development as well, such as in Rotation or Ich zwing dich zu leben). In the previous two chapters in this dissertation, I have focused on symbolic heroes and Vorbilder, who represent two elements in the positive hero dynamic. However, the third actor in this dynamic is the masses—-and it is they who are here represented by the sons in these

Mitläufer narratives, which offer both a vision of a path to personal ideological conversion for the spectator, and a metaphor for the identification of the East German masses with the substitute father of the State.

It is these father-son conflicts which provide the main microcontext (and impetus) for the next stage in this model, the crisis which precipitates conversion. They occur alongside the macrocontext of the Second World War.

Context: Second World War and the Third Reich The familial conflicts which precipitate conversion to socialism are intensified by the macrocontext in which the main action of all of the films takes place: during the years of the

Third Reich and the Second World War—usually its final two years. The violent events of the war, portrayed in antifascist films as the conflict between fascism and socialism

(represented both by the Soviet Union and by German communist resistance fighters), demonstrate the triumph of socialism over fascism and legitimise the foundation of a 184 socialist state on German soil; in these films, the war stands in for the revolution of Marx’s stages of history. Leute mit Flügeln, Rotation, Meine Stunde Null and Sie nannten ihn Amigo all particularly make this clear, portraying a direct connection between the actions of their protagonists against fascism and their life in the GDR/SOZ after the war, primarily through their use of a framing narrative. Hans and Helmut, in Rotation, find an opportunity for a peaceful, hopeful, and prosperous future after Hans finally acts against the Nazis who murdered his brother-in-law and after the Russians have captured Berlin. Henne, in Leute mit Flügeln, has the opportunity to train as an engineer and design passenger aeroplanes, as well as to reconcile with his father, as a result of the communist resistance his father was part of and the Russian liberation of the concentration camps. Amigo survives the concentration camp he is imprisoned in after helping Pepp, but is shown at the end of the film, driving a tank in a parade for his new fatherland and grinning broadly. (As a result, the context of war is still thematized in the latter example, even though the events of the film do not take place anywhere near the front or even during the period of active fighting.)

It would be easy to accept this portrayal of the war in general as the foundational violence at the root of the GDR as a new reign of law, following on from the Stunde Null at the War’s end. However, this interpretation loses sight of two important facts. The first of these is that the war was, of course, not primarily a conflict between fascism and socialism; indeed, even the resistance within Germany was not solely or even primarily a communist resistance. Secondly, while the war was certainly a traumatic rupture in German history, the trauma prompting a societal crisis of ideology and identity for East Germans was in reality more specific: the invasion of Eastern Germany by the Red Army at the end of the war, and the violent installation of a new reign of law as a result of this invasion. However, 185 the films discussed in this chapter generally portray participation in the war or in the fascist system as enough to cause a crisis of conversion—to cause trauma. This portrayal of the war, however, functions as a disavowal of the real traumatic violence at the root of the reign of law: the violent invasion of Eastern Germany and violation of its occupants. Weckel notes that in Rotation, ‘the props of National Socialism theatricality are omnipresent […]: uniforms, leather overcoats, party badges and medals, flags, swastikas, and photographs of

Nazi bigwigs on the walls.’242 This is equally true of many of the other films discussed in this chapter; such ostentatious reminders of National Socialism thus serve to cover over the true violence of the Soviet invasion. Žižek sums this up as follows (although he is describing the foundation of civil society out of nature, as opposed to a specific reign of law, the logic still follows):

‘the ultimate truth about the reign of law is that of an usurpation, and all classical

politico-philosophical thought rests on the disavowal of this violent act of

foundation. The illegitimate violence by which law sustains itself must be concealed

at any price, because this concealment is the positive condition of the functioning of

law: it functions in so far as its subjects are deceived, in so far as they experience the

authority of law as “authentic and eternal” and overlook “the truth about the

usurpation”.’243

That which is disavowed in the foundational myth of the GDR, in which socialism triumphs over fascism in the Second World War, is this violent invasion of Germany and removal of its ‘locus of power’. This is covered over (‘concealed’) by the focus on the narrative of violent resistance against fascism in the Second World War. The Soviet invasion is thus

242 Weckel, 72 243 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 204 186 fetishized as a Befreiung, and this fetish is necessary for the continued integrity of the GDR as a reign of law.

Žižek’s discussion of the Oedipus complex connects together the microcontext of the unresolved Oedipus complex and the macrocontext of the Second World War in the context of trauma: ‘What Freud called the “Oedipus complex” is […] an “unhistorical” traumatic kernel (the trauma of prohibition on which the social order is based) and the miscellaneous historical regulations of sexuality and society are none other than so many ways (in the final analysis always unsuccessful) of mastering this traumatic kernel.’244

Seeking the truth—seeking the ‘Real of violence’ at the root of the reign of law—is prohibited; the fetish is a trauma in itself. The conflict between father and son—the working through of an Oedipus complex—thus serves as a metaphor in these films for the

‘mastering’ of the traumatic kernel at the root of East German national identity: the illegitimate founding of the state. If the masses—those sons of the state—can be converted to desiring to be the positive heroes—whether biological or substitute fathers—then the reign of law will not be undermined, and that “little piece of the Real” at its root will remain concealed. In her analysis of Mama, ich lebe, Ute Wölfel also points to this when she characterises the film as rooted in ‘ethical betrayal’: ‘the betrayal consumes the regenerative potential it is based on. It flashes up a vision of freedom, yet destroys the self that ‘invents’ this utopian moment.’245

The macrocontext of the Second World War and the microcontext of father-son conflict thus provide, within the internal logic of each film’s narrative, a catalyst for the crisis that precipitates conversion. However, they also represent the fetishistic function of

244 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 102 245 Wölfel 2012, 26 187 these narratives, serving to cover over the Real of the violence at the root of the reign of law, which, if revealed, could spell its downfall. Thus they narratively provide the impulse for a fictional crisis while serving to avoid an ideological one.

2. Crisis Crisis refers to factors which precipitate conversion, which, as Rambo notes, may be

‘religious, political, psychological, or cultural in origin.’246 Of Tamir Bar-On’s ten prerequisites for conversion, the first is ‘a series of major crises and collapse (i.e. political- institutional, socio-economic, ideological, cultural, spiritual, generational or external invasion)’ and the second is ‘a crisis of faith in the prevailing hegemonic ideology (i.e. the ability to inspire faith and enthusiasm wanes due to time, the emergence of new circumstances without the past’s revolutionary fervour and generational change).’247 Both the macrocontext of the Third Reich and the Second World War, particularly its final two years, and the microcontext of generational, father-son conflict outlined in the previous section clearly fulfil these prerequisites as the catalysts for crises which provide the impulse for conversion.

As the second stage in his stages of conversion, Rambo describes crisis in similar terms to Bar-On: ‘Crises are disordering and disrupting experiences that call into question a person’s or a group’s taken-for-granted world. Crises are triggered by the interaction of external and internal forces.’248 External triggers or catalysts include those caused by governments or militaries, such as war or ‘colonial contact’,249 or alternatively familial

246 Rambo, 44 247 Bar-On, 244 248 Rambo, 25 249 Rambo, 25 188 crises or the collapse of religious or ideological structures. Internal triggers include illness, or ‘mystical or near-death experiences.’250 Often, crises are triggered by a combination of external and internal catalysts, at a point in which the subject’s life is undergoing a period of transition: for example, in Königskinder, Jürgen’s initial point of crisis comes when his relationship with his two best friends from childhood, Michael and Magdalena, is undergoing a period of change (Michael has been arrested and he is losing contact with

Magdalena), and his commanding officer in the SA is pushing him to take a more active role in their activities against communists—a group that includes Magdalena.

Furthermore, in his book Understanding Religious Conversion, Rambo goes beyond this to define two types of crisis: ‘crises that call into question one’s fundamental orientation to life, and crises that in and of themselves are rather mild but are the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.’251 In the Mitläufer films discussed here, the former occurs more often than the latter, usually in the form of someone’s death: for example, of Helmut’s mother in Rotation or Henne’s mother in Leute mit Flügeln (the crisis precipitated also being the Oedipal crisis); of the four Germans’ Russian comrade, Kolja, in

Mama, ich lebe; and of several characters in Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt, each exacerbating Werner’s uncertainties about fascism. The latter type of crisis does, however, occur in Sterne, in which the German officer, Walter, begins to help Ruth, the Greek Jewish girl, who is being transported along with many others to Auschwitz. Walter initially and disinterestedly declines to help her when she requests his aid for a pregnant woman among the Jewish prisoners, but changes his mind (and thus begins to consider what might be wrong with his collaboration with fascism) when she angrily calls him a “wolf” and a

250 Rambo, 25 251 Rambo, 46 189

“rat” for refusing the help;252 the small crisis, for him, is her regarding him as the same as all the other German fascists. While he initially responds angrily to her insults, telling her he could have her shot for what she said, he then pauses, and his facial expression changes—he tells her he would, but he does not have the time. Then he strolls away, but his expression suggests he is disturbed by the exchange. The camera cuts to Petko, the local communist cell leader, who thoughtfully watches Walter walk away. The implication is clear: Walter is reconsidering, and perhaps open to change.

Rambo notes that in other models of conversion, the crisis stage is sometimes considered to occur after the encounter stage, in which the convert-to-be meets an

‘advocate who sought to persuade them to see the world and see themselves in a new light.’253 In the Mitläufer films discussed in this chapter, this is sometimes the case, but usually in the sense that the encounter is a primary catalyst for the crisis; in other words, an initial encounter with a positive hero prompts the start of a crisis of ideology for the

Mitläufer. Sie nannten ihn Amigo is a prime example of this: Sine’s crisis of ideology begins when he, along with Amigo’s brother Hotta, finds Pepp, a communist resistance fighter who has escaped from a concentration camp, hiding in their building. Indeed, in Amigo and several other of the films discussed in this chapter, the crisis, quest, encounter, and interaction intermingle or occur concurrently within the narrative. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this analysis, I discuss them in the order proposed by Rambo, but it is worth noting that these stages do not necessarily occur chronologically.

252 Thomas Elsaesser suggests that Ruth’s insults are a play on Konrad Wolf’s surname (Elsaesser, 17). Indeed, this would be in line with Wolf’s penchant for making films that refer back to his own past as a soldier and German, although he fought for the Russians. 253 Rambo, 44 190

In this section, I first examine in more detail some of the moments of crisis found in the films discussed in this chapter, and then focus on two implications of the crisis stage of conversion for the Mitläufer as a representative of the masses, and in particular the connection between the crisis of conversion and the Oedipus complex already discussed in the section on context.

Crisis: Warning Signs The initial crisis for many of the protagonists of Mitläufer narratives may often be characterised as a “warning sign”; an event or moment which causes the character to begin to question their allegiance to or unthinking acceptance of fascism. This warning sign tends to be something that affects the character personally: either a threat to their family, friends, or love interest; or (sometimes) a realisation that fascist ideology is based on lies or inhumane violence. That this initial warning sign is personal is key: this is only the first step in the Mitläufer’s conversion.

The more obvious manifestation of the "warning sign" trope is the former, when fascism begins to represent a threat to the protagonist's family, friends, or love interest.

Königskinder and Ich zwing dich zu leben represent the most obvious examples of this:

Jürgen first begins to be troubled by what he has involved himself in by joining the

Wehrmacht when his superior officer announces that they will be arresting Magdalena, whom he loves, although she is involved with their mutual friend, Michael. He tries to warn her in secret, but fails, finds himself being ordered to break down her door, and ultimately cries in relief when it becomes clear that she has left the building shortly before the raid.

The plot of Ich zwing dich zu leben hinges even more around the threat of fascism to a loved 191 one: the teacher, despite having seen (and even encouraged) many boys in his class go off to war, is spurred on to act when he realises the danger faced by his son if he goes to fight, when the war is all but lost. Similarly, such threats and warnings play a large part in the narrative of Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt, in which Werner repeatedly encounters evidence that fascism is a threat to those he cares about: at the beginning of the film, he is concerned about a girl named Ruth Wagner, who has been mistreated by one of their peers, a leader in the Hitler Youth; during his army training, one of his friends is killed in an avoidable accident, which Werner is deeply troubled by; later, he meets another girl,

Gundel, who is being mistreated by an SS officer who she has been forced to live with after her parents are killed for their part in the resistance—he helps her escape the SS officer; and he also reconnects with his father, who tells him why he left his lucrative industry job and was divorced by Werner’s mother—although Werner does not believe him at first. All of these encounters represent ways in which fascism has negatively affected the lives of those close to Werner, and each of them cause him to think more and more critically about his own position and beliefs.

Werner Holt also contains scenes which fall into the second category of "warning signs", in which the protagonist is faced with the realisation that fascism is based on lies and inhumane violence. The scene in which Werner’s father explains that he did not want his research to contribute to hundreds of thousands of deaths in the gas chambers, as well as the death of Werner’s friend in the training accident, both fall into both categories.

Werner also encounters friends who try to convince him of the evils of fascism— particularly early in the film, when his tennis partner, Uta, speaks favourably of his father

(before Werner knows exactly why his father has left his job, although Uta seems to guess 192 more than Werner has told her), and she also tells him to 'wake up'—a warning that

Werner feels carries some weight (we hear her voice in voiceover over shots of Werner's eyes superimposed over their tennis match, implying that her words have penetrated him deeply), but does not seem to understand.

Sterne also contains both types of warning. Walter begins to abandon his passivity about the war and rethink his position in it after his first encounter with Ruth, in which she tells him angrily exactly what she thinks of Germans and of him. His increasing interest in her, and corresponding recognition of the danger she is in, becomes one catalyst for his actions as the narrative progresses. However, he only really recognises the danger she and the other Jewish prisoners face after he finds out what Auschwitz really is. Initially, he believes it really is a work camp, somewhere the Jews are required to sit out the war and

'farm cabbages', as he tells Ruth in their first encounter. However, once Walter's drunken officer friend tells him carelessly what really happens there, Walter becomes utterly disillusioned with both the war and fascism.

Such moral or intellectual realisations are rarely so clear-cut as in Sterne, however, particularly without the direct threat to a family member or loved one. In Sie nannten ihn

Amigo, Sine's initial realisation that fascism (or its representatives) lies, comes when he fights with Amigo over the secret of Pepp, the escaped communist, and Amigo emotionally explains the difference between being a criminal and being against the Nazis. While this initial realisation does not prevent him from continuing to try to keep his father happy against Amigo's urging to do something else, it does represent the beginning of his recognition of what is the right thing to do, and that it may not be what his father wants of him. Similarly, in Mama, ich lebe, the four protagonists’ initial "warning signs" about 193 fascism are shown in flashback at various points throughout the film. These are deliberately ambiguous; they represent the characters' frustration with their officers, fellow soldiers, or simply the situation in which they find themselves as soldiers on the

Eastern front, but not necessarily any deeper recognition of the problems of fascism or ideological change of heart. What is made clear, however, is that each of these moments acts as the trigger for each character to then choose to leave the P.O.W. camp they were held in and instead volunteer to help the Russians. Their ideological education only begins as the main narrative of the film unfolds, during a long train journey back towards the front lines.

In each case, this first realisation or warning causes the Mitläufer to begin to think more critically about their participation in the war or in Nazi society, whether they have been passively collaborating by benefiting from better economic circumstances and jobs within fascist institutions or more actively as soldiers. This then generally acts as a catalyst for the next stage of the narrative, quest, as part of which they often choose (or more often, are encouraged by a representative of socialist ideology) to take a positive action of their own against fascism. But how can these ‘crises of faith’ in the ideology of fascism be situated not only within Rambo’s model but also within the trinity of the people, Vorbilder, and the symbolic hero previously outlined in this dissertation? It is helpful in this regard to consider the crisis stage of conversion in the context of the Oedipus complex.

Crisis: Fathers, Sons, and the Oedipus Complex As discussed in the previous chapter, in Ich war neunzehn, the Oedipus complex is inscribed into Gregor’s choice between Russia and Germany, and more complexly, into his 194 acceptance of his role as a German, socialist man who must help to build a socialist state on

German soil. Here, Gregor’s mother is aligned with Russia and his father with Germany— but with the communist resistance, rather than with the fascists. As such, Gregor’s dilemma is to do with where he can become a better communist than he already is—to do with his development as a Vorbild, in terms of his role as a positive hero—rather than to do with his choosing socialism as an ideology altogether. He must simply learn that to be German does not have to mean being fascist.

In the Mitläufer films, however, the roles of mother and father are coded differently.

The mother is aligned with fascism; or rather, fascism is coded as feminine. As I have observed in the previous two chapters of this dissertation, fascism and fascists are generally coded as (mentally) weak, irrational, and emotional, traits that are traditionally ascribed to women. Some (although definitely not all) of the Mitläufer films more explicitly align this with mothers and motherhood. For example, in Mama, ich lebe, the note which gives the film its title is handed to Becker by a German P.O.W. as he leaves the camp to join the Russians. Throughout the film, the four Germans who agree join the Russian side do not mention their own mothers at all, and as such, the note symbolises only the attachment of the German who is stuck in the P.O.W. camp and who has seemingly therefore not rejected fascism to his mother.

Equally, in Die Russen kommen, Günter begins the film living in his mother's house.

She tries to convince him to hide until the war is over, since the Soviet invasion is imminent, and she does not want him to die at their hands. However, although she cries when he refuses to hide, she also calls him a man, and supports his choice to fight for the

Nazis. On the other hand, later on in the film, we discover that his father in fact deliberately 195 went to the front to die because he didn't want to have to continue perpetrating Nazi atrocities. The film thus aligns Günter's mother with fascism, and his father with antifascism. Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt contains a similar family structure.

Furthermore, even in films where the mother of the Mitläufer is portrayed as antifascist (or at the very least, not enthused by fascism) such as Rotation or Leute mit

Flügeln, it is only once she dies that the Mitläufer is able to begin the process of reconciling with and learning to identify with his father and socialism; her death signals the possibility of successful resolution of the Oedipus complex. For example, in his analysis of Rotation,

Arthur Bunkowski writes: ‘Der Sohn sucht endlich den Vater auf, weil ihn seine Tat quält, der Vater nimmt ihn auf, weil er sich nicht von Mitschuld freisprechen kann. Die Frau und

Mutter bleibt als Opfer.’254 In Mitläufer films, successful resolution of the Oedipus complex coincides with successful conversion to socialism: the Mitläufer rejects or abandons fascism

(the mother) and identifies with socialism, to which is ascribed rationality, logic, and authority. In other words, socialism and the father (or, more precisely, Lacan’s societal

‘Name-of-the-Father’)255 are one and the same.

The crises in Mitläufer films are thus equally Oedipal crises. As Julia Hell notes, ‘the

Oedipal crisis is a structuring moment, positioning the subject as having/not having the phallus, that is, a structure which produces sexual difference. The identification with the ideal image of the respective parent follows upon this initial positioning as feminine or masculine.’256 Thus, the moment of crisis that precipitates the Mitläufer’s conversion to

254 Bunkowski, 9 255 Muller and Richardson, 78 256 Hell, 109 196 identifying with socialism over fascism is one and the same as his choice of masculinity and identification with the father (Name-of-the-Father) over femininity and the mother.

However, as Hell goes on to note: ‘masculinity and femininity are never fully achieved but only “precariously” adopted, since each inevitably implies the repression of the other.’257 The adoption of/identification with socialism over fascism in these films is equally “precarious”. Firstly, in several of the films, there is no complete conversion; the

Mitläufer does not, in many cases, become a fully-fledged and active socialist at the end of film. The extent to which the conversion is complete varies from film to film. At one end of this spectrum are endings in which the Mitläufer’s future socialist activism is confirmed, such as in Sterne, where we see Walter join the resistance fighters, or Meine Stunde Null, in which it is clear that Kurt has joined the Soviets for good. In the case of Henne in Leute mit

Flügeln, the parts of the films set in the “present day” (1959/1960) revolve around his father’s difficulty in believing that his son has truly now dedicated himself to socialism, while Henne’s actions clearly demonstrate that he has.

Nevertheless, Henne’s case particularly demonstrates the paradox inherent in

Mitläufer films: following Hell’s formulation above, what these films imply, with their

“precarious” conversions, is the repression of fascism, rather than its utter rejection.

Ludwig is concerned that Henne’s dedication to socialism cannot be real, even though he has, since the war, studied for an engineering degree and become a pilot in the National

People’s Army, precisely because he was previously a member of the Volkssturm militia, fighting for the Nazis. This is, indeed, the tension underlying all Mitläufer films; the fascist pasts of their protagonists can only ever be repressed, not removed altogether. This

257 Hell, 109 197 tension is even further highlighted in films in which it is simply made clear at the end that the Mitläufer will now act against fascism but is left unclear whether or not he identifies as socialist, such as in the cases of Helmut in Rotation, Jürgen in Königskinder, Sine in Sie nannten ihn Amigo, Becker in Mama, ich lebe, and Werner in Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt.

While the spectator is left to assume that the Mitläufer will become an active socialist and citizen of the GDR, once it is founded, this is not explicitly shown on screen. The focus of the films is thus primarily on the conversion process—and thus on the fascist pasts of the

Mitläufer.

This tension is even more present at the other end of the spectrum, in which all that is made clear is that the Mitläufer now hates fascism, but where we do not know what future action, if any, they might take. In both the films discussed in this chapter which do this—Die Russen kommen and Ich zwing dich zu leben—the Mitläufer becomes trapped in the stage of crisis, his conversion thwarted by the fact that his father has died, and no suitable ideologically strong substitute father is present. Both Wolf and Günter thus end their stories in madness, trapped between rejection of fascism (and their mothers) but having lost the possibility of identifying with their fathers, who die before they can demonstrate themselves to be strong socialist role models.

That fascism can only ever be repressed, not banished, is the tension belied by the ongoing production of antifascist films in the GDR, even decades after the end of the War: that the defeat of fascism must be continually restaged, and that fascism must continually be combatted, within the GDR as well as at its boundaries, because of the fact that the bodies of the masses—of the people, who must one day be ready to birth the body of the

People—are polluted by their fascist past. Thus, these on-screen representatives of the 198 masses—the Mitläufer—are never truly able to banish fascism from their histories or their bodies. They are able only to reject it. Fascism here is neither subject nor object; it is, in

Kristevan terms, abject. As Murer explains: ‘In the process of abjection, the important point is that the enemy-other not only is created by the self but previously was part of the self.’258

Among all antifascist films(and all positive hero films), Mitläufer films particularly bring this tension to the fore, because their narratives not only imply but indeed thematize the fascist pasts of their protagonists.

Crisis: Fascism, Socialism, and the Abject There are generally two phases of crisis in Mitläufer narratives: firstly, the Mitläufer suffers from some form of personal difficulty, either emotional or economic, which generally then precipitate their initial decision to collaborate with fascism. These are usually externally stimulated crises; the depressed economy of Weimar Germany leads to financial crisis for the Mitläufer, or their personal relationships fail due to the actions of the others involved.

These then lead to a second stage of crisis, in which the Mitläufer experiences some kind of

“warning sign,” which begins their process of awareness of the evils of fascism. This second stage is often also to an extent externally stimulated—often, indeed, the continuation of the previous personal crisis—but is also a form of apostasy, in which a ‘disruption’ causes the

Mitläufer to question his allegiance to fascism and its institutions.

The second stage has already been discussed above. However, it is worth also examining the first stage of crisis, which appears in many of the films discussed in this chapter and which leads to collaboration. In the first stage of crisis, the Mitläufer is usually represented as suffering through some kind of personal difficulty prior to actively

258 Murer, 116 199 collaborating with fascism. This usually takes the form of either an economic struggle, or reason to be miserable due to family or romantic issues. Both of these serve to establish the character as collaborating not out of political conviction, but rather out of disillusionment or even desperation; something which functions not only to prefigure the justification for the Mitläufer’s absolution through conversion, but also implies the blame for fascism lies in part with Weimar society and capitalism in general, since both are often to blame for the character's difficulties.

Economic struggles therefore play a part in several of these narratives, either explicitly or implicitly. In both Königskinder and Rotation, the Mitläufer’s decision to actively collaborate with the fascists is a result of his economic desperation. In particular,

Rotation's Hans is explicitly shown to be desperate to find a way to feed his wife and young son. Jürgen's desperation in Königskinder is the result of his lack of a job and his unrequited love for Magdalena; as such, his inability to put ideology above practical considerations, as

Michael does, is to some extent excused, since Michael at least 'gets the girl'.

Father-son issues also lead to collaboration in two of the films: as discussed, Amigo's

Sine ends up collaborating in part due to his desire to please his father (and avoid the beatings his father doles out as punishment). This is contrasted against Amigo's relationship with his father, whose own strong ideological code and trust in his son has demonstrated to Amigo the value of standing up for what he believes in, even when it involves lying to his parents. Wolf's Leute mit Flügeln portrays a rather more complicated relationship between (socialist) father and son: Ludwig, may be a model socialist, but his absence from his son's childhood means that his son grows up without a strong role model.

While the film does not show much of Henne's childhood, its scenes set in the 'present day' 200 of the GDR in 1960 demonstrate Henne's continued bitterness with father's long absence in his childhood, at least in the first part of the film. Ultimately, both Sine and Henne are shown to have had miserable childhoods, lacking in a strong father figure who can provide ideological guidance. This is also true for Werner Holt in Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt, whose parents have divorced and who has lost contact with his father. We only discover later in the film that the divorce was due to his father's reduced finances after resigning from his job as a chemistry professor, in which he would have had to help create the gas to be used in concentration camps. Again, Werner goes astray because he lacks a father figure with strong ideological principles who is present during his childhood.

Further to the portrayal of the Mitläufer as suffering from economic or personal difficulties, his active or passive choice to collaborate is thus explicitly portrayed as not stemming from ideological conviction. In Königskinder, Jürgen specifically references the economy when he meets Magdalena while wearing his soldier's uniform and she tells him she does not want to speak to him. He seems to see fascism as serving solely an economic purpose in the early part of the narrative, stating that Michael's and the other communist's efforts were pointless because everyone now has work anyway. Similarly, Hans in Rotation takes a job at the Völkische Beobachter and ultimately joins the party due to his fears for his wife and unborn son--his unemployment has left them hungry and cold. This collaboration for economic reasons is generally condemned in DEFA films as the lazy, easy way out: see the discussion in the second chapter of this dissertation of Stärker als die Nacht for a good example of this. However, in Mitläufer films, it serves the double purpose of demonstrating the protagonist's bad choices, in which they are naïve of fascism's true evils because they are blinded by the prospect of escaping their poor financial circumstances, but also 201 representing the Mitläufer as 'not a true Nazi', because they have only collaborated for practical reasons.

This is even implied in films which show children being brainwashed or coerced into collaborating by their parents or teachers, since the children eventually realise the reality of fascism for themselves (to varying extents, depending on the film). Sine, in Amigo, represents one end of this scale: he is never really politically convinced of fascism, seeming uncomfortable when his father presents him with a Hitler Youth uniform and seeming uncertain of what he should do about the 'illegal' escaped communist, Pepp, even before he makes up his mind to defy his father. At the other end of the scale, Günter in Die Russen kommen and Wolfgang in Ich zwing dich zu leben represent fully brainwashed children, with whom the viewer nevertheless sympathises as their understanding of the world crumbles once they are faced with the realities of war. Their collaboration is portrayed as part following their peers, part delusions of what war really involves, induced by their teachers and other authority figures. These are also Helmut's (Rotation) and Werner Holt's reasons for joining the Wehrmacht--in both those films, we see the boys in school and/or

Hitler Youth training, being indoctrinated into their future role as soldiers for the Führer.

In cases where the protagonist's reason for collaborating (usually by joining the army) is not made clear, they are generally portrayed as being rather uninterested in the war, and as just trying to make it through to the end. The spectator is left to assume that they were probably conscripted as soldiers. Kurt in Meine Stunde Null and Walter in Sterne both seem to have little interest in being soldiers. Kurt and Walter both avoid and dislike their superior officers and enjoy joking with the locals in the towns they are occupying.

Whether due to brainwashing, financial straits, or conscription, the Mitläufer’s agency as a 202 collaborator is reduced or removed; instead, the blame is laid at the feet of those who are truly convinced by fascist ideology, who are consequently portrayed as creating the conditions making it difficult for those who do not already have strong antifascist convictions to avoid collaborating.

That many of the films portraying Mitläufer conversions also portray the character's initial conversion to fascism is interesting, because it invites the spectator to compare the two ideologies and conversion processes. As Jeffery Herf notes:

‘In West Germany in the first postwar years, the willingness to apply the charged

term ‘totalitarianism’ to both the Nazi past as well as the then existing communist

dictatorship, was a feature of both the West German conservatism of Konrad

Adenauer as well as West German Social Democracy as articulated by Kurt

Schumacher, Ernst Reuter and the young Willy Brandt, among others. Such a

willingness was never part of East German ‘antifascism’ which completely rejected

the slightest hint that its own regime had anything at all in common with the

previous dictatorship.’259

In light of this, it is interesting that double conversions are even obliquely portrayed in these films, because they to some extent inevitably draw parallels between the two regimes—just as the contrast scenes between Thälmann and Hitler in the Thälmann films do. This can perhaps be explained by falling back on the concept of political religion: members of one religion may recognise other religions as religions with their own methods of conversion and worship, while simultaneously believing that their own religion is the only “true” religion. Equally, the films discussed in this dissertation tend to represent

259 Herf, 162 203 fascism and its ideology as a false political religion; while some of its structures and rituals may be the same (promises to workers of a better life, rallies, etc), there is no similarity between the beliefs of the two ideologies.

The GDR may have outwardly and vocally rejected any similarities to the Third

Reich via its state doctrine of antifascism, but the double conversions portrayed in

Mitläufer films echo the blurred subject/object boundary between socialism and fascism and point to the abject nature of fascism within the GDR and its identity. In my previous chapters I described how positive hero films seek to other fascism due to the necessity of maintaining the integrity of the reign of law. Fascism’s abject status, revealed in the

Mitläufer films, is part of that violence at the root of the reign of law, the exposure of which threatens the system as a whole. However, because it is abject, it is not truly outside of the system altogether, either—it cannot be made fully Other, fully an object—and thus can only be repressed and excluded, rather than banished altogether. John B. Thompson notes of

Lefort’s concept of the ‘People-as-One’ in totalitarianism (on which Žižek in part bases his arguments concerning the body of the People): ‘The Enemies of the People are altogether different. They are attacked with a fervor which amounts to a kind of “social prophylaxis”,

“as if the body had to assure itself of its own identity by expelling its waste matter”.’260 In

Kristevan terms, the abject is precisely such ‘waste matter’: both part of the subject, and yet expelled. So too, following Lefort, is fascism in socialism and the GDR. Kristeva describes how religions seek to ‘ward off’ the abject: ‘A whole facet of the sacred, true lining of the sacrificial, compulsive, and paranoid side of religions, assumes the task of warding off that danger. This is precisely where we encounter the rituals of defilement and their

260 Thompson, in Lefort, 24 204 derivatives.’261 As such, antifascism (and antifascist films) functions as a form of ritual, designed to prevent the true exposure of that founding violence, which would result in the system’s collapse. As I noted earlier, the other part of that violence is the invasion of

Eastern Germany and violation of its people by the Red Army. The disavowal of this is inherently connected to the disavowal/repression of the pollution of the bodies of the people by fascism: if the people were all already sympathetic to socialism and antifascist, then the Red Army arrival was liberation from the trauma and violence of the war, in which the people were the resistance.

What the Mitläufer films uncover, particularly with their implied double conversions, is this founding violence. This is one reason why Die Russen kommen, which goes the furthest in this regard, was censored for so many years. The film plays down the violence of the Soviet invasion in favour of demonstrating the needless violence of the

German soldiers towards Russians through the murder of the Russian boy. However, it does show the majority of people in the German village to be in support of fascism, or at least not at all in support of socialism, and not just those in the SS or SA as is normally the case. Equally, it does not portray the arrival of the Red Army as a liberation but makes clear that it is a trauma—a crisis from which Günther cannot recover—as he slowly goes mad as his identity collapses. His crisis does, nevertheless, prompt him to begin the next stage of conversion—quest—even if, in his case, what he discovers overwhelms him to the point of insanity.

261 Kristeva, 64 205

3. Quest The context of a Mitläufer ‘s conversion, and the crisis precipitating it, provide reasons for considering conversion. Nevertheless, at the outset of each film’s narrative (at least, chronologically, since some films tell the conversion story in a Binnengeschichte or flashbacks), the Mitläufer is firmly portrayed as an active (if rather apathetic) participant in fascism. For example, in Sie nannten ihn Amigo, Sine is provided with a Hitler Jugend uniform by his father, which he wears to play with the other children, although he is embarrassed by their taunts; the scene makes clear that none of the other children would ever consider wearing such a uniform. Equally, the protagonists of Sterne, Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt, Die Russen kommen, Meine Stunde Null, and Ich zwing dich zu leben all begin their narratives as either soldiers in the Wehrmacht or as active members of Nazi youth organisations and institutions.

The stage of quest, brought about by the preceding crisis, which itself is often caused or exacerbated by the Mitläufer’s context, is the stage at which the Mitläufer begins to make a choice; to begin distancing himself from fascism through refusing to participate fully or at all in his previous role, or through taking initial actions to undermine it. This stage is usually coupled with the next stage, encounter, in which the Mitläufer interacts for the first time with a positive hero figure. If the quest is the stage in which the Mitläufer begins to reject fascism and seek alternative options, the encounter stage is the first step for him to find some answers. These stages represent the aspect of choice in the ideological conversion process, but more importantly, the reordering of boundaries—individually, for the Mitläufer, of their personal identity, and metaphorically, of the East German masses that the Mitläufer represents. 206

Rambo notes that, in the quest stage, ‘persons actively seek new ways of confronting their predicament.’262 In this stage of conversion, the Mitläufer begins to take his first steps against fascism, or at least begins to refuse to participate in fascist institutions. In the films discussed in this chapter, this stage often occurs simultaneously with the following two stages: encounter, in which the Mitläufer interacts with a positive hero figure for the first time, and interaction, in which he continues this interaction. For Rambo, this stage represents the ‘process of building meaning’.263 In other words, this is the stage of conversion in which the convert-to-be seeks something which will help resolve the crises they are facing. In this stage, Rambo particularly considers the question of motivation: what is the reason behind the quest for alternatives? For the Mitläufer, the crisis stage represents the reason(s) why he rejects fascism (the “push” factor for conversion). The quest stage thus represents why he might consider socialism. Rambo lists some possible reasons: to ‘fill the void’, ‘establish and maintain relationships,’ or ‘enhance self-esteem’264 are among them, and are the reasons most easily attributed to the characters discussed in this chapter.

In Mitläufer films, the beginning of the quest stage usually corresponds to the

Mitläufer’s first positive actions against fascism, in which the Mitläufer seeks a way to resolve their concerns about fascism without losing their own position or re-evaluating their identity. This is usually a gradual process of increasing awareness of problems, followed by increasingly larger actions against fascism, as the Mitläufer struggles to reconcile the two sides of their consciousness. There are different levels of ‘questing’

262 Rambo and Farhadian, 23 263 Rambo, 56 264 Rambo and Farhadian, 27-28 207 identified by Rambo: from ‘rejecting’ (in which ‘someone consciously rejects the new option’), through ‘receptive’ (in which ‘a person is “ready” for new options for a variety of reasons’) to ‘active questing’ (which involves ‘a person looking for new options because of dissatisfaction with the old ways and/or a desire for innovation and/or a search for fulfillment and growth.’)265

The reasons for the quest described above and their development through the levels of questing identified by Rambo can be clearly found in many of the films discussed in this chapter. In Sterne, for example, Walter begins the film in a rather listless, demotivated state. He barely responds when a Bulgarian soldier greets him with “Heil Hitler,” and seems more focused on painting and joking with the locals than on his role in the village as an officer of the Wehrmacht. For him, the quest serves to ‘fill the void’: His encounters with

Ruth seem to be the only aspect of his life in which he shows any care or interest in what is going on around him, and what he finds out from her about her people’s destination and mistreatment lead him through Rambo’s levels of questing. Initially, he rejects her pleas for help, even telling her he could shoot her on the spot when she angrily responds to his rejection. Nevertheless, he seemingly rethinks things, returning later with a doctor for her pregnant friend. Now, he is more receptive to what she has to say, asking her about her people and why they have been brought there. His naivety surprises her; he does not know what Auschwitz is, or why they would be taken there. However, her response to his questions spurs him on to ask more, of his fellow officers in the army, and also of his

Bulgarian friend, Petko, who turns out to be a key member of the local communist resistance. This is shown in particular through his first actions against fascism, as discussed

265 Rambo, 59 208 in more detail below. In other words, he quickly progresses to the level of active questing after meeting Ruth, and while his interest in her may have initially been romantic, his quest does ultimately lead to conversion, and a new meaning to his life as a communist resistance fighter—even though he is unable to save her. Ward notes the difference between this trajectory and the ‘standard DEFA hero’: ‘throughout the film, he remains motivated by his love for one person rather than for the cause.’266 Indeed, it is not until the very end of the film that Walter shows any kind of dedication to the cause itself, although Ward overlooks his encounter and interaction with Petko in her analysis. She also goes on to state that

‘there is no indication that his failure to save Ruth at the end of the film will lead to a renewed attempt to protect the collective,’267 something that is demonstratively contradicted by the final shot, in which Walter is shown to be actively participating in the resistance, having deserted from the army.268

Sine in Sie nannten ihn Amigo undergoes a similar progression through Rambo’s levels of questing. For Sine, the quest functions to ‘enhance self esteem,’ enabling him to break away from his oppressive father and develop confidence in himself and his decisions.

While he is initially reluctant to support Amigo in keeping the presence of the escaped prisoner, Pepp, secret, he gradually becomes more receptive to Amigo’s and Pepp’s influence, leading to him taking his own actions against fascism, such as stealing a jacket from his drunken father for Pepp. In two pivotal scenes, Sine’s developing self esteem is clearly portrayed. Firstly, after his encounter with Pepp and Amigo, and after seeing a

266 Ward, 48 267 Ward, 48 268 It is possible that Ward viewed a version of the film in which that final scene had been cut, as the West German release of the film was predicated on the removal of that scene, as discussed elsewhere in this chapter. 209 wanted poster for Pepp stating that he is an ‘illegal’, Sine plucks up the courage to ask his father what is wrong with illegals. However, this leads only to rebukes, and Sine does not, at this stage, argue back. However, once Sine and his father are brought in by the Gestapo for questioning over the matter of his father’s stolen uniform jacket, Sine has developed enough independence from his father and self-confidence to lie in the faces of the Gestapo, claiming that he lied to his father when he said he had given the jacket to “an illegal”. His father is humiliated in front of the Gestapo, who he wants to please, but Sine, from this point onwards, stands with Pepp and Amigo, having developed self esteem and his own opinion.

The last of Rambo’s reasons for questing that I mentioned above, to ‘establish and maintain relationships’, is present to some extent in all the films discussed in this chapter, as the encounter and interaction stages of conversion. These are discussed in more detail later on, but it is worth noting that in certain films, these stages are particularly intertwined with the beginning of the quest stage as well. For example, in Meine Stunde

Null, it is Kurt’s capture by and interaction with the Soviet soldiers which leads to his rethinking of his involvement with the German army. It is strongly implied by his flippant attitude to his duty prior to this point that he has no strong ideological attachment to fascism; however, this same portrayal equally implies that he would never have particularly sought out an alternative without the catalyst of his capture and his growing desire to develop a positive relationship with the Soviet soldiers.

While the quest stage of conversion is strongly connected to the encounter and interaction stages, it is nevertheless worth considering separately, because of what this stage represents. The quest stage, in the Mitläufer films, represents the transition stage 210 between the crisis which propels the Mitläufer away from fascism, and their eventual identification of and with socialism as an alternative. This stage may thus also be understood psychoanalytically, as part of the Oedipal metaphor present in each of these films.

Quest: the search for a symbolic father As already discussed, the crisis stage of conversion is equally the Oedipal crisis, in which the Mitläufer suffers a traumatic break from the maternal embrace of fascism and is forced to begin the search for a new alternative. As such, the quest stage represents a reshaping of identity and identification. The Mitläufer is forced to reconsider his identity, often both ideologically and personally. As a result of the crisis, he begins to act against fascism, to demonstrate his increasing surety of his rejection of it. However, until he finds or recognizes a new figure to identify with—a symbolic father, in Lacanian terms—and thus a new ideology, he will not find peace or answers. Of course, this figure is usually there all along, already beginning to influence the Mitläufer throughout their interactions, but until the Mitläufer has reached the level of ‘active questing,’ this identification (and thus resolution of the Oedipus complex) is not possible. As Julia Hell notes, in Lacan’s formulation, the symbolic father is not usually any real, specific person:

‘It is, of course, problematic to use the term “symbolic father” for this image of the

ideal father which the substitute represents, since, as I mentioned before, within

Lacan’s theory (from which the term is derived) no actual person ever embodies the

symbolic father. However, for the Oedipal crisis to be resolved, the actual father has

to be identified with the Name-of-the-Father (i.e., the symbolic father), who 211

represents the Law of the Symbolic order. It is this identification of the Communist

father figure with the symbolic father that these texts insist upon, denying the

gap.’269

While in the novels Hell discusses, the actual father of the protagonist and the Communist father figure are generally one and the same, this is rarely the case in the Mitläufer films; indeed, this only really occurs in Rotation, and only then with the presence of an additional symbolic hero in the form of Hans Behnke’s brother-in-law, Kurt, who is a resistance fighter. Instead, the Communist father figure is generally a positive hero—usually, a symbolic hero, a representative of the State or Party. These characters are usually portrayed as fatherly, benevolent leaders—they are often high-ranked Soviet army officers—who nevertheless push the Mitläufer to actively fight against fascism and aid the socialists or the Red Army, as is further analysed in the Encounter and Interaction section of this chapter.

In some films, the quest stage occurs more or less alongside those stages. However, in others, there is a distinctive phase of the narrative in which the protagonist has begun to actively reject and question his allegiance to fascism but has not yet encountered an adequate symbolic father in order to be drawn towards socialism as an alternative. Indeed, in two of the films discussed in this chapter—Ich zwing dich zu leben and Die Russen kommen—the protagonists never encounter such a figure at all and are thus doomed to madness brought about by this lack of ideological resolution, as I discuss later on. In two further films, however, the Mitläufer does eventually reach a resolution—although one

269 Hell, 47n79 212 which portrays a more tenuous conversion to socialism than the examples in which the initial encounter with the symbolic hero occurs at or shortly after the crisis stage.

For example, in Königskinder, both Michael’s development as a Vorbild and Jürgen’s gradual progression towards rejection of fascism and conversion to socialism are portrayed alongside one another, and indeed, sometimes contrasted. Despite Jürgen’s initial moment of crisis occurring relatively early in his narrative—his shock at his officer’s demand that he participates in the raid to arrest Magdalena, who he loves—he does not encounter the film’s symbolic hero figure, a Red Army officer, until the very end, when he and Michael desert the Germany army together and give themselves up to the Soviets. As such, while he has repeated interactions with a Vorbild, Michael, who is instrumental in this encounter, for the most part, Jürgen spends the film being receptive to or actively seeking alternatives to his situation as a Nazi soldier. He spends much of the film reluctant to leave behind the security of this role, but also unable to fully commit to it, eventually pushing back against it as discussed below.

The second film in which the protagonist spends the majority of the narrative in the quest stage is Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt, in which Werner repeatedly questions the situations he is thrust into as a trainee officer in the German army, but also fails to find an appropriate symbolic father figure to offer an alternative. As such, he has repeated encounters with other characters who are not in a position to offer him solutions: his own father, who is not ideologically committed enough to be a symbolic hero; various women, who often cause him to question his beliefs but with whom he cannot identify or who ultimately require him to save them rather than follow them; and friends, who sometimes agree with his questioning or sometimes seek to quash his concerns. As such, throughout 213 much of the film, he repeatedly acts against fascism in small ways, but never seriously considers quitting altogether until the end of the film. For example, he acts to find a way to free Gundel, daughter of two antifascists who died for the cause, from the home of a vindictive SS officer, but refuses her request for him to go with her, and consequently continues to train as an army officer.

What is important in these two examples is that both films explicitly thematize the lack of appropriate role model or father figure, making it clear that the characters’ desire to act against fascism is as a direct result of some crisis event—for Werner, these occur repeatedly throughout the film, but the death of a friend during an army training exercise is particularly key—but also demonstrating that neither Werner nor Jürgen has recognised that there is a valid alternative for much of the films. In both cases, they each have a friend who does make the choice much earlier than they themselves do: Michael rejects the Nazis’ offer of a job at the beginning of Königskinder, while Jürgen accepts it; and Werner’s friend,

Sepp Gomulka, deserts from the army after seeing firsthand the horrors committed by the

SS, and asks Werner to come with him, which Werner refuses—although he does protect

Sepp from being shot for desertion.

In Lacanian terms, the point at which the subject passes in the realm of the symbolic father (the “Name-of-the-Father”) is the point at which the subject enters ‘into the domain of language as a social institution.’270 As Muller and Richardson go on to note, ‘the father

[…] is the symbol and representative of the symbolic order as such.’271 What is therefore interesting is that in several of these films, the Mitläufer is portrayed as struggling with language and languages, prior to their encounter with a symbolic hero figure. For example,

270 Muller and Richardson, 18 271 Muller and Richardson, 18 214 in Ich zwing dich zu leben, fifteen-year-old Wolfgang is at his happiest when he is not required to use language at all; when he escapes from his father, who has kidnapped him to prevent him from voluntarily joining the SS, he races through the forest in an utterly childlike manner, pretending to be a fighter jet and making the corresponding noises. This behaviour seems utterly juvenile considering his age, particularly when compared to a character such as Amigo, who is supposed to be thirteen, and yet behaves mostly in a manner befitting an adult already. Wolfgang has been forcibly separated from his mother by his father but has not yet reached any kind of maturity; equally, he is ideologically immature, still steadfastly holding to the illusory dreams of fascist victory perpetuated by his older friend, Wulf, who has been trying to recruit him.

Similarly, in Die Russen kommen, Günter cannot communicate at all with his hallucinations of the dead Russian boy, because he does not speak Russian; not only has he killed him, and thus can never become friends with him anyway, his inability to understand the boy’s words mean that he cannot ever truly be enlightened by them. His own father, meanwhile, is also dead. When the Red Army officer keeping Günter imprisoned reads to him a letter, explaining that his father sought death on the front rather than continue fighting in a war he did not believe in, Günter refuses to believe his father’s words or those of the officer; he has lost all confidence in language and words at all. Žižek draws a connection between hysteria and this traumatic lack of language, which goes some way towards shedding light on the cause of Günter’s descent into hallucinatory madness: ‘we speak of hysterical conversion: the impeded traumatic kernel is “converted” into a bodily symptom; the psychic content that cannot be signified in the medium of common language 215 makes itself heard in a distorted form of “body language”.’272 Günter not only lacks the language to communicate in Russian, but also to articulate the ideological confusion— the

‘traumatic kernel’—that has pushed him into crisis. Indeed, he cannot even express this to himself, as Žižek continues:

‘According to Lacan, the fundamental of man qua being-of-language is that his desire

is impeded, constitutively dissatisfied: he “does not know what he really wants”.

What the hysterical “conversion” accomplishes is precisely an inversion of this

impediment: by means of it, the impeded desire converts into a desire for

impediment; the unsatisfied desire converts into a desire for unsatisfaction; a desire

to keep our desire “open”; the fact that we “don’t know what we really want”—what

to desire—converts into a desire not to know, a desire for ignorance…’273

Günter’s hallucinations, then, could be read as a manifestation of his ‘desire for ignorance’; by retreating to a scenario in which he cannot be expected to understand (since Russian is a language he does not speak), he can avoid articulating to himself the meaning of his father’s words in the letter, or his own understanding of his situation.

Even in adult characters, the issue of language is often a key element of the quest stage. For example, in Meine Stunde Null, one of the Soviet soldiers, Sergeant Mitja, who accompanies Kurt on his mission to retrieve information on the German attack plans, speaks no German, and Kurt cannot communicate with him. Nevertheless, when he believes that Mitja is dead, he finally begins to take his task more seriously and realise that his allegiance is now to the Red Army and socialism. When he returns to the Soviet side of the river and is received warmly by the fatherly Soviet general, he discovers that Mitja is not

272 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 142 273 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 143-44 216 dead after all, but now the two of them greet each other happily and appear to have reached some kind of understanding. Symbolically, Kurt has fully embraced his entrance into the Soviet domain, and thus his communication issues with Mitja no longer matter to their relationship. Unlike Günter, Kurt is able to move beyond the ‘desire for ignorance’: rather than becoming trapped in crisis, his quest leads him to complete his conversion.

Problems with language, and a connection to Russian, are also thematised in

Königskinder. Michael ends up conscripted into the German army as a political prisoner, and finds himself under his childhood friend, Jürgen’s, command. After Michael is overheard asking how to say 'don't shoot' in Russian, Jürgen's commander wants to have him executed, but Jürgen manages to save him by having himself put in charge of Michael's punishment. While close-ups of Michael's face during the following sequence, in which

Jürgen harshly forces him to run repeatedly through mud, demonstrate the hatred he has developed for his former friend, the spectator is aware that Jürgen has in fact saved his life.

However, Jürgen is unable to properly verbalise this to Michael; instead he can only put him through a brutal, physical drill.

As discussed above, the quest stage is a transition between two modes of identity: fascist to communist; and maternally dependent subject to independent subject identifying with a symbolic father figure, able to rationally use language. Whether the Communist father figure is the Mitläufer’s real father, as is often the case in the books Julia Hell discusses, or a symbolic hero figure, as in the majority of the films discussed in this chapter, is, however, less relevant than the fact that this transition phase—from identifying oneself as a member of Nazi state institutions such as the Wehrmacht or the SA, to seeking alternatives and rejecting fascism, to encountering a new symbolic father figure and 217 beginning to identify with him—represents a redrawing of the boundaries of the Mitläufer’s identity.

Quest: liminal spaces and the abject During the quest stage, the Mitläufer thus occupies a liminal space, in which he begins to reject elements of his own identity but cannot yet redefine the boundaries because he has not encountered (or recognised that he has encountered) the symbolic hero who can offer him a viable solution. As such, he is afraid to “dissolve” the boundaries of his identity altogether and wholeheartedly reject fascism. This is, for example, particularly clear in

Königskinder, in which we see Jürgen repeatedly seek to mitigate the damage of the orders of his superiors, and nevertheless remain in the German army, or in Sterne, where Walter, for much of the narrative, deludes himself into believing that he can save Ruth and yet remain in his position as an officer.

The Mitläufer is thus repulsed by fascism, but also drawn back in by its promise of security and by fear of losing his identity and of change. In other words, fascism becomes abject. Julia Kristeva describes abjection as follows:

‘Loathing an item of food, a piece of filth, waste, or dung. The spasms and vomiting

that protect me. The repugnance, the retching that thrusts me to the side and turns

me away from defilement, sewage, and muck. The shame of compromise, of being

in the middle of treachery. The fascinated start that leads me toward and

separates me from them.’274 (Bolding mine)

This position of simultaneous rejection and yet still retaining a connection to or identification with that which one is rejecting is particularly evident in Königskinder.

274 Kristeva 1982, 2 218

Despite Jürgen’s disillusionment with fascism beginning with his panicked attempt to warn

Magdalena about the raid on her apartment, he continues to participate actively in the regime, becoming an officer in the army and eventually becoming responsible for a group of conscripted convicts, among them Michael. After Michael is overheard asking how to say

“don't shoot” in Russian, Jürgen punishes him with a harsh physical drill in the muddy parade ground of the training camp.

The camerawork in this sequence makes it clear to the spectator that the two men have very different understandings of what has taken place. Michael believes that Jürgen, while formerly his friend, now only intends to punish him until he complies with the army and fascism. Meanwhile Jürgen knows that if he does not adequately punish Michael, both of them may end up under suspicion, as Jürgen’s fellow officers are aware that they used to be friends. Jürgen cannot yet imagine leaving his position as an officer; however, he also does not want his former friend to be killed for treason or desertion, and nor does he want to be responsible for the death of the man that Magdalena loves. As such, he must force

Michael to undergo something sickeningly harsh, in order to avoid a worse outcome, but also in order to avoid voiding his own position and identity as an officer.

While the spectator sees, through Michael’s facial expressions, that he feels betrayed by Jürgen and physically exhausted by the punishment, the camera primarily provides

Jürgen’s perspective, including some shots of his view of Michael as he struggles in the mud. Michael’s punishment can thus be viewed, from Jürgen’s perspective, as an attempt to purge the worst of fascism while maintaining the boundaries of his own identity; indeed, if

Michael were to be not only saved from death but also to change his allegiance to loyalty to the German army and state after the punishment, Jürgen would be saved from any further 219 necessity of redefining his identity, any further reconsidering those aspects of fascism he finds unpalatable. As Kristeva describes: ‘The one by whom the abject exists is thus a deject who places (himself), separates (himself), situates (himself), and therefore strays instead of getting his bearings, desiring, belonging, or refusing.’275 Jürgen’s actions lead him to remain in an ambiguous, unsustainable position—one which cannot be resolved solely through attempting to purge the abject of fascism.

The protagonists of Mama, ich lebe also spend a good deal of the film in this ambiguous position, separating themselves mentally and, by constantly remaining together as a group, physically from the Russians who are training them, as well as quite literally

“moving” through the countryside towards the front. Wölfel notes that ‘the defection has brought movement and change back into their lives and selves: this includes, of course, the experience that as traitors their identities are “moving”, as they belong neither to their national collective anymore nor to the Soviets.’276 They avoid thinking about their assigned task, to go behind German lines, and each struggles to reconcile his German-ness with this, as well as their fear of being caught by the Germans or killed. As Wölfel discusses, the film focuses on the characters’ choice—whether or not to betray their countrymen—far more than any other film discussed here.277 It is only when, during their first skirmish against their own countrymen, they accidentally cause the death their Russian friend Kolja by hesitating to shoot, that they recognise the true consequences of this ambiguity. ‘Was mach’

275 Kristeva 1982, 8 276 Wölfel 2012, 27 277 Wölfel 2012, 25. I dispute, however, Wölfel’s assertion that ‘Mama, ich lebe is the only antifascist DEFA film which did not dismiss the allegation of betrayal but identified betrayal as a central act in the founding of the post-war order.’ (also 25) Films such as Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt also grapple with the concept of betrayal and portray acts of betrayal (Werner’s choice whether or not to desert, his shooting of the SS officers) as such ‘central acts’. 220 ich denn jetzt?’ asks Kowalski, as they gaze, horrified, on Kolja’s dead body. The camera cuts away to a long shot of men in Soviet army uniforms, standing in a graveyard and shooting at the sky, then to a panning shot of each of the men in turn, their expressions shamed and sad, standing amongst the mourners. It is at this moment that the four

Germans find themselves in abjection—and must find a way to repel it. The visceral nature of the death, however, makes the necessity of this more urgent to them than in Jürgen’s case, and this scene becomes the catalyst for their final commitment to their task.

The foundational narrative of antifascism, however, necessitates that fascism be not only in the East German past, but also the present: as Buck-Morss describes, calling on Carl

Schmitt’s arguments about state identity: ‘the act of defining the enemy is the act of sovereignty […] defining the enemy is the act that brings the collective into being.’278

Without a common enemy, there is no collective. Fascism, in its portrayal in DEFA films

(and particularly in Mitläufer films) is the type of enemy defined by Buck-Morss as ‘the absolute enemy on the far side of the great political divide between the imaginary systems themselves [… which] challenges the very notion by which the identity of the collective has been formed.’279 In Kristevan terms, therefore, it is abject precisely because it threatens the boundaries of identity: ‘It is not lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection, but what disturbs identity, system order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in- between, the ambiguous, the composite.’280 It is within the GDR people, polluting their bodies and pasts, as the proliferation of Mitläufer films demonstrates! The quest stage is

278 Buck-Morss, 9 279 Buck-Morss, 34 280 Kristeva 1982, 4 221 where this root of antifascism becomes clear, and where the paradox of these films begins to be unmasked.

Quest: a path to the socialist reign of law In both the examples described above, the protagonist is eventually forced to find better ways to deal with the abjection they experience, through ideology. As Kristeva suggests: ‘By means of the symbolic institution of ritual, that is to say, by means of a system of ritual exclusions, the partial-object consequently becomes scription—an inscription of limits, an emphasis placed not on the (paternal) Law but on (maternal) Authority through the very signifying order.’281 The subject thus remains in the realm of the maternal—here, of fascism. This process thus “covers over” the abject, but does not truly delimit it, as this can only take place after the Mitläufer has encountered and identified with a symbolic father figure. In the example of Mama, ich lebe, the men’s encounter happens relatively early in the film, when they travel with the Soviet officer, Major Mauris, and also meet the Soviet general on the train. The horror of abjection, of their friend’s death, becomes a catalyst for their true ideological change, because they are able to inscribe limits on the abject through finally enacting their separation from their German identities, and making the definitive choice to go behind the German (now, enemy) lines. For Jürgen in Königskinder, this process takes longer, because he does not meet a symbolic father figure until Michael forces him to defect to the Red Army towards the end of his narrative. Michael, as a Vorbild, is not enough.

The quest stage of the conversion narrative therefore positions the Mitläufer on the boundaries of the reign of law. If it is followed by a successful encounter and interaction,

281 Kristeva 1982, 73 222 leading to identification with the symbolic father (symbolic hero) and thus with the

Party/State/ideology, then the Mitläufer may be brought fully into the reign of law. On the other hand, if the quest stage does not lead to active questing, or if the Mitläufer never truly encounters an appropriate symbolic father on his quest, then no successful conversion can occur. He will thus remain outside of the boundaries of the law in the realm of the abject—a position that I discuss in the context of consequences, later on in this chapter.

4-5: Encounter and Interaction The next stages of Rambo’s model are the encounter, in which an advocate of the new religion is instrumental in encouraging a person to convert, and interaction, in which the prospective convert develops a relationship with this advocate (or advocates) of the religion. For Rambo, the interaction stage is when the convert begins to ‘learn more about the teachings, life-style, and expectations of the group, and are provided with opportunities, both formal and informal, to become more fully incorporated into it.’282 In

DEFA Mitläufer films, these advocates are not religious missionaries, but ideological representatives: symbolic heroes or Vorbilder, who sometimes have more major roles in the films, or sometimes only appear very briefly. These also correspond to Tamir Bar-On’s fifth prerequisite for successful ideological conversion: ‘dynamic proponents of the ideology able to attract a mass or key elite following.’283 His reference to a ‘mass following’ is also key in this context: as discussed in more detail in the conclusion to this chapter, the

Mitläufer represents, in many ways, the masses; the ‘people’ who need to be prepared to become the People by the “Geburtshelfer”—the symbolic heroes and Vorbilder. The stage at

282 Rambo, 102 283 Bar-On, 244 223 which these “Geburtshelfer” appear in the films discussed here varies; sometimes it is even before the crisis stage occurs, or sometimes only after the character has taken their first actions against fascism on their own. What is important is that this encounter represents the beginnings of the character’s final conversion; not just a break away from fascism, but a turn towards socialism. Hence Rambo describes it as ‘the contact between questing persons and the advocate of a new alternative.’284

The encounter represents the Mitläufer’s first meaningful interaction with a positive hero figure, whether a symbolic hero like Thälmann or a Vorbild. As discussed previously, this does not necessarily occur after the quest stage has begun—it may sometimes occur during the crisis phase (and indeed, sometimes be the catalyst for that crisis, such as in the case of Sine in Sie nannten ihn Amigo) or even earlier—Jürgen, in Königskinder, is, for example, childhood friends with Michael, who becomes one of the advocates of socialism with whom he interacts. In the films discussed in this chapter, there are four different types of encounter and consequent interaction.

Firstly, in several films, the Mitläufer meets a symbolic hero figure, with whom he then interacts, until he makes a full conversion to socialism. We see this in Amigo, in which

Sine first encounters Pepp when Hotta, Amigo’s brother, finds him in the coal cellar. In other films of this kind, the Mitläufer already knows the symbolic hero character before the beginning of the film’s narrative: for example, in Sterne, Walter meets Petko, the leader of the local resistance cell; in Leute mit Flügeln, Henne, who is in the Nazi Volkssturm, encounters his father, a communist who has been imprisoned in a concentration camp for his resistance efforts, after many years apart, and then gradually builds a relationship with

284 Rambo, 23-24 224 him while also converting from fascism to socialism; and in Rotation, Hans is gradually drawn out of his apolitical apathy by his brother-in-law, Kurt. However, the progression of the film is the same: an initial encounter, followed by repeated interactions, culminating in a commitment to socialism and/or antifascist resistance.

In the second type, the Mitläufer does encounter a symbolic hero, usually at a key point in their conversion (either at the beginning of their quest or as the final catalyst for their commitment), but their interaction is primarily with Vorbilder, rather than with a symbolic hero. In Meine Stunde Null, Kurt meets the fatherly first lieutenant when he is first captured by the Red Army soldiers, and it is the lieutenant who convinces him to help them.

However, for most of the film, he spends his time with two Soviet soldiers, with whom he gradually becomes friends. The soldiers, Gornin and Mitja, offer Kurt advice and act as role models for his ideological development, but do not fulfil the role of idealised representative of the state that the first lieutenant does, or that characters like Thälmann do (as discussed in the first chapter of this dissertation). A similar constellation of encounter and Interaction may be found in Mama, ich lebe, in which the four Germans are introduced to a Soviet general (again, portrayed as fatherly and authoritative), who convinces them to undergo training to infiltrate the German lines. However, the majority of their time is spent interacting with two officers—Major Mauris, and Kolja. Königskinder also fits into this category; however, here, the encounter with a symbolic hero takes place after the repeated interactions between Jürgen, the Mitläufer, and Michael, the Vorbild. In this case, the encounter with the general, after Jürgen has deserted with Michael, functions to represent

Jürgen’s decision to finally commitment to, if not socialism, then at least antifascism. 225

In the two categories of encounter and interaction discussed above, the Mitläufer is always able to resolve his Oedipus complex, complete his conversion, and commit to antifascism or socialism. In this half of this chapter, I examine how not all of the films discussed here result in successful conversions, alongside examining the narratives of successful conversion in the films discussed above. The stages of encounter and interaction represent the point of diversion; those who encounter a symbolic hero are then shown to commit to socialism, while those who do not have more ambivalent, or indeed negative outcomes. The third category represents the former: in these films, the Mitläufer only interacts with a Vorbild, and by the end of the film has fully turned against fascism.

However, it is left unclear whether or not he will become a part of the antifascist resistance or a fully-fledged socialist. Of the films discussed in this chapter, Die Abenteuer des Werner

Holt falls into this category. None of the figures of authority that Werner encounters in the film represent a symbolic hero—his father is too apolitical and passive, and the other male authority figures shown are Nazi officers or officials (such as his school teacher). However, he does interact with friends who encourage him to think critically about the war and his role in it—particularly the orphan girl, Gundel, and his friend Sepp, who both try to convince him to desert from the army. Indeed, Sepp eventually deserts to the Red Army, implying that he is further along in his ideological development than Werner, who refuses to join him, despite his own growing doubts.

The final category into which the films in this chapter fall describes those Mitläufer narratives in which no real encounter or interaction takes place, either with a symbolic hero or indeed a Vorbild. The clearest example of this is Ich zwing dich zu leben, in which the teacher tries and fails convince his son, Wolfgang, not to try to run back to his friends in 226 the SS and the Hitler Youth. The teacher himself has collaborated throughout the previous years with sending the boys he teaches off to fight for the Nazis. He offers no ideological alternative; he just wants to save his son’s life. As discussed earlier in this chapter,

Wolfgang thus makes it no further than the crisis stage of conversion, despite his father’s efforts—and his crisis only occurs when his friend, the young officer Wulf, shoots his father dead. Similarly, in Die Russen kommen, no fatherly symbolic hero steps forward to help

Günter, nor does he meet a Vorbild who can advise him on his path. Indeed, the only person who could have seemingly fulfilled his role is the Russian boy in whose death Günter was instrumental, and who, once Günter is arrested, begins to appear to him in hallucinations.

Günter’s real father, who died in the war, chose that path deliberately out of disillusionment with what was happening; there is nobody left to offer Günter an alternative to fascism, and by the time he reaches the point of crisis, there is, as for

Wolfgang, no way for it to be resolved. Thus, both films end at the crisis stage.

As stated earlier, the encounter is thus the point at which the Mitläufer makes choices: to seek alternatives to fascism, and to find answers to their quest for something different. Whether or not the Mitläufer encounters a symbolic hero is thus key for their conversion. In both this and the following section, I compare the successful and unsuccessful conversion narratives described above. One key way in which these two types of narrative differ is in their portrayals of father figures and the symbolic role they fulfil.

Encounter and Interaction: enter the symbolic father The encounter and interaction with the symbolic father represent the key to a successful conversion to socialism in these films. It is only through the Mitläufer’s identification with 227

(and desire to be) the symbolic father, which occurs at the culmination of the interaction phase, that the Mitläufer can fully commit to socialism and thus be finally converted. In other words, the successful resolution of the Mitläufer’s Oedipus complex, as outlined above, is simultaneously the denouement of his conversion. The desire to have the phallus—to fulfil the desires of the mother—gives way to the desire to emulate the one who does possess the phallus: the symbolic father.

Noteworthy here is the role of the mother in Lacan’s discussion of the Oedipus complex. Lacan’s conception of the Oedipus complex does not, as already stated, concern the subject’s real father and mother. For Lacan, the Oedipal “mother” is ‘an obscure omnipotent presence who is the source of all-important love.’285 As such, extending that to ideological identification, we may identify the mother as the ideology into which the subject is “born”; the first ideology to have “nurtured” the subject. In many of the Mitläufer films discussed in this chapter, it is evident that fascism fulfils this role. In some cases, the

Mitläufer is almost literally born into fascism, in that they are still infants at the beginning of the Third Reich: for example, Sine in Sie nannten ihn Amigo; Wolfgang in Ich zwing dich zu leben; or Hellmuth in Rotation. (Indeed, at the first shot of baby Hellmuth, a playpen is placed over him so that he appears to the spectator to be peering through bars; he is inescapably trapped by his time and circumstances before he can walk or talk.) In other cases, as previously discussed, we see the Mitläufer’s initial conversion, from no ideology at all to fascism. In these cases, the “nurturing” of the subject is perhaps even more evident, such as in the example of Jürgen in Königskinder. We see his distress and poverty due to the economic crisis, and we see him convinced to join the Nazi party in order to get work—and

285 Johnston, “Jacques Lacan” 228 thus sustenance and security. While the spectator is invited to compare his willingness to be seduced by this offer to Michael’s staunch refusal, it has already been made clear earlier in the film that Michael is already a dedicated socialist, whereas Jürgen has no particular ideological identity prior to this point. As such, the Mitläufer’s struggles during the quest phase of the narrative can be understood as his desire to fulfil the desires of the mother— to fulfil that which fascism requires of him—in an attempt to deal with the trauma of the realisation that he is not, in fact, one and the same as the mother, as brought on by the crisis he has previously experienced. The encounter with the symbolic father thus finally offers him a viable alternative: identification with one who promises a route to power over the

(fascist) mother.

Muller and Richardson sum up Lacan’s formulation of this process as follows:

‘Wrenched away from a dyadic relationship with its mother in the world of

inarticulate images, the infant must now relate to her through a dialectic of desire, in

which the subject’s ultimate quest is for recognition by the desired. Traumatised by

its want, the child wants, i.e., desires, to recapture its lost plenitude by being the

desired of its mother, her fullness—in Lacanian language, by being the phallus for its

mother. Alas, that is impossible. For the father (who has the phallus) is there: the

real father, the imaginary father, and most of all the symbolic father, i.e., the “law of

the father”—the symbolic order, structuring all human relationships and making it

possible that absence becomes present through language.’286

Where the Mitläufer, in the quest phase, still openly desired recognition by the mother—i.e., by his officers, teachers, or others in positions of power within the Army or Nazi

286 Muller and Richardson, 23 229 government—his encounter and consequent interaction with the symbolic father forces him to realise that such recognition will not be fulfilled and is, indeed, taboo. Instead, the symbolic father offers a new path to fulfilment, through identification. As discussed in the first chapter of this dissertation, the symbolic father or symbolic hero (of whom Thälmann is an example par excellence) becomes an ideological fetish for both the Mitläufer and the spectator; i.e., for the masses. The symbolic hero provides a safe locus for their desire, while covering over the lack at the centre of the Oedipus complex and at the centre of the ideological system.

Returning, then, to the Žižekian formulation used from the beginning of this dissertation, the Mitläufer films bring together most fully that which I have already discussed in relation to the Thälmann films and the martyr films of the previous chapter: the symbolic hero’s function both as centre of identification (his role as an explicit father figure in these films is the key to the Mitläufer’s conversion) and fetish (functioning as the

“little piece of the Real”287 which covers over the ‘illegal violence’ at the foundation of the reign of law, by providing a path to socialism that appears natural and inevitable).

Meine Stunde Null is one of the most clear-cut examples of these dual functions.

Kurt’s encounter with the first lieutenant, who convinces him to switch sides and help two

Soviet soldiers capture a German officer, provides him with a fatherly role model whose respect he fairly quickly decides he wants to earn, after he is well-treated by the Soviets, but also because he wants to survive. Simultaneously, this encounter and his subsequent interactions with the two Soviet soldiers—the lieutenant’s proxies, who function as

Vorbilder for Kurt—justifies Kurt’s swift conversion to socialism and the Soviet cause. The

287 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 260 230

Russians convince him of the righteousness of their mission, and in them he finds a purpose in life that he had previously been lacking, as his previously lacklustre attitude to the war and ambivalent feelings about the German officers had made clear. As such, the film’s portrayal of a German encounter with the Red Army and subsequent entry into a new reign of law—within the Soviet hegemony—is centred around the first lieutenant, who convinces Kurt to do this in the first place, and covers over the violent reality of the Soviet invasion of East Germany.

Kurt’s ambivalent relationship with the German officers he serves under in the opening scenes of the film also points to another paternal factor common to the Mitläufer narratives. The films discussed here also generally imply (or make explicit) that the reason the Mitläufer came under the sway of fascism in the first place was due to their lack of a strong socialist father figure to begin with. Sie nannten ihn Amigo in particular makes this explicitly clear, contrasting between Amigo’s positive development towards socialist heroism, and Sine’s more complicated and difficult path to conversion, which only begins after he meets Pepp and can only be completed after he turns his back on his (fascist) biological father. A review from Junge Welt highlights the importance of the father figure for the ideological development of the child: the film makes clear ‘wie durch die häusliche

Erziehung ein Kind auf die Probleme des Lebens vorbereitet werden kann, nicht durch politische Vorträge aus dem Munde des Vaters, sondern durch dessen gesamte politische und moralische Haltung und Lebensweise.’288 Leute mit Flügeln is also an interesting example in this regard: while Henne’s biological father is a positive hero, and thus certainly capable of being a strong socialist role model for his son, he is forced to go into exile due to

288 Altenstedt, “Ein fünfzehnjähriger Held.” 231 his membership in the KPD. As a result, Henne is left in the care of friends, whose lack of ideological guidance leads him to becoming a member of the Hitler Youth and ultimately joining the Volkssturm.

In the cases of most of the Mitläufer portrayed in these films, after a period of crisis and quest, he ultimately encounters a symbolic hero (often accompanied by Vorbilder) with whom, after a period of interaction, he comes to identify as a symbolic father—whether that person is, as for Sine, initially a stranger, or as for Henne, someone he already knew (or indeed, his biological father). However, there are certain films in which the Mitläufer never finds a strong socialist father figure with which to identify and thus fully resolve his

Oedipus complex. For example, in Ich zwing dich zu leben, the teacher attempts to prevent his son, Wolfgang, from joining the SS by isolating him in the forest. However, the teacher is not a positive hero himself; it is made clear at the beginning of the film that he has stood by and passively acquiesced to hundreds of other boys, who he has taught, leaving his care and joining the war. As such, his efforts are not successful, and Wolfgang never makes it further than the crisis stage of conversion—and that only when his father is shot and dies in front of him by the boys he had considered friends. Similarly, in Die Russen kommen,

Günter’s father has allowed himself to be killed in the war so that he does not have to continue participating in it—but this leaves Günter with only a letter from his father, from which he learns the truth of his death, and with the apparition of the Russian boy he has killed. Like Wolfgang, he enters the crisis phase, but with no one to lead him out of it, he goes mad rather than continuing through the phases of conversion. These films are discussed in more detail in the consequences and commitment section of this chapter.

232

Encounter and Interaction: the symbolic father as fetish The resolution of the Mitläufer’s Oedipus complex—his personal conversion from fascism to socialism through identification with a strong socialist symbolic father (hero)—is simultaneously a representation of this process for the East German masses: the people who will one day become the People. It is, therefore, also a legitimisation of the GDR as a state, in the same way as the films discussed in the first two chapters of this dissertation, in that the films draw a direct line from socialist action prior to and during the war to the conversion of the German masses (represented by the Mitläufer) by its end, thus paving the way for the new socialist state on German ground. Indeed, many of the films discussed here

(e.g., Mama, ich lebe; Meine Stunde Null; Königskinder) have some form of framing narrative which implies that the protagonist is living in a safe, socialist present while relating the events of his path to it.

The difference, however, between the Mitläufer films and films such as the

Thälmann films, is that where the latter draws a narrative line between the actors of socialist resistance during the Third Reich and the founding of the GDR by or due to those same actors, the former instead portrays an idealised between representatives of the State and Party—the symbolic hero, vessel for the sublime body of the leader—and the readying of the German masses—the body of the people—to one day be ready to become the People.

As such, the Mitläufer films must recognise far more explicitly the pollution of the German body by fascism than any of the films discussed previously do, because they represent the path of many men in the GDR: passive (or even active) participation in the machinery of the

Nazi state prior to their citizenship of the GDR.

The idealisation of a truly active conversion portrayed in these films is, of course, far from the reality experienced by most real East German citizens. What is interesting here is 233 that the films portray the process of conversion as inevitable and natural, through the

Oedipal device; that they (as in the films discussed in the previous two chapters, but more explicitly here) position the symbolic hero in a paternal function that strongly aligns the

Party and State with the Lacanian Name-of-the-Father, the reign of law; and that they thus seek to ‘expel’ the pollution of fascism from the masses—from the body of the people— through this resolution of the Oedipus complex, by redrawing the boundaries of the

Mitläufer’s identity. In other words, they seek to reverse the subject/object positions of socialism and fascism: by the end of the narrative, the subject is socialist, and the object is fascist, whereas at the beginning, the reverse is true. Even in those films where the conversion cannot be completed, the Mitläufer always makes it at least as far as the crisis stage of conversion, in which he can no longer reconcile fascism with his own identity.

The paradox of these narratives is, as I have discussed, that the films themselves demonstrate that fascism is an inherent part of the Mitläufer’s history and thus his body, and therefore cannot be truly expelled, because it remains in memory and in the consequences of his actions. Indeed, as discussed in the following section concerning consequences and commitment, some of the films show the Mitläufer suffering consequences for his fascist past even after his conversion is complete. Furthermore, the films in this chapter that show the most complete conversion do so by showing the

Mitläufer fighting back against fascism by the end of the narrative. Fascism thus becomes abject, not object, in these films: 234

‘We may call it a border; abjection is above all ambiguity. Because, while releasing a

hold, it does not radically cut off the subject from what threatens it—on the

contrary, abjection acknowledges it to be in perpetual danger.’289

Two of the best examples of this are Mama, ich lebe and Sterne. In the former, we see three of the four protagonists leave at the end of the film to go behind the German lines to aid the

Soviet war effort. In the latter, we see Walter acting for the Bulgarian resistance, having deserted from the German army and abandoned his position as an officer. In both cases, the films end with the protagonist personally overcoming fascism while simultaneously reaffirming the ‘perpetual danger’ that fascism represents (i.e., to the GDR); the films do not end in glorious victory over the German army. Reviews of Sterne echo this: ‘Dieser Film mahnt, nicht nur die Verbrechen des Faschismus nie zu vergessen, sondern ruft zum Kampf für den Sieg der Menschlichkeit auf … eine Warnung an alle Menschen Europas vor dem wiedererstehenden Faschismus in Westdeutschland.’290

Equally, in those films that have narratives that end in the post-war period, the reminders of the continuing dangers of fascism are still present. For example, in Sie nannten ihn Amigo, the final shots of Amigo show him riding a tank in a parade of strength, while much of the ‘present day’ (i.e., 1960s) action of Leute mit Flügeln revolves around

Ludwig Bartuscheck’s struggle to believe that his son has truly left behind his fascist past and become a dedicated socialist. The contemporary reviews of Leute mit Flügeln offer a hint of the underlying reason for this portrayal of their father-son conflict: ‘… die

289 Kristeva 1982, 9 290 ““Sterne” / Ein erschütternder deutsch-bulgarischer Film.” The phrase ‘er mahnt mich nur, die Verbrechen des Faschismus nie zu vergessen, sondern ruft auch zum Kampf für den Sieg der Menschlichkeit auf’ appears in several reviews of the film and was presumably taken from press materials provided by DEFA. 235

Drehbuchautoren… haben in Bartuscheck eine Zentralgestalt geschaffen, die—ohne mit den Merkmalen eines billigen Symbolismus zu sein—tatsächlich in sich das Profil und das

Wesen der Partei konzentriert.’291 Bartuscheck’s difficulties in believing his son represent the Party’s mistrust of the masses, “polluted” by their fascist past; his ultimate joyful acceptance of his grandson, at the end of the film, demonstrates that the next generation, born into the GDR, should heal that rift.

Nevertheless, the paradox of antifascist films—that they show the defeat of fascism to legitimise the founding of the GDR, but implicitly remind the viewer of the necessity to keep fighting fascism because it could rear its head at any time—is thus made far more explicit in these films than in other kinds of antifascist film. A review of Königskinder even explicitly points to this: ‘Man begreift, auch wenn der Schluß etwas unvermittelt kommt, solange der Krieg die Menschheit bedroht, ist “das Wasser für die Königskinder zu tief,” ist für das persönliche Glück kein Raum.’292 As Susan Buck-Morss writes, the continued presence of the absolute enemy of fascism is necessary to the ongoing cohesion of the GDR as a nation state: ‘Paradoxically, the threat on the metalevel [of the absolute enemy] is that the enemy might disappear. But a threat to what or to whom? Clearly to the legitimacy of the sovereign agent. More than that, however. The disappearance of the enemy threatens to dissolve the collective itself.’293 Were the threat of fascism to disappear, so too would the continued legitimacy of the sublime leader—and consequently the State, Party, and ideology.

291 Altenstedt, “Leute mit Flügeln.” 292 Göring, “Königskinder.” 293 Buck-Morss, 13 236

The role of the socialist father figure—the symbolic hero, analogous to the sublime leader—in the Mitläufer films is thus to stand in opposition to the fascist abject. The symbolic hero, as a vessel for the sublime body of the leader, and thus an embodiment of the Party, State, and ultimately the socialist ideology itself, is not endangered by the abject.

For these characters, fascism is solely an object, not something which defies the subject- object boundaries. As such, the Mitläufer’s identification with the symbolic hero not only resolves their ideological Oedipus complex, but also serves as a fetish, which covers over the unstable boundaries of their identity caused by the fascist abject. By desiring to be

(like) the symbolic hero, the Mitläufer can imagine that fascism is also for himself an object.

As Yuh-Yi Tan describes the Freudian conception of the fetish: ‘the fetish amounts to an anxiety-ameliorating substitute for the missing maternal phallus.’294 While I am utilising

Lacan’s broader concept of fetish as not solely relating to the phallus here, the relationship of the fetish to the Oedipus complex still stands: the symbolic hero soothes the Mitläufer’s anxieties concerning their rejection of fascism for socialism, and provides fulfilment to cover over the lack represented by the fascist abject—what Julia Hell describes as the

‘empty locus of power.’295

Encounter and Interaction: two outcomes There are, as described above, two possible paths the Mitläufer might take at this stage of their narrative, predicated on whether or not they have had a meaningful encounter with a symbolic hero, combined with successful and fruitful interaction with the symbolic hero or their proxy, the Vorbild. In the cases in which this does take place, the Mitläufer is able to

294 Yuh-Yi Tan, 154 295 Hell, 27 237 resolve their Oedipus complex and keep the fascist abject at bay through fetishism of the symbolic hero, leading into the final stages of conversion: commitment and consequences.

As discussed in the next section, the Mitläufer’s commitment is demonstrated through portrayal of them taking some form of decisive action, or verbally dedicating themselves to antifascism, socialism, or the Red Army. Meanwhile, the abject of fascism is further repelled through social or ideological rituals—the consequences of their conversion.

On the other hand, in those cases where no meaningful encounter with a symbolic hero takes place—Ich zwing dich zu leben and Die Russen kommen—the Mitläufer thus does not learn to identify with a strong socialist symbolic father. He therefore remains trapped in the realm of the abject, a liminal space with unclear boundaries between fascism and socialism, subject and object, self and other. To return to Žižek and the reign of law: in these cases, since the Mitläufer does not identify with a symbolic hero, he also does not submit to the reign of law which revolves around the locus of the sublime body of the leader, of which the symbolic hero is a vessel. As such, he remains outside of the law, but not entirely in the space of the Other, since his experiences in the course of the film have ultimately caused him to reject his fascist identity.

Both Günter and Wolfgang have experienced a traumatic moment, which acts as a catalyst for their crisis. The deliberate and violent hunting and killing of Wolfgang’s father by his friend in the Hitler Youth, and the Soviet invasion of Eastern Germany experienced by Günter are both violent acts which fatally undermine each boy’s identification with the fascist ideology. As such, they function as illegal violence in the sense that these acts serve to destroy the reign of law (for these individuals, at least); they cannot be justified within it.

According to Žižek, these experiences can thus only be dealt with as follows: ‘the 238 integration of some external, contingent traumatic kernel into the subject’s symbolic universe […] is the way to “gentrify” a traumatic experience, to efface its traumatic impact by transforming it into a moment of meaningful totality.’296 Their “traumatic impact” on each boy’s identity can therefore only be alleviated through the process described so far in this chapter: by being legitimised as the foundation of a new ideological reign of law and system of belief, through fetishistic identification with the symbolic hero, which covers over the Real of this violence by subsuming it into the new reign of law.

However, in these two films, there is no symbolic hero for Günter or Wolfgang to identify with. As the symbolic hero functions as a vessel for the sublime body of the leader—the socialist equivalent to the king—this means there can be no new reign of law for them to identify as part of. Žižek, following Hegel, states that ‘the King is undoubtedly the point of the “suture” of social totality, the point whose intervention transforms a contingent collection of individuals into a rational totality.’297 Without the king (the symbolic hero), neither boy can be “sutured” into a new ideology to replace fascism.

However, neither can they be entirely freed from fascism without him: also, ‘the King radically “desutures” all other subjects.’298 In other words, they remain in the void: in the realm of the abject and the Real, rejecting fascism but without a route into socialism.

6-7: Commitment and Consequences The encounter, interaction, and identification with the symbolic hero (father) thus leads to commitment, the penultimate stage of Rambo’s stages of conversion. Conversely, the lack of resolution of the Mitläufer’s Oedipus complex leads to a path with no future other than

296 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 215 297 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 19 298 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 20 239 madness. However, both of these outcomes have consequences, the final stage of conversion in Rambo’s model. These two final stages concern us in this section of this chapter.

Rambo describes the final two stages as follows: the convert undergoes ‘a specific turning point or decision’299 in order to commit to the new religion, and then experiences consequences of this commitment which can range from effects for the society or culture as a whole (for example, he mentions the conversions of indigenous peoples) or individual consequences in terms of a reassessment of their own identity by the convert.

The films discussed in this chapter in which the Mitläufer’s conversion is completed do not tend to show much, if any, of his final commitment to socialism, nor of the consequences that accompany it. Often, his commitment is not even explicitly shown—it's often only implied or stated in a framing story, at the beginning of the film, or in a very brief scene at the end. Meine Stunde Null is a good example of the former: the main narrative leaves Kurt having returned to the Soviet base after completing his mission for them and befriending the officers, but we only know for sure that truly represents a completed conversion because of his statement in voiceover during the film’s opening scenes—that the story he's about to tell represents his “Stunde Null”, the most important story of his life.

Sterne, on the other hand, uses both an opening voiceover and a brief scene at the end to confirm Walter’s conversion: in the film’s final scene, we see him working undercover for the resistance.300

299 Rambo, 124 300 Interestingly, this scene was cut from the West German release of the film, and seemingly also from certain later releases on VHS or DVD, since some scholarly work on the film has operated on the assumption that the film ends with the shots of Walter seeing the train leaving. See: Schwalbe, 70. 240

In the context of conversion to socialism as resolution of the Oedipus complex, this lack of focus on the final commitment makes sense: commitment is the default outcome, just as in the resolved Oedipus complex, the default outcome is successful identification with the father and integration into society. Only an unresolved Oedipus complex is considered to be an anomaly. As such, if the Mitläufer has undergone an appropriate process of encountering and identifying with a socialist symbolic hero/father, a commitment to socialism is to be expected. Only in the films in which the Oedipus complex is not resolved, or not satisfactorily resolved, do we particularly see a focus on the consequences for the Mitläufer.

In the following sections of this chapter, I therefore begin by examining the implications of consequences and commitment in those films which do feature a complete conversion, before considering those films discussed above, in which there is a lack of resolution: Die Russen kommen and Ich zwing dich zu leben. In addition, I discuss Die

Abenteuer des Werner Holt as an example of a film which represents a less clear-cut conversion and commitment to socialism than many of the others.

Commitment and Consequences: framing stories and happy endings As noted above, the majority of the films discussed in this chapter do not spend much, if any, on-screen time portraying the Mitläufer’s final commitment to socialism. As I have described, Meine Stunde Null and Sterne go somewhat further in this regard than many of the other films. However, of all the films discussed here, Leute mit Flügeln focuses the most on the commitment stage of conversion. As such, it is worth considering in more detail here. 241

Unlike many of the Mitläufer films, Leute mit Flügeln deals with the relationship between a biological father and son, in which the biological father, Ludwig Bartuschek, also represents the symbolic socialist father-hero for his son, Henne. Ludwig Bartuschek is portrayed from the beginning of the film as a symbolic hero, someone who is ideologically committed from the start and who does not undergo any kind of ideological development

(or really even character development) through the course of the narrative.301 This was, indeed, noted in reviews of the film, although not always positively. In Neues Deutschland, this is an element of the film to be praised and defended: ‘In der sozialistischen Filmkunst kennen wir Helden, die sich innerlich läutern. In ihr hat aber genauso Platz der Held, der sich in der Konfrontierung mit gesellschaftlichen Ereignissen, im Klassenkampf oder bei der Überwindung entwicklungsbedingter Konflikte bewährt.’302 On the other hand, the

Berliner Zeitung criticises the film for its stereotypical characters: ‘Der kollektive

Bartuscheck wird zum Prototyp des positiven Helden in des Begriffes wörtlicher

Bedeutung: ein Kommunist, der keine Fehler macht und keine Schwäche zeigt.’303

Bartuscheck is portrayed as a leader in the resistance and during the Spanish Civil

War, someone other antifascists look up to, follow, and respect, and he becomes a government official of rank after the founding of the GDR. Despite all of this, his son, Henne, becomes a Mitläufer and undergoes a conversion narrative that follows most of the hallmarks of the model narrative outlined above, as I have already briefly described. The

301 The film was conceived as a kind of sequel to Das Lied der Matrosen, in which the character Ludwig Bartuschek first appeared as a sailor who rises up against his commanding officers, inspired by the October Revolution. Interestingly, in that film, Bartuschek was played not by Erwin Geschonneck but rather by Hilmar Thate, who plays Henne, Ludwig’s son, in Leute mit Flügeln. 302 Kn., ““Leute mit Flügeln” stark diskutiert.” 303 H.U.E., “Helden dieser Zeit.” 242 film makes it clear that the reason that Henne is able to become brainwashed into fascism is due to Ludwig's long absence in Spain, in the resistance, and in the concentration camp.

During this time, Ludwig is repeatedly portrayed as dreaming of his son and remembering the good times they had together--but his son is shown, from the very beginning, to be bitter about his father's absence during his childhood.

What is significant about Leute mit Flügeln is the film’s use of a flashback structure, so that there is far more focus on the “present day” (1960) scenes than in any of the other films. In these scenes, Ludwig is suspicious of his son, after they are reunited on opposite sides of the war; and Henne is bitter and unsure how to build a relationship with his father post-war. While at the end of the film, Ludwig is shown to have made his peace with his son's past, and accepted him to be fully committed to socialism in the present, to some extent implying that this is overdue (and making it clear that from Henne's perspective his father is partially at fault for Henne's roundabout path to socialism), certain scenes also imply that Henne is initially only enthusiastically participating in socialist society in the

"present day" in order to fill his own personal dreams of becoming an aeronautical engineer like his father, rather than through true ideological conviction. As such, Henne’s narrative is in many ways split between his path to conversion in the flashback scenes, and the kind of commitment he has achieved at the end of it, rather than primarily focusing on the conversion alone.

Ultimately, while the film suggests that Henne's collaboration was the result of his lack of a strong ideological father figure, its lack of condemnation of Ludwig's choice to put ideological commitment first still suggests that Ludwig chose the best path, despite its drawbacks. Indeed, contemporary reviews of the film suggest that the conflict between 243 father and son serves primarily to highlight Ludwig as a positive hero.304 This is similar to the establishment of Klaus-Peter as a Vorbild and future socialist at the end of Stärker als die Nacht: Hans' choice to put his antifascist activity before his family, and his consequent death, while traumatic for his family, was ultimately for the best, since it helped lead to a socialist future that his son could also participate in.

Unlike in Stärker als die Nacht, which, as discussed in the previous chapter, clearly marks Hans’ son as his successor, the tension between father and son in Leute mit Flügeln makes Ludwig Bartuschek’s choice of the socialist cause over his family seem at first sight more questionable. However, his narrative is in many ways very similar to that of Hans: his departure for the Spanish civil war is not so much a choice to leave as a flight into exile, just as Hans’ is separated from his family initially by his imprisonment.

In other words, it is fascism and its agents who are responsible, ultimately, for the absence of a strong father figure in Henne’s childhood, and his corresponding Oedipal and conversion crisis. The conversion process (and resolution of his Oedipus complex through ultimately re-encountering and interacting with his father) helps him finally reach

(ideological) maturity. Ludwig Bartuschek’s ultimate acceptance of his son thus represents the symbolic acceptance of the Mitläufer into the ‘fold’ after conversion—a full

304 For example: ‘Der positive Held, verkörpert durch den Genossen Bartuschek, weist durch sein todesmutiges Handeln den Weg von der Nacht zur Licht, aus der Unterdrückung zur Freiheit. Sehr anschaulich wurde in dem Film der Konflikt zwischen Vater und Sohn gestaltet.’ No author, “Mitreißendes Epos,” Tribüne, 11.10.1960.

‘Besonders beeindruckt hat mich das Verhalten des Parteisekretärs seinem Sohn gegenüber. Er stellt nicht nur Forderungen an andere, sondern beginnt mit der Erziehungsarbeit bei seinem eigenen Sohn. Sein ganzes Handeln wird von einer Summe reicher, im Klassenkampf erworbener Erfahrungen diktiert, das gibt ihm die Möglichkeit, die Menschen richtig anzupacken.’ Egon Grimm, “Bartuschek beeindruckt,” Tribüne, 26.7.1960. 244 confirmation of his son’s commitment and and exploration of the consequences of that commitment for both the converted and the converter.

Commitment and Consequences: rituals, the abject, and the consequences of commitment Rather than explicitly portraying or stating the Mitläufer’s ultimate commitment to socialism, many of the films discussed in this chapter tend to imply the protagonist’s commitment through a portrayal of the consequences he experiences as a result of his commitment. These consequences are usually represented through the Mitläufer’s participation in some form of ritual action (such as participating in a parade), or through the use of a framing story as a narrative device, in which the Mitläufer recounts his conversion narrative from a future perspective as a committed socialist. This is, in itself, a ritual action, since the telling of conversion narratives holds a specific function within an ideology to strengthen the commitment of those who have already converted, as well as to help convert the unconverted. John Lynch states that ‘the narrative of the conversion experience […] aims to convert its implied audience of the unconverted to the identity and affiliation the narrator has assumed.’305 As such, it is noteworthy that the framing structure present in many Mitläufer films positions the protagonist as a first person narrator, even if this is often not present throughout the rest of the film beyond the first scene. Moreover,

Lynch goes on to state that ‘the conversion narrative serves social and rhetorical functions for those who already believe and those searching for the truth. Historically, Puritan churches in the mid-1600s and again during the 1730s required members to recount how

305 Lynch, 3 245 they were born again into God’s grace to attain church membership.’306 The recounting of a conversion narrative functioned as a ritual in order to gain full entrance into the religion.

Rituals are important in Kristeva’s conception of the abject, as a means to uphold the ‘unstable border’307 between subject and abject. Beardsworth notes that: ‘In Powers of

Horror religions take on the task of transposing the semiotic (abject) into the imaginary and, in doing so, provide a social symbolic elaboration of the unstable border of self and society. Religion protects the subject and society by shifting the border into the realm of things.’308 In this context, socialist ideology (and in particular, antifascism) function in the same way; by posing this border as between the (socialist) self and the (fascist) enemy.

However, as Beardsworth goes on to state, rituals are necessary to continue to uphold this shifting of the boundary: ‘This act [the shifting of the border] is fundamental to collective existence. On Kristevan ground, collective existence in the sacred and religion is founded, not only on paternal law, but on the symbolic accommodation of a—forgotten— maternal authority.’309 As a socialist state founded on fascist ground, the GDR and its citizens were “born out of” fascism, and as has already been discussed in this chapter, the fascist is coded as feminine (or even maternal) in many of the Mitläufer films. This

‘forgotten maternal authority’ is what must be made abject through the rituals of antifascism, and through the rituals enacted diegetically by these films’ protagonists. As

Beardsworth concludes: ‘Sacred and religious practices uphold this foundation [of collective existence on paternal law] by having the members of a society re-enact, in

306 Lynch, 3 307 Beardsworth, 120 308 Beardsworth, 120 309 Beardsworth, 120 246 relation to the abject thing, the warding off of the unstable boundary. This is the meaning of rituals in this context.’310

As has already been discussed in this chapter, antifascist films themselves function as a form of societal ritual in this regard, by re-enacting the ‘warding off’ of fascism on a societal and individual level. Mitläufer films double this, by portraying an individual’s conversion, but also through the rituals their protagonists enact during the films’ narratives. These rituals are connected to the Mitläufer’s commitment and its consequences because it is only after he finally commits to socialism that he needs to continue to enact this “warding off”; indeed, enacting these rituals serves to demonstrate his commitment and is one of the consequences of his completed conversion.

Commitment is thus often implied through portrayals of the consequences of conversion, rather than being explicitly shown. As described above, these portrayals tend to fall into two categories. In the first type, the film ends by showing its characters participating in some form of ritual action. For example, at the end of Sie nannten ihn

Amigo, we see Amigo driving a tank in a military parade and grinning to the camera.311

Wolfgang Staudte’s Rotation was also supposed to contain a final scene involving a ritual: in the original version of the film, when Hellmuth returns to his father after the war, his father tells him: ‘Dies ist Dein erster Anzug—und dies ist Deine letzte Uniform,’ after which they then burn the uniform together. However, the dialogue was ultimately changed after a contentious meeting between Kurt Maetzig and Staudte, ostensibly to avoid

310 Beardsworth, 120 311 While we do not see Sine at the end of the film, this is unsurprising, as he is not the main character in the film. It is nevertheless made clear that he has sided with Amigo and socialism in his final scene, and thus Amigo’s position in the tank implies a similar future for Sine and Amigo’s brother as well. 247 offending those who were still fighting for peace and freedom. In addition, the scene in which a Wehrmacht officer objects to the SS officer’s plans for blowing up the U-Bahn due to the thousands of civilians in the tunnel was added. Staudte objected strongly to these changes, particularly concerning the final scene:

‘Er steht auf dem Standpunkt, dass der Satz vielleicht bei schärfer Durchleuchtung

ideologisch angreifbar sei, dass er aber genau in dem richtigen und gewünschten

Sinne am Schluss des Filmes einen spontanen Applaus hervorrufen kann, während

der von uns [ie, Maetzig/DEFA] vorgeschlagene Satz […] zwar ideologisch durchaus

unangreifbar sei, jedoch andererseits auch völlig wirkungslos.’312

What is not noted in the meeting’s minutes, but is an obvious consequence of these changes, is that the film’s condemnation of the Wehrmacht is softened, the blame placed more squarely on the shoulders of the SS, and its condemnation of war in favour of peace lessened. Hellmuth’s commitment becomes commitment to antifascism—not to peace.

Indeed, Staudte’s hopes for the film—that the audience recognise Hans and Hellmuth as

Mitläufer and ultimately realise ‘that is was impossible to remain apolitical’—313did not come to fruition. As Weckel notes: ‘The press in the Soviet occupation zone and later in the

GDR either focused on Behnke’s turn toward resistance or went so far as to make him into a bona fide resistance fighter.’314

In the second type, these consequences and resulting commitment are shown via a framing narrative. In these films, the opening scene or shots establish that the Mitläufer has

312 “Protokoll über die Besprechung zwischen Wolfgang Staudte und Kurt Maetzig in Hamburg am 3., 4., und 5.7.49 über die Änderungen des Films “Rotation”.” undated. From the file Kurt Maetzig 1407, Akademie der Künste. 313 Weckel, 80 314 Weckel, 80 248 acted against fascism or is already a socialist. These are then followed by a cut to the beginning of the Mitläufer’s chronological narrative, and his experiences are consequently portrayed in chronological order until the end of the film, when the embedded narrative rejoins the framing narrative. As such, the structure of these films makes it clear from the beginning that they are telling the story of a conversion.

The best example of this is Meine Stunde Null, which opens with Kurt Hurting explaining that he will tell the story of his ‘Stunde Null’, which is important to him because it's his own story, not a typical story. Not only does the film therefore tell the story of Kurt’s conversion, but indeed implies that the embedded narrative that follows is Kurt’s own retelling of his conversion. This is an act that adheres to one of the purposes of the conversion narrative: to tell one’s own conversion narrative (or indeed, to retell a conversion narrative at all) acts to strengthen the commitment of those who have already converted, and to encourage those who have not to convert.315

Sterne also makes use of a framing story, although the narrator at the beginning is anonymous (it is not Walter). The film also opens with a series of shots of its protagonists, particularly Ruth and Walter, who, in close-up, turn towards the camera as the credits roll.

Thomas Elsaesser makes an interesting point about these shots: ‘le film construit plutôt l’axe temporel d’un futur impossible, hypothéqué, de sorte que les gros plan rapprochés n’évoquent ni proximité ni intimité mais remplissent une fonction d’appel.’316 From the beginning of the film, before we know who these characters are or their relationship to one

315 See Pallotti, 74: ‘A conversion narrative generates further conversions. The aims of the exposition of the story of one’s conversion were thus manifold: the public delivery could be effectual in instructing, exhorting, comforting, teaching and edifying the believers who, by sharing their experiences, helped one another construct their (spiritual) identity as part of the close-knit community.’ 316 Elsaesser, 27 249 another, there is a call to action to the spectator: to prevent events such as those we see in the film from recurring, to continue the antifascist resistance. As such, the opening credits of the film serve as a framing narrative just as much as the anonymous voiceover in foregrounding a continuous history of antifascism from the film’s wartime setting to the present-day GDR of 1959.

Konrad Wolf’s Mama, ich lebe is similar example to Meine Stunde Null, if less clear- cut, due to the more complicated structure of the embedded narrative, which is not told entirely chronologically but rather also incorporates a series of flashbacks. At the beginning of the film, as the credits play, shots from the window of a moving train are intercut with a still image: a sepia-toned photograph of four young men in uniform, smiling together and leaning against a train. From the photograph, the film then cuts to Becker, who we have already seen in the photograph. We see him called away from digging a trench as a prisoner-of-war, awkwardly taking a note to deliver for another German prisoner, who stares at him in distrust. As he is driven away on a small cart, he tells the beginning of his own story in voiceover: ‘Im dritten Jahr der Gefangenschaft war ich am Ende. Ein Verräter, sagten die anderen, für ein bisschen mehr fressen…’ The photograph and the voiceover together thus make it clear that Becker is speaking from a future perspective, but it is not as obvious as in Meine Stunde Null that the film deals with his conversion: as Knut

Hickethier notes, ‘Der “Bildungsroman”, den der Film für seine vier Protagonisten schreibt, ist längst nicht am Ende, als der Film seine Zuschauer entläßt.’317 At the end of the film, the spectator is left with the knowledge that Becker is the only one of the four to survive, but his concrete future is left to the viewer’s imagination. However, the framing narrative, as in

317 Hickethier, 178 250

Sterne, implies the inevitable continuity of history and continued necessity to fight against fascism through the evocation of memory by the photograph. Discussing the scene in which

Kolja is killed, Wölfel refers to an earlier scene, where the four protagonists are still travelling by train: ‘During the train journey, the first Soviet tutor of the four, Major Mauris, predicts, ‘Do you know who you will have to face? Your own memories.’ This prediction comes true in the scene in the woods which is, in fact, the repetition of Becker’s capture presented in a flashback earlier on.’318 This statement, in combination with the device of the photograph, and along with the film’s implication of history repeating itself, imply that the path of Becker’s life is forever inscribed by his experiences; leading to the conclusion that it is inevitable that he remained on the side of antifascism, even if it is not as explicitly stated as in Meine Stunde Null.

Both Rotation and Königskinder function similarly, although in neither film is there the sense that the Mitläufer narrates his own conversion to the spectator, nor does he speak from a post-war perspective in the framing narrative. Instead, we see both protagonists in a position where they have turned on fascism in the opening framing narrative, and then see how they arrived at that position via the embedded narrative. In the opening shots of Rotation, we see the protagonist imprisoned as bombs fall around Berlin.

Graffiti is visible on his cell wall, but its significance only becomes clear when the shot is repeated towards the end of the film.319 Similarly, in Königskinder, the first scene after the opening credits is chronologically at the end of Michael and Jürgen’s narratives. We see

Michael being helped by a Soviet officer, his arm in a sling, who then hands him a piece of paper. In voiceover, Michael reads what it says: that he resisted Hitler, was sentenced to 15

318 Wölfel 2012, 30 319 See discussion of this scene in chapter 2. 251 years in prison, was conscripted, and deserted the army to join the Soviet side.

Furthermore, he says that this can be verified by his former colleague and schoolmate,

Jürgen. Already, therefore, at the beginning of the film, we know that Michael makes it to the Red Army, and that Jürgen is with him—and he is not naming Jürgen as an enemy. This is then confirmed by Jürgen’s reading of his own statement, again in voiceover—but he interrupts himself as it begins to outline his collaboration with the Nazis, asking: ‘Warum steht das alles hier drin? Das ist alles vorbei! Das ist alles ganz anders gekommen!’ We thus know from the beginning of the film that Jürgen will convert, and that Michael functions as a Vorbild.

Both of these types of representation of consequences represent ‘rituals’ in the

Kristevan sense. They are re-enactments of the warding off of the unstable boundary between the socialist subject and fascism, which, as previously discussed, has been made abject during the course of the film. As Beardsworth notes, ‘what these [ritual] practices accomplish with respect to the abject is causing it to exist through an act of exclusion that shifts the abject from the border of the subject.’320 While fascism becomes abject through the Mitläufer’s indelible connection to it, these ritual acts codify it, and this ‘codification of abjection shores up the subject and society at their limits.’321

However, not only do the onscreen actions of the Mitläufer constitute a ritual, but also the act of watching the film for a spectator is in itself a form of ritual, as discussed by El

Khachab.322 Importantly, Kristeva states that one characteristic of the rituals and rites designed to protect us from ‘defilement’ is ‘one’s being totally blind to filth itself, even

320 Beardsworth, 119 321 Beardsworth, 119 322 See: Khacheb, “Cinema as a Sacred Surface: Ritual Rememoration of Transcendence.” 252 though it is the object of those rites.’323 In each of these films, by the time the Mitläufer reaches the “ritual” within the chronology of the narrative, he believes himself to be on the other side of his conversion and to have escaped from fascism. He is blind to the abject

’filth’ that remains within him due to his fascist past, that by the very ritual of burning a uniform or retelling his conversion he is delimiting from his subjectivity. Similarly, the spectators—the East German masses—who ritually consume the conversion narrative do so blind to the ‘little piece of the Real’ that threatens the boundary of the Law in their system. The successful conversion narrative, indeed, with its key utilization of the symbolic

(hero) father, functions fetishistically as a whole, to cover this over, both for the Mitläufer within the narrative, as well as for the East German spectator. By enacting these rituals, which reinscribe the fetishistic “I know very well [about my fascist past], but nevertheless

[I am now a socialist],” in which the Mitläufer is shown onscreen to gain the approval and acceptance of the symbolic father, not only is the Mitläufer’s position as fully within the reign of law confirmed, but the position of the spectator within the reign of law as well.

Commitment and consequences: borderline commitments and inadequate fathers In films in which the Mitläufer fails to find an appropriate symbolic (hero) father, his commitment is thus far less clear-cut, and the consequences of that consequently unstable or ambiguous commitment are often more punishing or traumatic as a result. One such film is Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt, who throughout the film fails repeatedly to find a true symbolic hero with whom he can identify. His own father chooses to abandon his family and son in order to, in his own way, stand up to fascism—but his resistance is passive, not active, and Werner is not aware of what his father has done, or the consequences. As a

323 Kristeva 1982, 73; 74 253 result of his father’s weak, passive resistance, and resulting absence, Werner becomes indoctrinated by fascism, joining the army and the war. Indeed, he does not know why his father has abandoned him until after he has already become part of the German army.

While his father is not explicitly condemned in the film for his choice to deny his son of a father figure, he is also not held up as symbolic heroes in the same way Ludwig

Bartuscheck is in Leute mit Flügeln. This is partly because Werner's father has his own history as a collaborator before he begins his own resistance: he refuses to help the Nazis create the gas for use in the death camps, which he previously had helped to invent. Unlike

Bartuscheck, this is an act of passive resistance: rather than actively trying to prevent the gas from being used, he simply resigns from his job. As such, at the end of Werner's conversion narrative, he does not receive absolution from his father as Ludwig’s son Henne does: Werner instead pictures Gundel, the socialist girl he tried to help earlier in the film, calling him to her. She is the closest thing to a symbolic hero he can find in the film, but she cannot function as a symbolic father with whom Werner can identify.

Werner’s conversion thus appears to be more tenuous at the end of the film than those discussed in the previous section, since it concludes with neither the reunion with a symbolic (or real!) socialist father, nor any framing narrative or epilogue to imply that

Werner has ultimately found fulfilment in the GDR. Instead, Werner’s final actions in the film demonstrate his final, decisive separation from fascism, and imply that he will turn towards socialism. As Barton Byg notes: ‘Die historischen Überlegungen werden filmisch zu einer einzelnen impulsiven, verzweifelten und individualistischen Geste einer Filmfigur 254 reduziert, welche dem Film einen genrespezifischen und gewaltsamen Abschluss seiner

Narration liefert.’324

Byg, in his article on three of Wolf’s films of the 1960s, positions the film in its historical context of the Cold War, but considers the ending to be reminiscent of a Western:

In the final scene of the film, Werner hides in a darkened machine-gun bunker, using the gun to shoot the SS soldiers who have hung his friend, Wolzow. The camera then cuts to an upwards shot of the dark stairwell as he ascends into the daylight. This is highly suggestive of imagery noted by Hans Maier in “Political Religions and their Images”:

‘Daniel Suter has investigated the linguistic imagery of eradication, smashing, and

obliteration that was used repeatedly in the show-trials of the Soviet Union (and in

the communist Eastern Bloc in the postwar era). With bodily destruction, the name

and memory of the political enemy was also to be wiped out. But just as regularly,

images of sun and light followed images of eternal eclipse, darkness and

forgetting.’325

However, as discussed in the case of double conversion, the fascist abject is not so easily purged; Werner himself is still wearing his uniform as he walks away from the burning village in the final shot of the film.

The spectator is thus left to assume that Werner will continue along the path to socialism due to his final vision of Gundel, who of all of Werner’s encounters most fulfilled the role of Vorbild. However, it is ultimately only clear that Werner has left fascism behind him; we do not know for sure that his conversion is complete. The film thus underscores the importance of the symbolic hero for true ideological conviction for the spectator,

324 Byg, 117 325 Maier, 276 255 because it so often thematizes that Werner is lacking guidance and leadership, and finds it only in the wrong places, such as his friend, Gilbert Wolzow, who is truly convinced by the fascist cause, or finds only others who are not enough of a symbolic father figure to draw him to them, such as his friend, Sepp Gomulka, who himself choses to cross over to the

Soviets, but who is not able to convince Werner to do the same. Had Werner found someone to identify with to follow, who embodied the correct ideology, the film implies, his departure from fascism would have happened both earlier and with far less personal trauma; he would perhaps not have had to witness the deaths of his best friends, nor would he have had to murder their killers in his grief.

Commitment and Consequences: the death of the father, the madness of the son While Werner Holt must undergo several traumatic events beyond his initial crisis before he finally completes his separation from fascism, the end of the film nevertheless implies that he will continue along the path to socialism; that his conversion will ultimately be more or less successful. In contrast, in two of the films discussed in this chapter, no successful conversion takes place, nor is it portrayed as a possibility, due to the circumstances in which the protagonist finds himself. In neither Die Russen kommen nor Ich zwing dich zu leben does the Mitläufer make it further than the crisis stage of conversion.

Neither Günther nor Wolfgang reach the commitment phase, or are able to resolve their

Oedipal crisis, and both are shown at the end of the film to have simply lapsed into a kind of madness or desperation. Wölfel describes Die Russen kommen as ‘[portraying] individual 256 collapse at the end of the war instead of the the conversion and redemption that the ruling discourse had rendered canonical.’326

In both cases, this lack of commitment is caused by a lacking father figure, as previously discussed. The consequence of this for both Günther and Wolfgang is that they are thus left to languish in the realm of the abject—alienated from the fascist object, and yet unable to extricate their subjectivity from it and reform the boundaries of their subjectivity around a new ideology. Müller and Richardson cite Lacan as follows:

‘For the psychosis to be triggered off, the Name-of-the-Father, verworfen, foreclosed,

that is to say, never having attained the place of the Other, must be called into

symbolic opposition to the subject.

It is the lack of the Name-of-the-Father in that place which, by the hole that it opens

up in the signified, sets off the cascade of reshapings of the signifier from which the

increasing disaster of the imaginary proceeds, to the point at which the level is

reached at which signifier and signified are stabilized in the delusional metaphor

[1977, p. 217/577].

But how in fact can the Name-of-the-Father be called by a subject to a place “in

which it has never been” (1977, p. 217/578)? By an encounter with some specific

concrete father-figure, denoted by Lacan as simply “A-father.”’327

In the case of Wolfgang in Ich zwing dich zu leben, this encounter is with his own father—or rather, his own father’s death. The shooting of his father by Wolfgang’s friend and mentor,

Wolf, forces Wolfgang to finally see his father as Other to his own (and Wolf’s) ideological position in fascism, something which Wolfgang, with his childish games, has previously

326 Wölfel 2013, 332 327 Muller and Richardson, 222-23 257 never fully recognized. This is because his father, despite his desperate efforts to save

Wolfgang from being conscripted into the last days of the war, never manages to offer

Wolfgang a convincing alternative, or indeed, provide him with any sort of masculine role model to emulate. Wolfgang instead looks to Wolf for his model of adult masculinity

(despite Wolf’s youth)—an illusion which is only finally destroyed when Wolf shoots

Wolfgang’s father, and Wolfgang suddenly sees the truth behind his childish fantasies. In the final shot of the film, we see Wolfgang standing and silently screaming, while the sound of his scream is replaced, instead, by birdsong. Unlike for Werner Holt, no future as a socialist is implied here; only a life (and childhood) destroyed by fascism.

In Die Russen kommen, the state of madness in which Günther finishes the film, and the lack of any redemption for him, is even more clear-cut. Berghahn describes his descent into madness: ‘in a highly subjective sequence of dream images and memories, we witness

Günter trying to come to terms with a guilt that eventually drives him to insanity.’328

However, where Berghahn ascribes his madness solely to the guilt of shooting the Russian boy, I submit that it is knowledge of the truth behind his father's death which is also a contributing factor to his mental collapse: just as his self-image splits between fascist

Other, who followed the rules, and friend of the dead Russian boy, who understands himself as guilty for his death, so too does his image of his father split between dedicated

Nazi officer and suicidal disillusioned casualty of an unjustified war. Not only that, but his encounters with the Soviet officer who talks to him in his cell do not lead to Günther seeing him as an alternative father figure, perhaps because this man is so instrumental in destroying Günther’s ideals of his real father, by showing him his father’s letter. As Byg

328 Berghahn, “Post-1990 Screen Memories,” 298 258 notes, the ending of the film poses ‘ein in zweifacher Hinsicht differenziertes Gefühl des

Verlustes und des erfolglosen Rebellierens, das ebenso vom Gefühl verlorener Unschuld gekennzeichnet ist, ohne dem Bildungsroman zu folgen und den Schritt ins Erwachsensein zu erzählen.’329 Günther remains at the end of the film where he started: on the boundaries of childhood and adulthood. Equally, as Hans Lohmann notes, he remains stateless; his lack of a father figure leaves him with a lack of a (new) fatherland as well.330

In the other Mitläufer films discussed in this chapter, in which such an encounter leads to identification with the symbolic (hero) father, this successful resolution of the

Oedipal crisis leads to a successful commitment to socialism; a fetishistic warding off of the abject and covering over of the violence at the root of the reign of law. However, in the case of these two films (and to an extent, also Werner Holt), the Mitläufer fail to find a path into the reign of law. They remain in the realm of the abject, entangled in the maternal (here: fascist) authority, which they have not been able to escape; indeed, they now have no means of escape due to the death of the (in any case inadequate) father. In Powers of

Horror, Kristeva describes how, due to Oedipus’ ignorance that he has killed his father and married his mother, abjection breaks out in his desire to know. His solution to this is to exile himself, by which act he ‘thrusts defilement aside’; to blind himself, an ‘exclusion from sight […] so as not to have to suffer the objects of his desire’ (the face of his wife-mother).

329 Byg, 119. 330 Lohmann discusses the sequence in Günter sees his father leave on the train: ‘Die Sequenz deutet auf Günters Vaterbedarf; es mag nicht zu weit ausgeholt sein, so gesellschaftlich auslotet der Film akzentuiert ist, auf seinen Vaterlandsbedarf.’ Lohmann, 63 259

The image of blinding himself represents the split subject, torn between subject and abject.331

Both Günther and Wolfgang have been complicit in the deaths of their fathers through their enthusiastic participation in the system which killed them: Günther’s father would rather die on the front than face the disappointment of his wife and son or the consequences of his actions, while Wolfgang leads his father’s killers straight to him through his naive participation in their hunt. As such, they have both aligned themselves with the maternal (fascism, as previously discussed—and indeed, both of their mothers are aligned with fascism in each film) and been in some way instrumental in the killing of their fathers. When finally confronted with this knowledge, each becomes split and faces madness. Günther’s mental state is portrayed as literally split, through his imaginary conversations with the Russian boy he has killed. Wolfgang remains narratively ‘stuck’ at his father’s death scene: in the closing shots of the film, all he can do is close his eyes and scream.

That Günther and Wolfgang remain as split subjects, caught in both subject and abject, means that they represent a threat to the boundaries of the reign of law, as previously discussed in this chapter. Both films thus demonstrate to the contemporary East

German viewer that, without a strong socialist Vorbild or positive hero to follow, the only possible path is ideological ‘blindness’—madness—with no hope of salvation. That Die

Russen kommen was banned for 19 years before being ultimately released in 1987 is thus hardly surprising—as discussed in the final chapter of this dissertation, during the GDR’s last decade, the role of the positive hero begins to fracture, and representations of Mitläufer

331 Kristeva 1982, 83-84 260 begin to be more ambiguous. However, Die Russen kommen and Ich zwing dich zu leben also bring to light a paradox inherent to antifascism and antifascist films; the necessity of the continued danger of fascism to the survival of the State, Party, and Ideology.

Conclusion: the masses and the reign of law Let us briefly, then, return to Heiner Carow’s reported response to criticisms of DEFA for focusing too much on antifascist films at the expense of other genres, cited in the introduction to this chapter:

‘Ja, es hat eine große Zahl DEFA-Filme über den Faschismus gegeben, das ist Carow

klar. Trotzdem werden immer wieder derartige Filme gedreht werden müssen—

solange nämlich, bis der Faschismus wirklich Vergangenheit geworden ist.’332

This statement implies the paradox laid bare in the Mitläufer films discussed in this chapter: that in fact, the reverse is true. The repetition of the foundational narrative of antifascism was necessary for cohesion of a GDR identity, but the continued threat of fascism was necessary for this narrative to hold any power. That fascism becomes abject, not Other, in these films is key to understanding this. In Powers of Horror, Kristeva states:

‘I experience abjection only if an Other has settled in place and stead of what will be

“me”. Not at all an other with whom I identify and incorporate, but an Other who

precedes and possesses me, and through such possession causes me to be. A

possession previous to my advent: a being-there of the symbolic that a father might

or might not embody. Significance is indeed inherent in the human body.’333

332 Junge, “Warum dieser Schluß, Heiner Carow?” 333 Kristeva 1982, 6-7 261

The body of the people, in order to birth the body of the People, must be purged—fully exhumed of all traces of fascism. The role of the symbolic hero/leader/Party/State is to hold that sublime body in perpetuity until the people are ready to birth it. This is what the

Mitläufer films portray—the purging of fascism, possibly even from bodies that have actively embodied it. However, as Kristeva describes, the very necessity of this purging demonstrates the presence of fascism all the same —the purged is abject, not object, and thus threatening of boundaries (of the ideology) even after it has been supposedly purged.

The symbolic order, previous to the advent of the body of the people of the GDR, is that of fascist ideology and of (fascist) biological fathers, both of which we see emasculated and feminised in the Mitläufer films. These films seek both to de-symbolise and to replace them with new symbolic fathers, and a new symbolic order, through representing the transition from fascism to socialism as an Oedipal process, and process of rejecting one’s desire for the (feminine, castrated) mother, and identifying with the (rational, powerful) father.

However, the very act of repeatedly portraying this process through films and other art forms, and particularly the thematizing of this act of transition in the Mitläufer films, demonstrates that fascism is not only continually present as abject within the body of the people, but is also necessary; for how else does a society define itself, if not in opposition to that which it rejects? As previously discussed, Buck-Morss makes clear in her discussion of the absolute enemy and its function for both socialism and capitalism in the late twentieth century that it is necessary for the continued cohesion of the collective—and thus for the continued legitimacy of the ‘sovereign agent’ (sublime leader/State/Party).334

334 Buck-Morss 12-13 262

The structure of the Mitläufer narratives as conforming to a process of religious conversion also supports the idea of fascism as abject within GDR identity. Describing the role of the abject in Christianity, Kristeva refers to it as, ‘a threatening otherness—but always nameable, always totalizeable.’335 As we have seen in the examples described in this chapter, this is precisely the role of fascism in Mitläufer films; something which threatens the protagonist’s very existence if he does not find a way to reject it and purge it. Kristeva describes how this functions within an ideology: ‘An unshakable adherence to Prohibition and Law is necessary if that perverse interspace of abjection is to be hemmed in an thrust aside.’336 As Alan L. Nothnagle notes, the continuation of antifascism—the GDR’s foundational ‘myth’, to use his terminology—throughout its forty year history was necessary precisely because of its function of maintaining the fascist abject at its boundaries: ‘… once communist states, as utopian regimes, invoke their mythology, they can never let it go. No utopian regime ever measures up to its millenarian goals, regardless of the quality of its propaganda, and hence it is always threatened by a worrisome lack of present.’337

As Günther’s and Wolfgang’s narratives demonstrate, the encounters (or lack thereof) with a symbolic hero (father) and/or Vorbild in Mitläufer narratives are thus key to understanding the role and function of DEFA’s positive heroes within the reign of law.

Where the films discussed in chapters one and two of this dissertation deal primarily with the symbolic hero and the Vorbilder who follow him, the Mitläufer films put the focus on the masses—the people themselves. These films demonstrate how, in conversion narrative

335 Kristeva 1982, 17 336 Kristeva 1982, 16 337 Nothnagle, 8 263 terms, ‘sinners’ can turn to the ‘true path’ through encounters and interactions with positive heroes. The Mitläufer functions as a proxy for the spectator; the films’ narratives enact in a more concrete way that which the other films seek to achieve with their audiences—a rejection of fascism and an increased dedication to antifascism and socialism.

Chapter 4: Hollow heroes: DEFA in the 80s and 90s By the early 1980s, DEFA was suffering from stagnation, particularly in its feature film studio. The citizenry of the GDR had been lured away by western television or even apolitical import films from both the East and West, and there were few opportunities for new and younger directors to work in the studio.338 Decades of censorship from within

DEFA, from the Ministry of Culture, and self-censorship, meant that many projects that would perhaps offer different perspectives or draw new audiences were never even floated. Films continued to be made about the same topics as in the previous decades: historical antifascist films, Alltagsfilme, along with the numerous romances and musicals, which drew audiences.339 Moreover, DEFA productions had to compete with television

338 Reinhold Steingröver discusses the attempts by the ‘youngest generation of directors, producers, and cinematographers at DEFA, the so-called Nachwuchsgruppe/Arbeitsgruppe 3’ to combat this: after ‘five years of discussion’, they produced a manifesto, to be presented at the Fifth Congress of the film and television workers association: ‘The manifesto critically analyzed the training and employment situation at the Babelsberg school and the DEFA studios and demanded that all censorship and taboos be abolished, and that opportunities be provided earlier for younger talents to realize their unique visions. The authors of the manifesto declared DEFA films to have become boring and irrelevant to their increasingly sparse audience.’ (5) However, the group was ultimately convinced to withdraw the manifesto before the conference, with the promise that it would be discussed afterwards; this never happened. A new studio was never founded; belatedly, ‘funds for a new production group within DEFA were granted in the spring of 1989 and formally instituted on January 1, 1990.’ (6) This was the production group DaDaeR, which produced Das Land hinter dem Regenbogen, to be discussed in the second half of this chapter. See Steingröver 2014, 5-6 339 Leonie Naughton surveys three film historians’ perspectives on DEFA in the 1980s: ‘Bärbel Dalichow, Wolfgang Gersch, and Jürgen Bretschneider are among the film historians who have viewed the mid- and late 1980s as a period of decline at DEFA.’ While she notes that Gersch and Bretschneider both view these years as ‘a period of stagnation’ in which ‘DEFA films … failed to accept the last challenge that faced them: the chance to describe a socialist alternative and to push ahead for the disbanding of a political system that was in ruins’, she describes Dalichow’s view as more nuanced, citing her as follows: ‘in DEFA films of the 1980s there was no uncritical glorification of existing circumstances.’ See: Naughton, 40-41

265 broadcasts of German films from prior to 1933, as well as Hollywood films, more of which were imported into the GDR in its last decade than in any previous one.340

For much of the 1980s, as McGee notes, the state, fearing the consequences of outright censorship, ‘adopted a policy of negotiation, compromise, and stalling’341 with regard to contentious film releases. McGee’s article, Revolution in the Studio?, documents the struggle of the youngest generation of directors at DEFA, including those whose films are discussed in this chapter such as Ulrich Weiss and Michael Kann, to achieve success or direct their own feature films during this period. As she describes, it was first at the very end of the 1980s, after repeated pressure, particularly from this youngest generation, that the tight control on DEFA’s film production began to be loosened, and films were able to be made that told less ideologically over-determined stories, even in the context of DEFA’s high ground for ideological education, the antifascist film.342 Films that had previously been banned were released (including Carow’s Die Russen kommen, as well as Rainer Simon’s

Jadup und Boel (1980/1988)), while other films were made that perhaps would have been banned or suffered only a very limited release just a few years previously, such as Jörg

Foth’s Letztes aus der DaDaeR (1990). After reunification, DEFA continued—but, as Leonie

340 ’When DEFA’s production of musical films reached an all-time low in the 1980s, the state archive dusted of thirty German films from the UFA-era for post-war television premieres. Despite a relaxation of import policies for U.S. films during this period, which led to an unprecedented number of GDR screenings of Hollywood musicals (more than all the previous years combined), new releases of old German music films still outnumbered their Hollywood counterparts by a ratio of two to one.’ Soldovieri, 134-35 341 McGee, 448 342 McGee, 458: ‘The atmosphere in the studios changed substantially in 1988. Studio Director Hans Dieter Mäde officially stepped down for health reasons in 1988, though he continued to exert influence until February of 1989. Shortly afterwards, production began on a number of films that had been postponed for years. Many of these were received only to a limited degree, as the public’s interest was already directed towards life in unified Germany when they finally premiered. […] A number of these had surprisingly critical content, something that would not have been possible in preceding years.’ 266

Naughton notes, ‘the independence these filmmakers faced during unification brought with it insecurity and dismay.’343 Ultimately, as Naughton describes, currency reform and the lack of state subsidisation led to DEFA’s privatisation and the end of the use of the DEFA signature for film-making by 1993.344

Nevertheless, from the early 1980s onwards, historical antifascist films began to be made featuring characters who bore the hallmarks of positive heroes of both types, but in which such characters’ narrative ultimately broke away from the portrayals discussed in the first three chapters of this dissertation. As Kannapin notes, in the 1980s ‘issues such as opportunism, hypocrisy, and double standards in relationships, […] or individual myths of the antifascist tradition are critically presented.’345 While the 1980s and 1990s films featuring positive heroes still deal with the same period as the earlier films I have discussed—from the end of the First World War to the early years of the GDR—their narratives differ from earlier forms of the positive hero in a number of key ways. Where the films discussed in the other chapters of this dissertation position symbolic heroes as vessels for the state, party, and ideology, the would-be symbolic heroes and leaders in this chapter are either dead (Stalin in Zwischen Pankow und Zehlendorf), dismissive of the protagonist (the prison officer in Der Aufenthalt), mad (the grandfather in Das Land hinter dem Regenbogen), ambiguous (the grandfather in Stielke, Heinz, fünfzehn), or absent altogether (Dein unbekannter Bruder). In earlier films, those protagonists who are already convinced communists at the start of the film, and who undergo a Bildung-style narrative in order to tread the path towards symbolic heroism (or die as martyrs before this is

343 Naughton, 45 344 See Naughton, 45-59, for a detailed account. 345 Kannapin, 196 267 complete), function as Vorbilder for the spectator and for other characters in the film.

Meanwhile, in the films discussed in this chapter, characters who begin the films as communists become disillusioned with the party, state, ideology—or even the symbolic heroes they would typically follow. For example, in Dein unbekannter Bruder, Arnold only reluctantly rejoins the resistance, and his ultimate betrayal by Walter almost seems a self- fulfilling prophecy after his paranoid and fearful behaviour throughout the film. Finally, in the Mitläufer films discussed in the previous chapter, the Mitläufer either are successfully converted to socialism as the result of an encounter with a positive hero or go mad due to the lack of this. As I explore in depth in the first half of this chapter, the Mitläufer of the

1980s DEFA films end the film in neither madness nor ideological conviction, but rather ambiguity.

In this chapter, I therefore examine how several DEFA films from the 1980s and early 1990s featuring positive heroes problematize or undermine the archetype and thus demonstrate a weakening of the ideological basis of East German identity, that had earlier been instilled and reinforced by the same character type. In the first part of the chapter, I examine films that take up the Mitläufer narrative discussed in the previous chapter, but do not follow through with a completed conversion to socialism or even antifascism, and that also portray more ambiguous socialist characters, as well as (sometimes) less inevitably- evil fascists. In the second part of the chapter, I consider films made after reunification (but still made by DEFA and by Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen Potsdam-Babelsberg trained directors) that openly undermine Stalin and his legacy, and in doing so thus undermine the ideological system as a whole, in part through a subversion of positive hero narrative tropes. 268

Ambiguous Mitläufer: trapped in space and time As discussed in the previous chapter, DEFA films about Mitläufer generally follow a typical narrative: a crisis caused by recognition of the wrongs of fascism, an encounter and interaction with a symbolic hero or Vorbild, and ultimately, commitment to socialism, or at the very least, a definite and complete turn against fascism. However, by the 1980s, the

Mitläufer’s conversion had become rather more ambiguous. For example, in Frank Beyer's film, Der Aufenthalt (1983), Mark Niebuhr is in transit to a POW camp with other German soldiers at the end of the war, when the Polish authorities arrest him and take him to a normal prison. Initially, he does not know why he is there, but eventually discovers that it is because he has been accused of killing a Polish woman in Löblin, a place he has never been. At first, he is held in isolation, occasionally with the company of a Polish prisoner who teaches him the rules and strictures of the jail. Alongside the Polish criminals, he works on a building site clearing war rubble, eventually breaking his arm in a fall. After this, he is moved to a different cell, filled only with Germans, and slowly realises that they are all war criminals who have participated in the worst atrocities of the Third Reich. While he is gradually confronted with the evils of fascism by his cellmates, and is repeatedly forced to consider his own culpability in the war and the fascist machine, the ending of the film is left open: it is not at all clear that Niebuhr ever truly recognises that he is also guilty, nor is there any indication that he is even an active antifascist by the end of the film. As a reviewer for the Berliner Zeitung writes:

‘Alle unschuldig? Alle schuldig? Gespräche mit den Henkern? Wo beginnt Schuld?

Wann wird man schuldig? Wie? Warum?—Es sind die Fragen, die anders gestellt 269

sind als üblich. Und es sind die Antworten, die anders gegeben sind als üblich—das

ist neu.’346

The film does not portray any clear conversion, commitment, or consequences for Mark at the end. The best that can be said is that he clearly recognises that the acts of his cellmates were both horrific and wrong and does his best to physically and mentally distance himself from them. Unlike in earlier films, we do not see him make any attempt to act positively for socialism or antifascism.

In this section, I discuss three films of the 1980s, which, similarly to Der Aufenthalt, portray characters who have, in various ways, collaborated with fascism, either as soldiers or informants, but who, like Mark Niebuhr, are not really portrayed as undergoing an ideological conversion. Firstly, I discuss Der Aufenthalt in more detail in this respect, followed by analyses of Ulrich Weiss's Dein unbekannter Bruder (1982), and Michael Kann's

Stielke, Heinz, fünfzehn (1987). Marc Silberman notes the thematizing of ambiguity in all three films: they ‘are examples of films that try to address in the eighties the psychological dimension of complicity or resistance, neither demonising nor heroizing those who were involved in either side of the war.’347 In my discussions of these films, I focus on a number of shared similarities, particularly in how they reuse tropes from earlier positive hero films

(and especially Mitläufer films) but do not (or do not fully) utilise them to reinforce the ideological system as described in previous chapters. Specifically, I examine the unfinished nature of the characters' socialist Bildung, the thematization of mistrust, and changes in the portrayal of both fascists and dedicated socialists which represent a more nuanced and ambiguous concept of good and evil. I also explore a further similarity between the films:

346 Sobe, “Mitgegangen, mitgefangen, mit…” 347 Silberman, 274n22 270 the idea of being trapped in a limited, enclosed space for an indefinite or extended period of time, and uncover the connections between this theme and that of the deconstruction of the positive hero through both the Žižekian concept of the structure of the system of ideology that I have already discussed, in conjunction with Foucauldian ideas of heterotopic space and Buck-Morss' work on the relationship between socialism and time.

Der Aufenthalt: a "heterotopia of deviation" According to Foucault, a heterotopia is a form of space in which 'the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.’348 Der Aufenthalt, taking place almost solely within a prison, plays out this microcosm of 'all the other real sites', most particularly once Mark ends up in the cell with the other German prisoners, who represent all the terrible realities of (and excuses for)

Nazism, in one enclosed space. Foucault calls prisons 'heterotopias of deviation: those in which individuals whose behaviour is deviant in relation to the required mean or norm are placed.'349 This is certainly true of Mark's cellmates, who are recognisably deviant from the post-war norm, with their continued belief in the structures and rituals of fascism, and their lack of comprehension that what they did was wrong (since it was inside the structure of law as they knew it).

The spectator's assessment of Mark himself, however, is rather more ambiguous.

The film's economy of knowledge means that we do not usually know more than Mark himself about his situation—this is not a film of suspense, in which we wait for him to discover what we already know. Instead, we are left as unaware as he is as to why he has

348 Foucault, 3 349 Foucault, 5 271 been imprisoned, discovering the reason only when he is told of it, and the film works to build sympathy for Mark as a confused, young, man. This is particularly achieved through the sympathetic relationship he builds with one of the Polish prisoners in the first part of the film, a character who we discover is a very 'ordinary criminal'—his crimes are not political or related to the war. As such, his transgressions do not threaten the system; they are inside of it, and it is thus acceptable for the spectator to view him positively. As Žižek describes, coinciding with Buck-Morss’ conception of the necessity of an absolute enemy for national identity: ‘our identity is in itself always-already “truncated”, impossible, mutilated, “antagonistic”, and the threatening intruder is nothing but an outside-projection, an embodiment of our own inherent antagonism…’350 The Polish prisoner is no

‘threatening intruder’, but instead seeks to help Mark—indeed, Mark is portrayed as the intruder.

We are thus able to share his positive assessment of Mark, have sympathy for the young man as he struggles with the somewhat cruel tasks given to him by his guards and the cold of the cell, and feel concern for him when he falls from the wall and breaks his arm.

On the other hand, Mark seems just as much an outsider, a misfit, in the “normal” Polish jail cell, as in the cell with the other Germans. The spectator's understanding of whether or not

Mark really 'belongs' in the cell with the other Germans requires a reconciliation of two conflicting impulses. On the one hand, the more we learn of the transgressions of the others in the cell, the more we recognise that they truly have committed deviant acts. Mark, also, admits to having shot at a tank during the war, in which potentially four soldiers were killed. As a result, while his crimes do not amount to war crimes (unlike the others)—and

350 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 38 272 indeed, what he is accused of (killing a Polish woman) also is not a war crime, even if it is very serious—the spectator must recognise that in this collection of 'individuals whose behaviour is deviant in relation to the required mean or norm,'351 Mark still belongs, because he has still participated in something now judged to be deviant. On the other hand, he is portrayed sympathetically, is shown to be aware that he has been falsely accused of the serious crime and shares his discomfort with the pasts and behaviour of his cellmates.

In this respect, the film thus does not show Mark undergoing a true conversion to active antifascism—he never, for example, offers to testify against the others in the cell, or seeks to act against them in any active fashion—and the film also does not offer the spectator an unambiguous judgement of Mark in terms of his morality or general guilt. As such, the film also does not allow the spectator to fully align themselves in the position of antifascist resistance, by encouraging them to identify with Mark and then leaving the question of his own ideological alignment open. He only acts in a passively defensive fashion towards the others in his cell, and we see no indication on his release that he will live the rest of his life in a different way as a result of his experiences in the prison, nor does the film make use of the framing device found in other, earlier Mitläufer films.

While the spectator is encouraged to sympathise with Mark and feel his disgust at the others in his cell and their histories, their portrayal also diverges somewhat from the typical portrayal of SS members and high-ranking Nazis. Where Mark undergoes an incomplete conversion narrative, rather than ultimately conclusively landing on the side of

“good” (socialism/antifascism), the Nazis are portrayed as rather less than the exaggerated examples of the absolute enemy that one finds in earlier DEFA films such as the Thälmann

351 Foucault, 5 273 films or even in Ich zwing dich zu leben. While Der Aufenthalt's Nazis are just as guilty of horrific war crimes, they appear both more human and more mundane. In some ways, it is as if the Third Reich still survives in miniature in the cell but is exposed in all its banality.

As one reviewer writes of the portrayal of Mark’s imprisonment: ‘In diese danteske Hölle dringt die Außenwelt so gut wie nicht ein, die Zeit scheint stehengeblieben: es gibt keine

Gegenwart und keine Zukunft, nur eine Vergangenheit.’352 This past is all that the prisoners still have. They hold rigidly to their hierarchies and rituals, insisting that they address each other by their military title, and conceding to those with a higher military rank. They also enact a bizarre game, in which one of their number is blindfolded, and they take it in turns to spank him. The blindfolded man must then guess who has spanked him, and they seek to best their records for who has guessed the most correctly.

These futile attempts to maintain a kind of 'dignity', or at least to maintain their continued adherence to fascism, are continually undermined by the camerawork: Beyer makes use of repeated shots through the bars of their cage, highlighting the limitations of their space as well as their positions as deviants. The camera also tracks them in circles as they pace around the room, repeating themselves that they weren't really true members of the regime, or that their crimes were really quite minor. This use of the camera accentuates their lack of agency, and, despite their earnest and rational-sounding dialogue, heightens the sense that they are all, in fact, totally delusional in their skewed self-image. Ultimately, the camerawork underscores their complete lack of agency. They cling to the remnants of their outside world, but really exist in a heterotopic space—an 'effectively enacted utopia

352 Funke, “Vom tiefen Fall des Menschen” 274 in which [...] real sites [...] are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted'—353in which their agency extends only so far as their hold on themselves and each other. Rather than being a threat to Mark or anyone else not adhering to their ideology, Mark becomes a threat to them, as a disruptive force to the rigid worldview they aspire to uphold in their enclosed society. They seem like limited, rigid, but human men who cling to what they know and are seeking desperately for ways to save themselves, because they are terrified of what the future holds for them.

The men in the prison cell thus still share the negative traits of fascism from early antifascist films, such as cowardice, hatred of and crimes against Jews, communists, and

Russians, and are still driven by their emotions rather than rationality (for all that they attempt to “rationalise” their crimes by repeatedly stating their innocence). However, they are also portrayed as far more human than earlier examples of SS members or the Nazi elite—compared, for example, to the portrayal of the SS in Ich war neunzehn or Die

Abenteuer des Werner Holt, in which they are one-note villains, whose only goal is to kill as many (communists) as possible. Here, the SS are not embodiments of the absolute enemy; their human traits make them rather more mundane. This corresponds to Berghahn’s conclusion about the film, that it ‘proposes that even those proven innocent share in the collective guilt of the Germans.’354 The SS officers must grapple with the fact that they were committing acts acceptable within a reign of law—until they were not.

This has the effect of delegitimising the entire reign of law (as Žižek terms it).

Through exposing the ‘big Other’, the absolute enemy, as the limited and dysfunctional human beings they really are, the illegal violence at the root of the reign of law is exposed.

353 Foucault, 3 354 Berghahn “Post-1990 Screen Memories”, 297 275

This is because the unmasking of those representatives of the Other, that which (in the foundational narrative of the GDR) had to be violently resisted and other thrown in order to found and justify the reign of law, as ordinary human beings, not so different from

Mark—with whom we sympathise and even identify—brings to the foreground that what came before was another reign of law. Žižek refers to Kant: ‘one cannot arrive at the

(historical) origin of legal power, since it is forbidden to search for it. […] What is so horrifying about it is […] its absolute proximity to the reign of law.’355 What has to be covered over is that the reign of law is necessarily predicated on the violent overthrow of the previous reign of law—and that another such overthrowing would ultimately result, per Žižek, in another, new reign of law.356 Thus the fascist abject, firmly repelled and contained outside of the boundaries of the reign of law in the earlier Mitläufer films discussed in the previous chapter, blurs here into the subject—as discussed in more detail below.

Alongside the more ambiguous evil of the fascists in the film, the representatives of socialism are also not portrayed as unambiguously positive. Mark's Polish jailers, though for good reason, treat him mostly coldly and sometimes cruelly, a portrayal which led to the film's restricted release in East Germany, and prevented it from being entered for film festivals, despite its positive reception with critics. Particularly the cold final line of dialogue, from the Polish officer who releases Mark—“Sie werden nicht erwarten, dass wir uns bei Ihnen entschuldigen'—led to outcry from the Polish side, with claims it could reawaken anti-Polish sentiments in the GDR.357 The Polish reaction to Mark, even once they

355 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 208-209 356 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 208 357 Franz, “Probleme mit dem Aufenthalt” 276 know he is not a murderer, is understandable and natural, based on the suffering of the

Poles under Nazi occupation, but it diverges from the typical representation of socialists in positions of authority in Mitläufer films. In Meine Stunde Null, for example, Kurt is equally a captive of the Soviets, but they immediately set about seeking to convert him, and even those soldiers who have good reason to hate the Germans eventually warm to him (for example, his eventual friend, Sergeant Mitja). Similarly, while in Mama, ich lebe, the POW camps are shown to be unpleasant places, this is never attributed to cruelty by the Soviets.

Indeed, when one prisoner complains about the lack of food, another specifically tells him that the Russians also do not have enough to eat. The film also repeatedly shows attempts by the Soviet soldiers to re-educate the POWs in order to instil a socialist ideology. In Der

Aufenthalt, nobody tries to convert Mark explicitly. The only thing the Polish guards try to convince him to do is to admit his guilt. As such, while by the end Mark has learnt enough that he does, indeed, not seem to expect an apology for their treatment of him, there is no

Polish symbolic hero or ideological representative to draw him into the cause. The best they have to offer is a Polish petty criminal, who teaches Mark how to submit to the structures of the system in which he finds himself—but not the ideology. A reviewer of the film proposes that ‘er erzählt keine Entwicklungsstory, er erzählt, wie Voraussetzungen für

Entwicklung geschaffen werden.’358 This may be the case—but there is nothing in the film’s ending to imply that Mark’s development will lead him to conversion to socialism. Indeed, unlike in the films of the previous chapter, Mark’s lack of any kind of encounter with a symbolic hero means that a successful conversion is impossible. However, his abruptly gained freedom from the crisis stage—the exposure to the reality of fascism through his

358 Krenzlin & Schiller, “Zwischen Preisgabe und Selbstbehauptung,” 277 imprisonment with the other Germans—means that he does not remain trapped in crisis and doomed to madness, unlike Wolfgang of Ich zwing dich zu leben or Günter of Die Russen kommen.

While a true conversion proves to be impossible, Mark nevertheless finds himself, within this 'heterotopia of deviation', faced with a choice between two ideological systems.

His first option is the Polish (and therefore implicitly socialist) system, which is characterised by arbitrary rules, an inability to choose for himself where he goes and when, occasional random punishments or rewards with no clear relation to his behaviour, and no clear ideological affiliation beyond an aversion to fascism. Here, his basic needs are

(mostly) met—he is provided with food and water (for the most part), and he is kept warm enough (again, for the most part). He is anonymous and completely lacking in agency; a cog in the machine. On the other hand, he could choose to align himself with the Nazis with whom he is eventually forced to share a cell. Their system is characterised by a strict hierarchy defined through military rank and age, normalisation of and habituation to casual violence, the oppressive fear of death rather than release at the end of their limbo in detention, and repetitive, circular (both physically and figuratively) recitations of why they should not be in the cell, which seem to serve to reassure each other of their respective innocence as well as themselves. Where within the Polish system Mark is a cog in the machine, anonymous and uninteresting, amongst the Nazis he is in a pack of wolves, forced to assert himself for dominance or else suffer the "bites" of the others.

The space of the jail cell thus represents an enclosed space in which two conflicting ideologies are played off against one another—a site which has 'the curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralise, or 278 invent the set of relations that [it] happen[s] to designate, mirror, or reflect.'359 In other words, the microcosm of society being played out in the jail cell forces us to recognise the dynamics-in-miniature which are being portrayed. Mark is first interned in a space he cannot leave, told he has done something wrong without really understanding what it is, and then given a set of rules to follow (the phrase he must say when the guards enter the cell, etc.). He does his best to comply and tries to please those in control—his small acts of rebellion are only for self-preservation, such as drinking from the toilet bowl. He is then confronted with his former peers and superiors and forced to choose between sticking to the rules of the system in which they are all confined, with the hope that he will one day be freed, or to try to blend in with the other Germans, by adapting to their rituals and hierarchy, which he quickly comes to find contemptible. Faced with a choice between the obviously wrong (the crimes of the Nazis in the cell and their attitudes towards them) and a system whose rules he understands, he ultimately picks the latter: better to suffer seemingly indefinite confinement than be a Nazi. He must find a way to repulse the fascist abject with which he is confronted, which threatens the boundaries of his subjectivity and identity. Brodsky describes Mark’s development over the course of the original novel, stating that it ‘follows [him] from confidence in his own innocence and a feeling of being misjudged, to the moment when he realizes that without people like him, the ordinary soldier following orders, none of the atrocities of war would be possible.’360 While this is not made as explicit at the end of the film, the viewer can understand from Mark’s choice that he has been forced to reconstruct his identity after being confronted with the fascist abject in the form of the SS prisoners. To recall Kristeva’s statement, cited in the conclusion

359 Foucault, 3 360 Brodsky, 257 279 to the previous chapter: ‘An unshakeable adherence to Prohibition and Law is necessary if that perverse interspace of abjection is to be hemmed in and thrust aside.’361 Mark seeks to do this—but what exactly the law is, and what exactly is prohibited and allowed, is not really clear. Despite his freedom from imprisonment, and his escape from the fate of the other German prisoners, Mark thus seems ultimately to be doomed to remain trapped in abjection at the end of the film—but unlike the madness this induces in the protagonists of

Die Russen kommen or Ich zwing dich zu leben, he has some form of escape. Indeed, in this sense, one may read Mark as a metaphor for the average citizen of the GDR by the 1980s.

As a result, he does act as a figure of identification for the viewer, but in the inverse of the typical Vorbild-type positive hero: Mark demonstrates that it is better to keep one's head down and stick to the rules, as confusing or incomprehensible as they may seem, rather than to succumb to the banal evil of fascism.

The paradox at the root of the reign of law: Dein unbekannter Bruder Ulrich Weiss's 1982 film Dein unbekannter Bruder takes the tradition of the resistance film and turns it into an exposé of the psychology of the resistance hero and his counterpart, the

Nazi mole. Like Der Aufenthalt, it portrays characters who undermine the typical conceptions of Vorbild and fascist, and whose roles do not provide easy ideological answers for the spectator, for all they may identify or sympathise with the protagonist or even with his opponent. Equally, the film thematizes isolation and complicates the idea of the absolute enemy. Far more than Der Aufenthalt, however, Weiss’s film encourages the spectator to identify with its protagonist’s feelings of doubt, uncertainty, and paranoia.

361 Kristeva 1982, 16 280

The film follows Arnold Clasen, an antifascist resistance fighter from Hamburg, who in 1935 is released from a concentration camp. This experience has scarred and scared him, and to begin with he finds a job as a film projectionist and keeps a low profile, aware that he is almost certainly under surveillance. However, the other members of the Hamburg resistance want to bring him back into the fold and back into action, and introduce him to

Walter, who will be his contact to them. Despite some initial success, the activities of the resistance are continually discovered by the authorities and undermined before they can be properly completed. The group’s members are also gradually arrested in increasing numbers, and this, combined with Arnold's memory of seeing Walter be grabbed by police and then released again at a mass arrest some time previously, makes Arnold voice his suspicions of Walter. The group's leader, however, reassures him that Walter has long been a member of their group, and it is impossible for him to have betrayed them. The spectator, however, knows that Walter is indeed a Nazi mole, though not entirely of his own volition.

Eventually, Arnold is arrested again too, and the remaining members of the group confront

Walter in an isolated fishing hut on the coast. Walter admits that he is a spy only once they reveal that Arnold has been arrested, and the end of the film sees him left on the hut on an island in the marsh, isolated and alone. Arnold's fate remains unclear.

From his narrative, Arnold should be a Vorbild, perhaps even becoming a symbolic hero. He follows almost exactly the same trajectory as Stärker als die Nacht's Hans Löning: an initial stay in a concentration camp, initial reluctance to continue antifascist resistance afterwards, then renewed action, and ultimately another arrest, as well as betrayal by a former comrade along with it. It is a trajectory that usually would be expected to lead to a martyrdom. However, in Clasen's case, this typical narrative is consistently undermined: by 281 the camerawork, by his characterisation, and by the ending. As Steingröver notes, ‘Weiss had dared to break a major DEFA taboo by directing a feature film in the important antifascist film genre that emphasized not the heroism but the fear of its protagonist.’362

The film was consequently withdrawn from consideration for the Cannes film festival,363 and Weiss was put under Stasi surveillance.364

Rather than the typical Vorbild disposition of stoic, unemotional determination to carry on no matter what, Clasen is, from the beginning of the film, filled with fear, reluctance, uncertainty, and occasionally even resignation to the success of fascism, which battle with his sense of the necessity of antifascist action and dedication to the cause.

Berghahn describes him as ‘a far cry from the brave and self-sacrificing heroes featured in antifascist films of earlier decades; he is tormented and paralysed by fear, and his relationship with other members of the resistance group is characterised by suspicion and mistrust.’365 Towards the beginning of the film, he seems reluctant to become involved in the antifascist group again, although he does agree to meet with them when they suggest it.

Later, when we see Arnold in his own room for the first time, he is alone, peering through the curtains from the darkened room at a large Nazi flag. He asks, aloud, how one is supposed to hold on through all of this. Then the camera cuts away to a shot of Arnold's face with voices whispering to him, asking what his name is. Our overriding impression of his emotional state is that he is afraid and uncertain of what he should do: he clearly does, in some ways, want to be active again, or at least feels it's the right thing to do, but is also clearly terrified of the possible personal consequences. Later on, we are shown flashbacks

362 Steingröver 2008, 117 363 Allan 2003, 17 364 Berghahn, Hollywood behind the Wall, 84 365 Berghahn, “Post-1990 Screen Memories of the Third Reich,” 298 282 of Arnold's treatment by the Gestapo, in between scenes of his anxious behaviour as he helps deliver antifascist flyers to be distributed at the factory and his cautious and suspicious first meeting with Walter. Some time later, we see Arnold in his room again, where a colleague brings news that another comrade has been arrested. Arnold's reaction here seems resigned, as if he expected this all along, and when the other man asks what they should do, Arnold gets angry, saying that the ball is rolling, and it is rolling unstoppably towards that—he points out of the window, towards the large Nazi flag.

Finally, he tells the man that they should be careful, and that they should start to hide themselves, one at a time. This scene highlights Arnold's conflicted emotional state: he is strongly antifascist and against the Nazis and does not want the antifascist group to fail.

However, he also is beginning to believe that their work is futile, and fears for his own safety and that of his friends. Unlike Der Aufenthalt’s Mark Niebuhr, who spends much of the film seeking to find ways to shore up his defences against the fascist abject, Arnold’s portrayal is of a man in the throes of abjection: ‘abjection is elaborated through a failure to recognise its kin; nothing is familiar, not even the shadow of a memory.’366

The camerawork and mise-en-scene throughout the film underscores this, positioning the spectator to perceive Arnold's fear, but also sometimes to share the gaze of those surveilling him, a filmic strategy which has the effect of drawing the spectator into his psychological tension through this split perspective, because it simultaneously allows us to share his fear but also validates it; he is, indeed, being watched. The scenes in which Arnold peers through the curtains at the flag-bedecked street below are particularly key for this. In the first such scene, we see Arnold's view through the curtains. The curtains of his

366 Kristeva 1982, 5 283 darkened bedroom function like an aperture, framing the Nazi flag on the opposite building through a narrow strip of light. The camera then cuts away to a shot of Arnold holding a mirror up to his eye and asking how he is supposed to hold on through all of this. Then it cuts to a close-up of his face, along with which we hear voices whispering, asking his name.

This scene encapsulates the dual perspective of the spectator: firstly, the darkened room and narrow strip through which the Nazi flag near-glows create an atmosphere of oppression. It is as if Arnold is imprisoned in the room, with the flag the symbol of his jailers—or at least, that which is at root of the fear that is really what is limiting him.

Secondly, the mirror image of Arnold's eye represents his conflicted self: he fears the surveillance and the possible consequences of it, but he also fears not acting. He is watching

(and judging) himself, just as much as he is being watched. The spectator, meanwhile, is watching Arnold watch himself: the mirror allows us to share his gaze, but the position of the camera puts us in the position of a third person, one whom Arnold is unaware of. This is underscored by the following close-up of Arnold's face and the whispering voices. On the one hand, that he seemingly thinks of voices asking his name suggests he is questioning his identity: Who really is he? What kind of a person? On the other, it highlights his fears of capture and interrogation once again. In a later scene in which Arnold once again peers through the curtains, this sense of oppressive fear is heightened as the plot of the film has developed. This time, Arnold sees not only the large Nazi flag, but also soldiers marching down the street: that which he is afraid of has grown larger and stronger. Arnold himself is this time topless, hiding from them behind the curtain: he is exposed, protected only by a flimsy (and easily removed) covering. Arnold’s focus is permanently on that which he fears: 284 according to Kristeva, ‘the phobic has no other object than the abject.’367 His world—and his identity—is constituted by that fear.

The enclosed spaces in which Arnold finds himself—his darkened room with the gleaming Nazi flag outside; the projection room at the cinema where he works; and the prison cell in which he is trapped at the end of the film—all are, in effect, the opposite of

Foucault's heterotopia of deviation and the enclosed space of the Polish prison in Der

Aufenthalt. Arnold's enclosed spaces are sites constituted by a sole duality: the oppressive nature of fascism, and his all-consuming fear of it. In the first sequence in his room, the only defining feature of it is the Nazi flag hanging outside his window, and the curtain Arnold uses to shield himself from it. While in the later sequence set in the room we see a little more of his furniture, his behaviour there is still solely connected to his fear of fascism; the flag once again dominates the beginning of the sequence and is followed by his conversation about how their resistance is perhaps futile. During the sequences with his boss at the cinema where he works as a projectionist, Arnold is repeatedly also confronted with fascist ideology and forced to endure it in silence or risk losing his job: he must operate the projector for Nazi films, including Hitler speeches; his boss repeatedly tries to convince him to join the Nazi Party; and eventually, submits him to a eugenics test in which she encases his head in a metal contraption (one that looks oddly like the headdress of the robot in Fritz Lang's Metropolis!) and uses it to measure his head, in order to declare that he is racially "pure". During this last sequence, although we do not initially see Arnold in close-up, the oppressive nature of the situation is reflected in the sound, which is solely of

Arnold's breathing. This enables the spectator to share Arnold's sense of fear and

367 Kristeva 1982, 6 285 claustrophobia—again, this small space is entirely defined by his fear of fascism. Similarly, when we see him alone in the prison cell at the end of the film, the use of close-up and a voiceover of his inner monologue, in which he talks about betrayal, make it again clear that this is what constitutes the space.

The sense that Arnold is exposed and watched, and that the spectator is one of these observers, is also exacerbated by several scenes in which Arnold moves around the city. In the first of these, as Arnold walks from work to his friend Richard's shop, the camera tracks him in a long shot from the other side of the street, following him as he walks. The spectator is immediately put into the position of somebody secretly following and observing him; he appears unaware of the surveillance. This sequence, coming only a few minutes into the film, sets up the spectator's dual perspective: as a result, to begin with, we are not sure if we are supposed to think positively of Arnold or not, because he appears to be the object of our own suspicious surveillance. That we know he is an antifascist and has been in the concentration camp (usually a shorthand at the beginning of a film for a

Vorbild-type positive hero) sets up the tension between surveilleur and sympathy for/identification with him. Indeed, the perspective offered up to the spectator mirrors

Arnold’s own paranoia; we are asked to identify with him in his abjection, rather than in his dedication to socialism or fetishising of the symbolic hero as a Vorbild. Just as Arnold becomes a voyeur of fascism, so too is the spectator positioned as voyeuristically observing him. Kristeva describes this as connected to abjection:

‘Voyeurism is a structural necessity in the constitution of object relation, showing

up every time the object shifts towards the abject; it becomes true perversion only if 286

there is a failure to symbolize the subject/object instability. Voyeurism accompanies

the writing of abjection.’368

The ending of the film works to confirm the work the camera and characterisation has done to undermine Arnold's position as Vorbild and to highlight this abjection. In Stärker als die

Nacht, as discussed in the second chapter, Löning's narrative fully becomes that of a martyr. We see his final speech against the enemy in the courtroom scene, we see him writing his final letter to his family, and finally we see their mourning of him while reading it aloud, along with his son's transition to Vorbild in his place. In contrast, Arnold is unceremoniously arrested, and beyond that point the focus of the film is primarily on

Walter, his betrayer, not on Arnold himself. The last shots of Arnold show him being interrogated and refusing to speak, followed by a shot of him in a cell, facing the wall. We hear his inner monologue, in which he thinks of betrayal. Finally, we see a close-up of his face. He says he will stay silent, no matter what they do. Then the film cuts back to his comrades' interrogation of Walter, and ends with Walter's fate, not Arnold's. It is thus left unclear what, exactly, will happen to Arnold; whether he will be executed, tortured, or sent back to the concentration camp. In any case, the focus of the ending on Walter, rather than on Arnold, means that the potential for a martyrdom narrative is not capitalised on in

Arnold's case: the film does not narrativise his fate in the same way that the previously discussed martyrdom films do.

It is not that Arnold is not the hero of the film—he is certainly portrayed as an active antifascist who has suffered for the cause, and nevertheless continues to fight, just like

Löning or any of the other resistance heroes discussed thus far in this dissertation.

368 Kristeva 1982, 46 287

However, he cannot really be described as a Vorbild, because what the spectator is called to identify with, in his case, are his uncertainty and misgivings regarding the cause and its likely success. As discussed above, the camerawork highlights his cautiousness and concern, rather than his heroics; indeed, we barely see him taking positive action against fascism, although the way he is treated by his peers and his stint in the concentration camp provide evidence that he must have done so. A reviewer in Junge Welt points out that the film diverges from the book (by Willi Bredel, co-author of the Thälmann scripts) in this respect, and questions this choice: ‘Weshalb, frage ich mich, wollten Regisseur und Autor nur die psychologische Studie eines Illegalen auf die Leinwand bringen?’369

Equally, the antifascist group he is part of (and thus implicitly, the wider movement and its followers) are characterised by blind faith and lacklustre action: his comrades do not take seriously his concerns about Walter, do not manage to properly carry out their leaflet campaign in the factory, and when they finally confront Walter, they do not take decisive action to silence him, but rather leave him on the coastline, where he can potentially continue to act against them, if not in the same capacity as a mole. In other words, Arnold seems like someone who himself does not want to be in his position—thus more or less actively discouraging the spectator from desiring to emulate him—and the movement of which he is a part seems weak and ineffective. The only reason the spectator does not doubt its success, unlike Arnold, is due to their knowledge that the war did end and that the GDR was ultimately founded. This is the opposite of the way that spectatorial knowledge is used in earlier antifascist films that I have previously discussed, where the end of the film draws a triumphant and inevitable line between the successes and

369 Stolze, “Fragen zu einem neuen DEFA-Film” 288 martyrdoms of the socialists in the film and the beginning of a socialist state on German soil.

Arnold’s narrative may be compared to that of Horst E. Brandt’s 1971 film, KLK an

PTX - Die Rote Kapelle, in which the protagonists are also resistance members who are captured at the end of the film. However, Brandt’s film explicitly features scenes from the present-day GDR, to highlight the role of the protagonists’ actions within the State’s foundational narrative. Dein unbekannter Bruder contains no such promise of a future better life, except, obliquely, in its title. Equally, unlike the martyrs discussed in the second chapter of this dissertation, Arnold has no symbolic hero to guide him; no fetish to enable him to disavow the violent Real with which he is surrounded. Žižek describes fetishism as the ‘matrix of totalitarian authority […] although “we know very well” that we are people like others—at the same time [we] consider ourselves to be “people of a special mound, made of special stuff”—as individuals who participate in the fetish of the Object-Party, direct embodiment of the Will of History.’370 Arnold would, perhaps, like to believe this— his vow to remain silent at the end of the film shows he remains dedicated to the cause— but his actions throughout the film do not support his words.

Equally, Arnold's opposite, Walter, is humanised and made more complex than his counterpart in films such as Stärker als die Nacht, Eddi. Where Eddi does not want to be involved in observing and informing on Löning because he does not want to have anything more to do with politics at all—a selfish reason—Walter's reasons for trying to stop informing on Arnold are far easier to empathise with: he cannot take the pressure of keeping up the double act anymore, and does not really want to betray Arnold, who he

370 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 252 289 clearly likes. When his Nazi handlers put pressure on him to produce results, he sounds like a broken man, telling them that he cannot continue, and that he cannot look at himself anymore. He sounds like he is falling apart.

While Walter should therefore really be the embodiment of the absolute enemy, as a man who, unlike Eddi, never even "quits" as a socialist and antifascist but who begins to betray his comrades nevertheless, his very human weaknesses and his struggle with his conscience are exposed and focused on to the extent that the spectator not only cannot view him as any kind of absolute Other or enemy, because he is too human, but indeed is even able to empathise with the situation he has found himself in. He seems almost a victim of circumstances who has made some bad judgements, rather than the embodiment of evil.

Where Eddi is indicted by Stärker als die Nacht for following whichever side seems to make life easiest for him, Walter seems to have ended up with an almost unavoidable fate—from the scene in which his handlers pressure him, it appears that he is being blackmailed or pressured into informing, rather than doing it out of conviction (or lack thereof). This may explain why the plot does not end with his destruction: his characterisation and the film's focus on his psyche, combined with the lack of martyrdom narrative for Arnold, would leave any violent acts towards him by the comrades as seeming cruel and unjustified, even if he has been instrumental in Arnold's arrest. Instead, at the end of the film he is simply isolated, cast out from the resistance group and left alone on an island in the coastal marshes.

At the end of the film there is thus no heroic resistance victory, nor is there implied heroic death. Arnold's fate is left open: he's not granted a narrativised martyrdom a la

Thälmann, nor is he given the ending that most Vorbilder get, in which they are portrayed 290 as the future leaders of socialism and the coming German socialist state. Walter, meanwhile, is left as a complex figure, isolated on the island but not gone. As someone who defected from the resistance to the Nazis under duress, he should be the true absolute enemy—that enemy which could be anywhere, or anyone—but he ultimately does not fill that role, because we know his reasons and his internal conflict, and we feel sympathy for him. The antifascists leave him there rather than killing him: seemingly, since he has been unmasked as a real, human person, and thus no longer represents the threat of the absolute enemy, since we know both who he is and his motivations. This has the apparent effect of rendering him relatively harmless to the antifascists, but also contributes to the sense that their movement has dispersed and collapsed at the end of the film: some semblance of the absolute enemy must remain, or the system cannot constitute itself. Equally, however, this has the effect of leaving one of the sources of Arnold’s paranoia unresolved—which, as I have already established, is mirrored to the spectator. That Walter is left alive, if isolated, serves to expose the paradox at the root of the reign of law. As Žižek outlines, ‘the absolute crime cannot be properly “forgotten” (undone, expiated, and forgiven); it must persist as a repressed traumatic kernel, since it contains the founding gesture of the legal order—its eradication from then “unconscious memory” would entail the disintegration of the very reign of law.’371 The foregrounding of Walter’s survival at the end of the film serves to unveil this persistent ‘traumatic kernel’—to remind the spectator of its continued presence.

Indeed, Heidrun Chmura cites a comment by Ulrich Weiss, explaining his choice to leave

Walter alive at the end of the film, which underscores this: ‘Sie verurteilen seine Schwäche

371 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 208 291 politisch und moralisch. Daraus folgt, daß sie mit ihm, oder besser mit dem Problem des

Verrats, leben und zurechtkommen müssen.’372

Not only this, but the ideological system in which Arnold, Walter, and the others in the resistance group exist seems utterly disconnected from the wider socialist movement.

There does not appear to be any elite at all, and certainly no symbolic hero, proxy of the

State and the Party, portrayed on camera. The leader of Arnold's resistance movement is barely characterised or seen, there are no references to the Soviet Union or any other communist leader (not even the usual shots of Thälmann-related graffiti), and there does not seem to be much connection to the broader ideological movement other than a few flyers. We see few attempts at real action against the fascists on-screen. As Berghahn notes:

‘By staging the antifascist theme as film noir and psychodrama, diminishes the heroic stature of the antifascists.’373 The space of the film is rather like those spaces that Arnold inhabits: permeated throughout with the oppressive nature of fascism and its paraphernalia. The ideological system of socialism here appears to be hollow or even collapsing. This lack of the presence of the sublime body (in the form of the symbolic, fetishistic hero) in the space of the film and seemingly within the group means that that

‘little piece of the Real’ it represents, that which holds together the System and covers up the violence at its root, is absent. As such, this violence permeates the film, in the form of

Arnold's consistent, oppressive fear of fascism and the consequences of his resistance.

372 Chmura, 184 373 Berghahn, Hollywood behind the Wall, 84 292

Stielke, Heinz, fünfzehn: identity in crisis Heinz Stielke, the protagonist of Michael Kann's 1987 film, Stielke, Heinz, fünfzehn, is portrayed as undergoing the typical Mitläufer narrative, as discussed in the previous chapter, to a far greater extent than Mark Niebuhr. However, the underlying motivation beneath his decisions tends to be emotional, as in Arnold and Walter's case, and driven by coincidence rather than guided by any kind of ideological representative of socialism or antifascism.

It is worth briefly recapping the main events of Heinz’s narrative here, in order to examine how the film ultimately diverges from the typical Mitläufer narrative. The film begins with his expulsion from his school, where it has been discovered that he has Jewish heritage on his father's side. This news comes as a shock to Heinz, who is a dedicated member of the Hitlerjugend and a dedicated student, and who also looks extremely Aryan.

Indeed, his father fought and fell in the war. Despite his mother's attempts to convince him that this news is, indeed, true, and that they should keep a low profile to avoid trouble,

Heinz refuses to believe her, refuses to stay at home, and goes back to school the next day.

After a confrontation on the sport field, the other schoolboys (his former friends) chase

Heinz through the village. An old man working in his allotment offers Heinz a place to hide in his outhouse, but as Heinz waits there, a bombing raid comes through, and the man is killed. When Heinz returns to his apartment, he finds his mother has also been killed— something for which he blames himself, because he had told her he didn't want to go into the cellar anymore during bombing raids. A neighbour gives him some money and tells him to run.

Heinz wanders the streets for a day, riding the tram, and eventually goes back to the old man's allotment, breaking into the small house there. As night falls, the bombers return, 293 and Heinz takes a lantern and stands outside with it, holding it up to the sky. This brings him to the attention of the authorities. He is scolded by a Nazi officer, who knows about his

Jewish heritage, but who nevertheless seems to have sympathy for him, and who sends him to an orphanage in Thuringia, which is run by the man's brother. Once Heinz leaves, the officer destroys his papers, thus destroying the evidence of his Jewish background.

En route to the orphanage, Heinz gets into an altercation with a woman in a crowded train station, after overhearing her reading a story about how terrible Jews are to her young daughter. He is initially arrested but is quickly released from his handcuffs after an SS officer notices his Aryan looks and impressive physique. Despite Heinz's reluctance

(since he is afraid his secret will be discovered), the SS officer tries to recruit him. However, later that night, after realising that the officer has spent the evening beating a Jewish prisoner, Heinz climbs out of the window and runs away. He finally makes it to the orphanage, which turns out to be run by a priest, who greets him kindly. However, the next day, the SS officer returns, and takes him away to a training camp.

There, Heinz gradually discovers that it is a kind of school or training camp,374 where boys are supposedly trained to be future SS officers—although their day-to-day tasks seem to primarily involve manual labour. They are, however, well-fed, given meat and portions far larger than they would normally expect in wartime. Heinz quickly comes to the attention of one of the school's leaders, a female officer. He is called to the male camp leader's office for ‘normale Abhärtung’, where he is beaten while the female officer watches. After this point, she begins to show a special interest in him, inviting him to eat with her, arranging for him to have easier work, and eventually seducing him and painting

374 The training camp is presumably intended to be a “NaPoLa” school (Nationalpolitische Lehranstalt), where the future leaders of Nazi Germany were to be trained. 294 a naked portrait of him, in which he is portrayed in a Roman style. Eventually, she sleeps with him before showing him the finished portrait, hung amongst many similar portraits of other boys. Heinz becomes upset, and after this, she picks a new boy to seduce and he loses his special privileges. After fighting with the other boys, he destroys the paintings and runs away.

He finds a train and stows away in it, where he is discovered by a German soldier who tries to discourage him from heading to the Front, and tells him eventually about a work camp, where he can still contribute to the war effort without actually fighting. On his way to the camp, Heinz meets a girl, Gabi, who offers him a place to stay for the night at her grandfather's house. Her grandfather is also sceptical about the war, and insistent that everyone is equal—even Jews. When Heinz takes his leave from Gabi the next day at the work camp, he admits his true past to her.

In the camp, Heinz is taught about defence against invasion, and meets a new friend,

Max. Max shows him a letter from his father, in which his father announces he is committing suicide because he has realised the Nazi ideology he has followed and the genocide of the Jews is a crime. This finally forces Heinz to admit aloud that, if that is true, then they have been lied to all along. After this, Heinz meets Gabi again at the edge of the camp. She tells him the English will be there in two days, and that he should take the civilian clothing she has, and leave. He agrees to come to her, but thinks the clothes are too much of a risk. The next day, his commander notices a house hung with white laundry, and is convinced it is meant as a symbol of surrender. He intends to hang all the residents.

Heinz and Max are horrified, and consider running away before deciding to blow up the farmhouse (in which all the officers are meeting) to save the house's residents (who are in 295 the barn). Following this, the British arrive, and although Heinz tries to convince them he is

Jewish, they don't believe him. The film ends with Heinz running along the road to Gabi's house, seeming happy and free, accompanied by odd music.

The film's narrative thus consists of Heinz's entrapment in a variety of limited or enclosed spaces, broken up by a series of coincidence or emotion-driven decisions to run away. While it to some extent follows the typical Mitläufer narrative outlined in the third chapter of this dissertation, there are significant differences, both in how Heinz's conversion ends and how with how the various stages come about, which lend the film more similarity to Der Aufenthalt and the ambiguous Mitläufer story of Mark Niebuhr, than to earlier films dealing with the conversion of brainwashed youth, such as Rotation or even

Ich zwing dich zu leben. Firstly, although Heinz, early on in the narrative, has multiple moments of crisis and realisation that fascism is problematic, he repeatedly refuses to confront these thoughts; he runs away from his home after the bombing, and runs away again from the SS officer. When coincidence takes him to the SS training camp, he pushes aside his discomfort and blends in. Indeed, it is hard to tell if his "moments of realisation" really are realisation at all, or whether they are the pricking of fear that his heritage will be exposed. Rather than leading to a quest for enlightenment, his repeated crises primarily lead him to flee. While the film ultimately thematizes this tendency to an extent, his conversion never makes it further than this aborted quest stage.

This state of identity crisis, which underlies all of Heinz's actions until almost the end of the film—his desire to deny and hide his Jewish heritage, which switches, at the end, to a denial of any connection to fascism in favour of convincing the British officer he is 296

Jewish—is highlighted by the types of space in which he finds himself enclosed. They are, for the most part, sites which Foucault explicitly designates 'crisis heterotopias':

'privileged or sacred or forbidden places, reserved for individuals who are, in

relation to society and to the human environment in which they live, in a state of

crisis: adolescents, menstruating woman, pregnant women, the elderly, etc. [...] For

example, the boarding school, in its nineteenth century form, or military service for

young men, have certainly played such a role, as the first manifestations of sexual

virility were in fact supposed to take place "elsewhere" than at home.'375

Heinz's state of heightened adolescent identity crisis, combined with his confinement in the

SS training camp and the military work camp, clearly match Foucault's description, and this has implications for our understanding of Heinz's conversion narrative. In Mark Niebuhr's case, in Der Aufenthalt, the prison is a heterotopia of deviation, which functions as a means of confronting him with various realities, and which he is finally able to leave once he rejects (through his attempts to physically separate himself) the possibilities represented by the Nazi officers who share his cell. While it is debatable whether this represents a conversion to socialism, or even to active antifascism, in the end, there is a clear ideological component. In Heinz Stielke's case, the key elements are far more his crises of personal identity (Aryan/"German" or Jewish?) and sexuality (in each of the camps, he forms a relationship with a woman, which ultimately leads to him rethinking his path), than ideology, which, while represented in those dichotomies, is not really Heinz's own focus.

There are, nevertheless, similarities between the enclosed spaces in which Mark

Niebuhr, Arnold in Dein unbekannter Bruder, and Heinz find themselves confined. Firstly, in

375 Foucault, 4 297 each case—the cell Mark shares with the Nazis; Arnold's rooms; and Heinz's SS training camp and work camp—the space functions as a means to contest conflicting identities.

Mark must reconcile his previously unchallenged identities as German and soldier with the atrocities committed by his cellmates; Arnold seeks to overcome his fear of fascism and its potential personal consequences for him with his commitment to antifascist resistance;

Heinz is forced to integrate the new knowledge of his Jewish heritage into his worldview, which has been continually shaped by fascist ideology. In the SS training camp, he mostly tries to forget about it, particularly to begin with, but two things prevent him from being able to: a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo, which he finds in the abandoned church, and the female officer who seduces him and with whom he believes himself to be in love.

While the film does not explicitly reference the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo at all, we see shots of him finding and reading the book (it is the only book we see him read in the SS camp), particularly immediately before his friend leaves for the front and tells Heinz that he intends to desert. In the novel, the protagonist, Edmund Dantes, is imprisoned after being betrayed by former friends, who frame him as a Bonapartist traitor, leading to him being sentenced to life imprisonment. Eventually, he escapes, and, taking on a new identity as the wealthy Count of Monte Cristo, enacts revenge on those who betrayed him, who do not recognise him and believe him to be who he says he is, reacting to his wealthy appearance accordingly.

That we are shown Heinz reading a novel that deals with a secret identity, reassessing who one's friends are, and confinement in a seemingly inescapable place, signals his own struggle with those aspects, even though we see little of this struggle on the surface of his behaviour during his time at the training camp. This ongoing inner struggle 298 also surfaces in his final question to the female officer, after they have had sex: if she were to fall in love with a man who turned out to not be Aryan, would she still sleep with him?

Her response, that of course she would not, is the catalyst for Heinz's decision to escape the training camp, but not that which crushes his ideal of maintaining his non-Jewish, German- fascist identity; as soon as he leaves, he tries to head to the Front. It is only in his second confinement in the work camp, in which he meets a positive influence in the form of Gabi, her grandfather, and a new friend, Max, whose father has committed suicide, where he finally is willing to admit his Jewish heritage aloud.

In Heinz's case, therefore, he is trapped in a limited space, one which revolves around disavowal of an Other (in his case, his Jewishness), but one which is also present within him: an absolute enemy, one which could be anywhere, and which is required for the system to function. Once Heinz ceases to believe that his being Jewish is an absolute evil—it becomes something ordinary, something he is able to apply to himself—he can no longer believe in the system, which is supported by a conflict with that Other. This is similar to one of the elements of Arnold's fear of and conflict concerning fascism: Arnold is equally trapped in spaces in which fascism could be anywhere or in anyone, including his comrades (Walter). Moreover, Arnold is measured by his fascist boss and found to be

"reinrassig"; the fascist Other could even be Arnold himself. Similarly, Mark Niebuhr tries to disavow, but ultimately is forced to recognise, the fascist within him: that he too has participated in the fascist war machine, and thus is, in some ways, one and the same as the men with whom he shares a cell.

In all three cases, an enclosed space (a closed system) is portrayed in which an ideology constituted around an absolute enemy—an ultimate Other—is thematized. In this 299 space, the protagonist is, or at least feels, trapped, and is confronted with (and forced to confront their own disavowal of) this Other. In Heinz's case, this process of confrontation and integration of his Jewishness is connected to his relationships with women and their connection to the enclosed spaces in which he is confined. Through this, the film recalls a major theme of earlier antifascist films, discussed in the second chapter of this dissertation: mothers, and their role in conjunction with the films' positive heroes.

The first of his relationships with woman we see is that with his mother, at the beginning of the film. His mother's death functions in certain ways like the mother-as- martyr narratives discussed in films such as Rotation, in the sense that Heinz, like

Rotation's Helmut, blames himself for his mother's death: it was he who demanded that they not go into the cellar during the bombing raid. This first refusal to be confined, coupled with his refusal to go into hiding with her to protect them from those seeking to persecute him as a Jew, leads to her death, while he (enclosed in an outhouse), remains safe. This death functions somewhat similarly to the mother-as-martyr narratives of earlier films, in that it pushes him to leave their neighbourhood and begin his journey through the world, which eventually leads to his rejection of fascism. However, the death is not narrativized as a martyrdom: her death is not implied to be self-sacrifice, but rather random chance, something which seems to primarily be the driving force behind everything which happens to Heinz from that point onwards. She does not die for any cause

(or even "for" her son). While Heinz initially states that the death is his fault, once he begins to travel to the orphanage, his mother's death no longer seems to be a factor in his decisions or actions. However, her death does fulfil the Freudian requirement noted by E.

Ann Kaplan for the development of psychical maturity: 'Freud’s concept of psychical reality 300 requires the repression of the desire for the mother, an instinctual renunciation which is the price of civilization.'376 Her death does allow Heinz to move to the next stage of his development: desiring and engaging in sexual relations with another woman.

This occurs when he reaches the SS training camp. Here, he is chosen to be the female officer's next object of affection. Her character fully resembles the typical DEFA characterisation of fascism and fascist women in particular: a temptress who plays on

Heinz's emotions, who thrives on causing chaos amongst the boys in the camp (who attack

Heinz once she picks a different paramour). Through her seduction of him, she also binds him to fascism: his transition to sexual maturity is thus tied to his induction into the pinnacle of fascist masculine adulthood, represented by the SS. In opposition to the female officer is Gabi, the girl with the egalitarian grandfather who teaches her English and is unbothered by Heinz's Jewish heritage. Where the Nazi officer embodies the typical DEFA characterisation of fascism, Gabi equally represents all the positive aspects of socialism and socialists as found in earlier DEFA films: rationality, logic, an unwillingness to adhere to the invalid legal system of fascism, and a lack of overt sexuality. She approaches Heinz as a friend, rather than as a temptress, and rather than attempting to draw him emotionally to her point of view, uses reason and ethics when speaking to him: “Großvater sagt, alle sind gleich.” That Gabi refers back to her grandfather in this conversation is key: if Heinz is undergoing an almost-Mitläufer narrative, if one that is guided mostly by coincidence and chance, then the grandfather to some extent fills the role of ideological representative.

As discussed in the previous three chapters, such figures in DEFA films, up to and including those who are fully developed enough to count as symbolic, fetishistic hero

376 Kaplan, 29 301 figures, act as proxy vessels for the trinity of State, Party, and ideology. This can range from the full-blown symbolic, fetishistic hero role of Ernst Thälmann, to much more minor figures such as the General in Meine Stunde Null, who simply fulfil the narrative role of ideological representative but do not have enough screen-time to fully function as a positive hero. (The spectator is not required to desire to be (with) an ideological representative; they simply fulfil a narrative role for the protagonist's development). This latter function is the most similar to the role of the grandfather in Stielke, Heinz, fünfzehn: he expresses several tenets of socialism and antifascist resistance, including telling Heinz to remember to build things, not just focus on the war. As we have also seen, Gabi tells Heinz that her grandfather says everyone is equal, and that laws are only good when they're good for people. However, he does not seek to convince Heinz of anything himself, and he also does several things that do not align with the ideological representative role: he teaches

Gabi English, and he also encourages (via Gabi) Heinz to run away (not join a resistance!) when he discovers that the English will be there in two days. This diverges from the typical role of the ideological representative: such characters do not stray from the Party line, because for narrative purposes they are the Party/ideology/State, in human form. That

Gabi's grandfather seems to have no affiliation to the Soviet Union, and indeed teaches his granddaughter English instead, undermines any reading of him as fulfilling the typical ideological representative role. Equally, the fact that he does not try to encourage Heinz to join in antifascist resistance, and indeed, does not seem to be active in the resistance himself, belies any such reading. At best, he represents a father figure who has not fought in the resistance, who is generally aligned ideologically with antifascism, and who is training a future generation (Gabi) to think similarly. It is thus interesting that Michael Kann was 302 criticized by reviewers for his own lack of experience in that respect (he was born in 1950), to which the film’s lack of truly moving or exciting moments is attributed: ‘Ich denke, einiges von dem, was diesen Film belastet, hätten andere, Erfahrenere, auch bemerken können. Vorher.’377

It is his and Gabi's influence that allow Heinz to finally admit aloud that he is Jewish, and perhaps even to finally take direct action against fascism in the form of blowing up the house; and at the end of the film, it is Gabi who Heinz either finds again or at least imagines doing so. In the final shot, in which he runs back along the road towards Gabi, it is somewhat unclear which is the case: the change in background music, to a melodic clarinet, flute and guitar trio with some odd, occasionally discordant harmonies, seems to imply that it is the latter, perhaps his imaginings while a prisoner of war. One could perhaps read the ending in a similar fashion to Ich war neunzehn—that, having reconciled himself with his paternal heritage, Heinz returns to a new Germany formed of people like Gabi and her father, in which everyone seems happy and fulfilled (we see people happily pass Heinz—a man and a woman with flowers in her hair—and the weather is brighter and sunnier) in order to follow her grandfather's advice and build things, rather than make war. However, this is purely conjecture: all that we actually see and hear is him walking back up the road and greeting Gabi, with the aforementioned change in music. As such, the ending is at best ambiguous in terms of Heinz's future in Germany and as a German.

Heinz is himself lacking in a father figure: his father has died, fighting in the war.

This is one reason Heinz has such a hard time reconciling his Jewish heritage (from his father's parents) with his fascist worldview, which he connects with his identity as a good

377 Goldberg, “Von den Wölfen aus der Meute gestoßen” 303

German citizen. How can his father have given him Jewish blood, if he died fighting for the fatherland? This complex father-son relationship is in some ways similar to that of Konrad

Wolf's Ich war neunzehn, in which the protagonist, Gregor's, feelings towards his (absent) father begin with rejection for his German-ness and end with acceptance and taking over of his commitment to building an antifascist Germany. In Heinz's case, his schoolboy identity is built around those values he thought his dead father shared: a total commitment to fascism, to the Führer and to victory in the war. On discovering that his father is the source of his Jewish heritage, he tries at first to disavow it—claiming that his mother must have cheated on his father and become impregnated by another man—before accepting it is true but attempting to cover over it with an overt performance of a fascist identity in the SS training camp, just as Gregor performs Russianness in the first half of Ich war neunzehn.

Like Gregor, Heinz clings to the maternal—although in his case, his German-ness is rooted in the maternal, not the paternal—and resists identifying with his father and his

Jewishness. Indeed, his reaction to the discovery of his father’s Jewishness, suggests a form of fear of castration: his father is, even beyond the grave, able to ‘cut him off’ from his

German-ness and dedication to fascism (again, here connected to the maternal, as in the

Mitläufer films of the previous chapter). Ultimately, however, he is able to accept that not only is he Jewish, but that dedicating himself to the war is pointless, but only through the influence of two other fathers: Gabi's grandfather, who gives him a different perspective to consider; and Max's father's suicide letter.

The film's narrative represents the latter as a more direct cause of Heinz's only direct and decisive action against fascism, the explosion of the farmhouse. After a sequence in which Heinz and Max are being trained in defence using wooden weapons, with an 304 instructor who appears to be teaching them from a book, Max pulls Heinz aside and reads him a letter from his father. While the letter initially appears to be about the

Niebelungenlied, the underlying message is that the whole system is corrupt. In other words, he openly states that which, according to Žižek, will cause the system's collapse if known: ‘for the synchronous order of law to function, it must be supported by some “little piece of the real,” which “stops up” and thus conceals the void of the law’s vicious circle.’378

Accordingly, Max and Heinz are immediately fully disillusioned. Heinz tells Max that, if his father is right, then they've been lied to all along. He also tells him about the female officer, saying that it was not how he imagined it would be—in other words, he now sees through her ideological seduction—and also tells Max that he too has no father anymore. This is the point at which both boys reject fascism as an ideology—and indeed, in which Heinz finally rejects his father as he knew him and as he emulated him; as a soldier who died supporting a corrupt ideology. If we are the view the film as a Mitläufer narrative, this is perhaps Heinz’s true moment of crisis—but it comes too late for him to truly undergo the other stages of conversion before the end of the film’s narrative (and before his capture by the British soldiers).

Although this is followed by the scene in which Gabi offers Heinz civilian clothes to run away, the scene after that, in which Heinz and Max blow up the farmhouse, seems more linked to the letter than to Gabi and her grandfather's influence. Indeed, Heinz's first response to his horror at what his commanding officer intends to do (hang the people from the farmhouse) is to suggest that they run away—exactly what Gabi has suggested he do. It is Max who believes running away is not the solution, and the cut from this to Heinz

378 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 260 305 blowing up the house and Max shooting another officer implies that it is at Max's urging that Heinz therefore takes more direct action. Max says that the war is lost, but he does not want to come out of it a murderer. His desperate cries after he shoots the SS officer who has been preparing the nooses, however, shows that he realises he has no choice—to prevent injustice, he still has to become a murderer.

Dead fathers ultimately come to represent, for both boys, a break with the past and with fascism. As in earlier films, and as Julia Hell points out in GDR literature of the post- war period, there is a double parallel here: not only was the phenomenon of the absent father, dead or captured in the war, an issue affecting audiences of the GDR immediately post-war, but also the GDR itself was a state formed around an absent father figure:

Stalin.379 By 1987, those real sons—the Heinzes and Maxes—of absent fathers were themselves fathers or even grandfathers, and the absent father-at-a-distance, Stalin, was himself doubly absent: dead, but at least in the GDR, not forgotten. As discussed further in the second section of this chapter, Stalin's legacy hung heavily over the GDR even after its end. As David Childs describes, the GDR’s leadership was old—mostly well over the standard GDR retirement age—and, by 1986, suspicious of the direction the Soviet Union under Gorbachev was moving. Childs notes the case of the Soviet film Repentance, an

‘allegory about small town small-mindedness and political representation which was critical of the Stalin era,’ that was ‘strongly criticised in Neues Deutschland and Junge

Welt.’380

In Stielke, Heinz, fünfzehn, one can read Heinz's struggle with his identity in light of the revelations concerning his father as similar to the struggle with how to consider Stalin's

379 Hell, 29 380 Childs, 18 306 legacy in the GDR. On the one hand, the GDR was one of the most "Stalinistic" states behind the Iron Curtain, right up until 1989. On the other, he was purged from many areas of public life (scenes deleted from films, including the Thälmann films; streets renamed) and officially denounced relatively soon after his death across the Soviet Union. If one reads

Heinz's difficulties as being paralleled to the troubled path of real existing socialism in the

GDR, his conversion narrative, driven, as it is, primarily by coincidence, makes more sense.

It is not a narrative concerning conversion to an ideology, but concerning gradual disillusionment with an ideology and with a reign of law. One telling factor here is Gabi and her grandfather, who are seemingly aligned with antifascism but also, confusingly, associated with the West (England) and with advocating running away; with

Republikflucht? Heinz cannot bring himself to fully abandon his duties even when confronted with all the lies the ideological system is built upon, and tries a last-ditch effort to bring about drastic change in the state authorities: blowing up the house. In the end, we cannot know if he has a happy ending or not; it is unclear if his reunion with Gabi is real or imagined precisely because the future for the ideological system is unclear.

Like Mark Niebuhr and Arnold Clasen, Heinz thus undergoes an ambiguous process of questioning his identity, which is not conclusively resolved at the end, not driven (as it would have been in earlier films) by encounters with ideological representatives, symbolic heroes, or Vorbilder, and which is instead shaped by and conducted within enclosed spaces.

These enclosed spaces function as heterotopias of deviation or crisis, in which these identity struggles are played out in a space that is Other from all other spaces, and in which self and Other, "us" versus absolute enemy confrontations take place. In many ways, these films mirror in these narratives their function for their spectator: rather than didactically 307 portraying positive heroes and their Bildung, the films create, within the space of the cinema, their own heterotopia in which the spectator can also identify with and experience these dichotomies. If the spectator recognises in the protagonist of a film themselves—if the film functions in some ways as a mirror of its spectator381—then Foucault's description of mirrors in relation to heterotopias and utopias holds true also for films in this sense:

'The mirror is, after all, a utopia, since it is a placeless place. In the mirror, I see

myself there where I am not, in an unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the

surface; I am over there, there where I am not, a sort of shadow that gives my own

visibility to myself, that enables me to see myself there where I am absent: such is

the utopia of the mirror. But it is also a heterotopia in so far as the mirror does exist

in reality, where it exerts a sort of counter action on the position that I occupy. From

the standpoint of the mirror I discover my absence from the place where I am since I

see myself over there [...]. The mirror functions as a heterotopia in this respect: it

makes this place that I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at

once absolutely real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely

unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass through this virtual point which

is over there.'382

The space portrayed within the film thus becomes connected with all the space that surrounds it—the "real" space occupied by the spectator—but also is simultaneously unreal, also to the spectator, since they know very well that it is a two-dimensional screen.

As such, the spectator equally fetishizes the film in their suspension of disbelief, just as they

381 Aaron, 28: ‘Cinema, then, provides our most common mirror, reviving the conditions of, and “older fascination” with, looking that was deemed so inseparable from our developing subjectivity.’ 382 Foucault, 4 308 fetishize the symbolic hero, who they know very well is a fictional, on-screen character, and yet whose perfection covers over the gaps in the ideology, in the reign of law. This fetishization of the film is utilised in earlier DEFA films to didactic effect; in the films discussed in this chapter, such efforts are undermined by their portrayals not of a utopia, but of a heterotopia, in which questions of identity are played out and in which typical narratives of Bildung, conversion, and martyrdom collapse or become instruments of chance and coincidence. This undermining of or collapse of typical positive hero narratives of the 1980s could be viewed as symptomatic of the gradual disillusionment with the GDR as a state, which was by this point in time endemic, or, particularly in Stielke, Heinz, fünfzehn, a representation of the disappointment which followed the GDR response to

Gorbachev's call for glasnost and perestroika (openness and restructuring) in 1985. Rather than providing a definitive statement on German, antifascist identity at the end of the film, and shoring up the spectator's adherence to the ideology and the state as a result, these films leave open questions and ambiguity in their wake.

Stalin no more Where the films in the first section of this chapter deal with personal identity crises, and ambiguous Mitläufer narratives, the films in this section, made after the Wende, go further, striking at the heart of the typical positive hero narrative, by delegitimising its most central figure: Stalin. The two films to be discussed in this section, Horst Seemann's Zwischen

Pankow und Zehlendorf (DEFA, 1990/1991)383 and Herwig Kipping's Das Land hinter dem

383 Multiple production companies were involved in the making and financing of Zwischen Pankow und Zehlendorf: Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Allianz Film Produktion, DEFA, and Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen. However, DEFA was the primary production company for the film, which was made as part of the Künstlerische Arbeitsgruppe “Johannisthal” in the 309

Regenbogen (DEFA, 1991/1992), are both set in 1953, the year of Stalin’s death. Both undermine the cult of personality surrounding Stalin, undermining his position as the ultimate representative of the trinity of ideology, State, and Party. Alongside this, they denounce those who fill the roles previously filled by positive heroes—the socialist elite— as laughable and morally bankrupt. Both films focus on children as their protagonists, showing how children find creative escapes from adult irrationality caused by their ideological eccentricities. Simultaneously, both films thematise fathers and mothers: fathers as traumatised and violent; and mothers, not as martyrs, but as overworked and unrecognised.

Zwischen Pankow und Zehlendorf: finding the middle ground Zwischen Pankow und Zehlendorf is set in Berlin in 1953, and tells the story of Susanne, an

11-year-old budding pianist who lives in Pankow with her mother, Isolde, and older sister,

Gies. Her father, Emil, has been missing since the war, and they have continued their lives without him. Susanne divides her time between her home and school in Pankow in East

Berlin, and her grandmother's house in Zehlendorf, in the West of the city, where she learns to play piano. Her grandmother is an opera singer and recognises Susanne's talent.

The film works both to depoliticise art and demythologise Stalin through its portrayal of

Susanne's struggles to reconcile the two halves of her life, either side of the Berlin-Berlin border.

The film begins with shots of Susanne's piano lessons in her grandmother's grand house in West Berlin, and with her playing hopscotch outside her mother's East Berlin

DEFA studios, and directed by Horst Seemann, who trained at the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen in Potsdam-Babelsberg, and who had made multiple films for DEFA prior to reunification. 310 apartment: a carefree and innocent childhood. However, when Emil returns from a P.O.W. camp, Susanne's comfortable life begins to change. Emil is convinced that a new war will begin soon and insists on training his wife and children in the woods so that they will survive. He tries to prevent Susanne from practicing piano, seeing it as a waste of time.

Meanwhile, Isolde dislikes the level of influence her mother (Susanne's grandmother) has on her daughter. She tries to convince Susanne and Gies of the necessity of being ever active against the class enemy, who could be hiding anywhere. Susanne and Gies decide that if a new war comes, they will join the partisans, and so begin to try hard in their father's training sessions, so that the partisans will be happy to take them. This comes to the head with a conflict at Susanne's school, where she kills a frog after a dare from one of her classmates. The school principal tells Isolde that she worries about the Western influence on her child, although Susanne tells the principal that she did it because she must be strong to be able to join the partisans.

As a result, Isolde prevents Susanne from going West to her grandmother's house for piano lessons. Unable to play at home or with her grandmother, Susanne resorts to desperate measures. She imagines that, in jail, she would be able to play piano forever, in peace, and so goes on a shoplifting spree so that she gets arrested. When the judge hears her reasons, she lets her off for shoplifting, and Isolde lets her return to Zehlendorf to her lessons. Emil, meanwhile, has been trying to run an illegal business involving fish. Two men in leather jackets arrive and want to speak with him. Emil, who fears arrest, packs a bag and flees West.

In the final scene, Susanne arrives at school to discover everyone grieving, because

Stalin has died. The principal asks Susanne if she will play piano at the commemoration 311 ceremony. Susanne agrees, but says that it will not be a proper ceremony without a coffin coming onto the stage, and without a funeral march and flowers. The teacher tries to explain that the coffin will not be there, and says she does not know where they can get flowers at that time of year. Susanne pulls some Western currency out of her pocket and says they can get them from "drüben". After the ceremony, Susanne pulls off her FDJ scarf, and goes back to playing hopscotch—just as she was at the beginning of the film.

The adults in Susanne's life represent facets of two conflicting ideologies. Firstly, her grandmother, and the people she meets in Zehlendorf, represent capitalism. They are focused on personal success rather than a unified goal; in Susanne and her grandmother's cases, this means success in music, an endeavour which requires intense individual focus, often to the detriment of other relationships and interests. They are also portrayed as overtly wealthy and, indeed, upper-class: her grandmother lives in a large villa and has friends who include a Count and an African General.

Meanwhile, her mother, school teachers, and Hans (her mother's friend and mentor) represent facets of socialism. Her mother is convinced of the idea that "class enemies" exist and could turn out to be anyone, at any time, and seeks to transmit this paranoia to her children. Equally, her mother works hard, with long hours, and is rewarded by her peers and the Party for her efforts, but is still not respected at home by her husband, or even by their teacher, who can only scold her for allowing them contact with their grandmother.

Susanne's mother, the teachers, and Hans, are all completely dedicated to the project of socialism, but do not do a good job of transmitting this to Susanne: we see her writing homework about Lenin, being told about Klassenfeinder, and mourning Stalin, but beyond 312 that she seems to have little understanding of what it means to be a citizen of the GDR or a socialist.

Rather more disconnected from ideology stands her father, Emil, whose primary trait is an obsessive fear of another war taking place, which leaves him paranoid, emotionally volatile, and, at times, physically aggressive. His utter conviction that another war may take place, and requirement that his family train unrelentingly in the woods for that eventuality, could be aligned with sentiments on either side of the Cold War—and his business dealings, which involve some kind of illicit fish import business, seem more aligned with "dodgy dealing" in capitalism than any socialist activity. Indeed, his difficulty in finding a job seems at odds with the idea that there was a shortage of workers in the GDR of the 1950s.384 He appears to be a remnant of the war that the authorities would rather ignore and forget; while his wife is celebrated for her work for the state, nobody—not even her seemingly influential colleague—offers him a job or any help with reintegrating into society after his clearly traumatic experiences as a POW. It is thus not surprising that his narrative ends with him escaping to the West. The East Berlin in which he lives has no place for him.

Susanne has little concept of the reality of war or its consequences, despite (or due to) growing up in a society and being part of an education system for which antifascism was the primary legitimising factor. Her only frame of reference is what she has seen in the cinema: her first question for her newly-returned father (who is a stranger to her) is if he

384 ‘To avoid a shortage of workers in individual branches of industry, measures must be taken now to make available the necessary numbers of workers, technicians, and engineers, and to further mechanize production methods, especially in the coal- and ore- mining industry, so that production quotas can be met and the shortages of workers overcome.’ “The Five-Year Plan of the German Democratic Republic”, 13 313 learned anything from his experiences. She then tells him what she's seen in movies: ‘Ich habe Filme gesehen, und da haben die Partisanen Rad geschlagen und spielten dabei auch

Ziehharmonika.’ She can only picture war as involving partisans, and it does not occur to her to imagine her father as a soldier fighting against them. Her only way of incorporating her father's trauma-induced actions and stories into her imaginary is thus to create vivid fantasies in which she, her sister, and sometimes her father are the primary actors. For example, in one scene, her father returns to their apartment, to find Susanne playing the piano. For once, he seems to be in an affectionate mood; he grabs her and hugs her, then begins drinking. Susanne asks him if he has brought them anything, and he pulls out an axe.

When she and her sister seem unimpressed with the axe, he also gives them some candy he has bought for them, because he got a job today with the fish import company. Then

Susanne asks him what he organised in the war, since he says that is why he got the job. As he tells them a story about a Christmas Eve during the war, he uses the piano to make sound effects, which transports Susanne into the scene. She imagines herself playing the piano in the middle of the snow, while Gies and their father dance around. We see the scene in her imagination through an aperture in high and low angle shots, but rather than

Christmas music, her vision is accompanied by discordant string music—continuing the impulse of her father’s piano sound effects, which he makes by leaning backwards onto the keys. The scene demonstrates Susanne’s utter lack of references for what war truly looked like; in her imagining, her father wears a kind of laboratory coat (or perhaps that of a fishmonger!), as do the others in the scene, and it takes place in a kind of barn, which also has a piano for her to play. 314

Susanne's other frame of reference for interpreting her father's actions and stories, aside from the cinema and music, is her mother. In a key scene, Isolde functions as the

"interpreter" of Emil's paranoia and his harsh training of his daughters, which up until this point Susanne has rejected and fought against. For Christmas, the family gather together

(including the grandmother) in the Pankow apartment, along with some of Isolde's friends from work. Emil gets drunk, insults his mother-in-law, and tells war stories, creating a tense and unhappy atmosphere. Susanne and Gies express the desire to move West, but

Isolde's friend tells them that that's where the “class enemy” is, so they cannot really want to move there. Afterwards, when the sisters are in bed, Susanne asks Isolde if she really believes in class enemies, because her grandmother says there are just good and bad people. Isolde explains to them that the “class enemy” can be anyone: ‘manchmal trägt er eine Maske. Dahinter versteckt er sich.’ After she leaves, Susanne and Gies decide that if another war comes, they will join the partisans, and afterwards begin to train with their father more enthusiastically, so that the partisans will accept them if that happens.

The girls don't explain where they got the idea of partisans from, nor of how they work, but based on Susanne's earlier comments about learning about returning POWs from films, it seems implicit that this is where her ideas come from. Indeed, the idea of cinema as both shaping society and of shaping the worldview of the film's characters is implied in the very first shots of the film, in which a man (who we later discover to be Isolde's close friend, Hans) makes a speech in front of a blank film screen, in which he thanks Stalin for his great input to Soviet film. That the screen is blank, and that we see no intertextual shots of which films he is specifically referring to, implies that the reality is a lack of content; a gap where Stalin's input is believed to be. In other words, the belief that Stalin has shaped 315

Soviet film through his input is in fact covering up the blank space at the heart of the film's message—the ‘"little piece of the real" which […] conceals the void at of the law’s vicious circle.’385

We see the screen again after shots of ruined houses, covered in banners supporting

German self-determination (“Deutschland den Deutschen“; “Deutsche an einen Tisch“), which also undermine the idea of Stalin's unambiguously positive, fatherly influence over the GDR and German communism. The camera follows Susanne, who picks her way through the rubble and passes the screen, affectionately greeting Hans as she passes. The blank screen, representative of Stalin, sits amongst rubble, with few people seeming to notice or pay attention to it, and surrounded by banners which deny his influence in

Germany. Despite the fact, therefore, that Stalin is not mentioned explicitly again until his death at the end of the film, the first shots of the film already function to shape the film around delegitimising and demythologising Stalin, and to demonstrate Susanne's understanding of the world, in which Stalin plays a minor and uninteresting part: a complete contrast to the "children of the future" of films such as Stärker als die Nacht or Sie nannten ihn Amigo, in which ideology is the most important part of their worldview.

That this understanding of Stalin is already shown at the very beginning of the film means that Susanne's reaction to the news of his death, in the final scene, is unsurprising: when her teacher tells her that everyone is sad because Stalin is dead, she simply replies

"Ach so!" in a very unconcerned way—although her teacher is so overcome that she sobs into a handkerchief. Her attitude to the memorial preparations also serves to demythologise Stalin, because Susanne only understands the death as that of one person—

385 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 260 316 someone quite ordinary, just a man who has died—and has no concept of the ideological element of it at all. When her teacher asks her to play piano at the memorial, Susanne asks when the coffin will be brought onto the stage, and is disappointed when she's told there will be no coffin, because “ohne Sarg wird das ganze nicht so richtig feierlich!” In other words, Susanne has no conception of Stalin's continued existence beyond his death—of the sublime body of the People that continues after his death—because for her, he is just a man whose death in body means his death in totality. Not only that, but she seems only interested in him insofar as she will be allowed to participate in the ceremony. Žižek, discussing Lefort and Kantorowicz, describes how the King’s body (equally, the totalitarian leader’s body) is redoubled into ‘his sublime, immaterial, sacred body and his terrestrial body.’386 Moreover, the significance of this sublime body is reinforced by our ‘fascination’ with ‘the charisma of the royal figures.’387 Susanne’s disinterest in Stalin himself—she is interested only in the trappings of the funeral, and does not seem to care who it is for— undermines this. Unlike in Žižek’s discussion of the French Revolution, in which he states that ‘we cannot deprive the king of his charisma simply by treating him as our equal. At the very moment of his greatest abatement, he arouses absolute compassion and fascination— witness the trial of “citizen Louis Capet”.’388 Susanne’s reaction, in contrast, is one of dismissal—she does not treat Stalin’s death as an object of fascination, but rather as mostly meaningless to her.

Stalin's ideological significance is also undermined by her suggestion of using western currency to buy flowers, not only because Susanne does not understand that

386 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 254 387 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 255 388 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 255 317 flowers from the West would not be appropriate to mourn Stalin's death, but also because the teacher does not reject her suggestion, instead telling her to buy them. The ceremony, which should be utterly ideological, is transformed instead into an almost apolitical act of performative mourning, with the expected flowers, and Susanne playing a traditional funeral march on the piano. While Hans, Isolde's friend, gives a speech about Stalin (and is nearly in tears), the camera focuses primarily on Susanne. After the ceremony, Susanne removes her FDJ scarf and puts it away in her bag. Then she goes back to playing hopscotch. The end of the film is thus in complete opposition to other films surrounding the deaths of positive heroes. In the Thälmann films, Die Toten bleiben jung, or Stärker als die

Nacht, the focus of the end of the film is on the spiritual continuation of the dead hero's cause in the next generation; on the passing on of the sublime body of the People to the next symbolic hero.

In Zwischen Pankow und Zehlendorf, in contrast, the end of the film focuses on the very opposite. Susanne, as a representative of the future, sees political and ideological things as uninteresting and unimportant, and goes back to her childhood games. She will continue to find a balance between East and West—between her mother and grandmother—for as long as she can, because it is what is best for her own, individual goals. Tellingly, the film's last shot is a slow-motion shot of Susanne hopping into the air while playing, and ends at a still of her, mid-hop, before she lands.

The film not only undermines the idea of Stalin as the ultimate symbolic hero, the sublime Leader, thus also undermining the ideology/State/Party trinity that he stands for, but also undermines or exposes other aspects of the myths that structure the reign of law formed around that trinity. Firstly, the figure of Emil, who represents the trauma of war but 318 who is not ideologically really connected to either system, works to both highlight (rather than cover over) the pointless violence at the root of the system and simultaneously disconnect it from antifascism. While he escapes to the West near the end of the film to avoid the men who are looking for him after his business dealings in the East go sour, there is no implication that he will be successful in the West either. Rather, the film implies that he is likely to become involved in shady dealings no matter where he is living, because he is a traumatised alcoholic who seems perennially short of money. His (seemingly illegal or illicit) fish business is not portrayed as a capitalistic scheme—indeed, initially it is portrayed as a positive initiative that he can work hard for, something Isolde's Party- affiliated friends appear to have no problem with. As such, Emil is not particularly aligned with one ideology or another, unlike Isolde or her mother, who clearly represent East and

West respectively.

Emil's paranoid obsession with the war and his attempts to educate his daughters about it thus function for the spectator primarily to highlight the pointless, traumatising violence that he has experienced. When Susanne asks him what he learnt while he was imprisoned, he has no answers for her. He hallucinates the sounds of bombing raids, gets drunks and assaults Isolde, and insists on training his family to survive a new war. His fear of a new war does not include any speculation of who the war would be against or why it would start; he sees only the inevitability of it happening again. The war thus appears to be something that simply is: a violent and traumatising event, after which life may continue, but which will inevitably happen again. This stands in opposition to the typical use of the war in DEFA film, which narrate the war through the lens of socialist or at least antifascist

Bildung. Typically, the war is portrayed as a war against fascism, which is ultimately won 319 by German antifascists with the invaluable aid of the Soviet army, thus leading to the inevitable creation of the GDR, the German socialist state for which everyone on the antifascist side was fighting all along. The portrayal of war through Emil's character utterly undermines this myth, by highlighting the violence and disassociating it entirely from any kind of antifascism and from Russia. As such, the violence at the root of the reign of law is exposed, rather than covered over. Emil’s fear of a new war implies that which Žižek draws out from Kant’s prohibition of ‘the exploration of the origins of the legitimate order’:389 that another such ‘absolute, self-referential crime’ would result in ‘precisely and simply a (new) reign of law.’390 Emil, rather than repressing the ‘traumatic kernel’391 of violence he has lived through, centres his life around it; like Arnold in Dein unbekannter Bruder, he lives in abject fear.

Equally, the film undermines the idea of the absolute enemy, in a similar manner to the films discussed in the first section of this chapter. There are no characters in the film who could represent the absolute enemy themselves: Emil could be the 'hidden'

Klassenfeind, but is never condemned as such; Susanne's grandmother or her friends could have been portrayed as all that is evil in the West and with capitalism, but they are portrayed as kindly people with Susanne's best interests at heart. Indeed, Isolde's attempts to teach her daughters about Klassenfeinde backfire by leading Susanne into committing casual animal cruelty, killing a frog to prove she is ready to be a partisan if necessary, whereas her grandmother's insistence that there are simply "good and bad people" seems to be something that Susanne can more easily understand and make sense of in her

389 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 205 390 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 208 391 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 208 320 everyday life. Susanne, by straddling the fence between East and West, socialist schooling and capitalist education from her grandmother, finds it least confusing to exist in a world without absolutes, something that is encapsulated in the final shot of her in mid-air, in the middle of her game.

The film thus demonstrates that childhood is (and should be) ultimately apolitical— and Susanne's childhood, which revolves so much around her piano and music, also represents a depoliticisation of art. Indeed, the film was criticised by reviewers for its superficiality in this respect: one reviewer, writing in the Berliner Zeitung, states: ‘Es wird—ich werde den Verdacht nicht los—mit einer großen Tragödie zunächst erst mal ein kleines Geschäft versucht. Das dient dem DEFA-Abgesang, doch nicht dem DEFA-

Neuanfang!’392 The narrative's primary conflict for Susanne is not about ideology, but about whether she is allowed to continue playing; a ‘generational conflict’, as Naughton notes.393

Her father (and thus the aftermath of the war, and his obsession with it) tries to prevent her playing for no reason other than finding it annoying and frivolous. Her mother

(representing idealised striving for the success of the State (and ideology and Party) above all else) does not want her to continue visiting her grandmother for her piano lessons for political reasons, but also because she does not get on with her mother. Susanne herself understands only that she wants to play the piano above all else, and that the adults' arguing is preventing that. She even goes so far as to try to get arrested and sent to jail so that she can play piano as much as she wants without distractions! In other words, she seeks an imaginary enclosed space in which her ideal life can exist without outside

392 Sobe, “Die Irrungen und die Wirkungen der Wanderer zwischen Welten” 393 Naughton, 207 321 influence, a desire which is immediately dismissed—first by the judge, who is nevertheless understanding, and secondly by her father, who ridicules her.

For Susanne, art is entirely about imagination and personal cultivation; it is utterly apolitical. This goes utterly against the position of the GDR State regarding art: as McGee notes, artists had ‘the right to artistic freedom if such artistic production furthered the socialist goals of the state in both form and content.’394 The scene at the end of the film around Stalin's memorial demonstrates the extent to which Susanne cannot recognise the connection between art and politics or ideology. Indeed, her full name implies that she is utterly incapable of this recognition—her surname is "Wünsche", suggesting that she is someone whose entire existence is shaped by fantasy and dreams, right down to her name.

This attitude is utterly in contrast to the idea which permeated all of GDR culture—that all art not only should be political, but in fact inevitably is political. Ironically, of course, by choosing this as a theme, Horst Seemann has ultimately created a film which is inherently political in its attempt to depoliticise art and portray an ideal of not choosing a political side, but rather, finding a middle ground. The film can thus also be read not only as an undermining of the cultural narratives which permeated pre-Wende DEFA films, but also as a Plädoyer for the unified Germany of the 90s: for finding a middle ground between two ideologies.

Das Land hinter dem Regenbogen: escaping Stalin Produced by the Künstlerische Arbeitsgruppe "DaDaeR", Das Land hinter dem Regenbogen offers a similarly surrealist take on GDR realities as the group's earlier film, Jörg Foth's

Letztes aus der DaDaeR. Like Zwischen Pankow und Zehlendorf, the film acts to

394 McGee, 445 322 demythologise Stalin and delegitimise his legacy. However, where in Zwischen Pankow und

Zehlendorf, this demythologising of Stalin is an undercurrent in the film, beneath the main plotline of Susanne's struggles between East and West, in Das Land hinter dem Regenbogen, the undermining of Stalin is far more overt and far more the main purpose of the film.

Indeed, whereas the former deconstructs and subverts certain aspects of the typical positive hero narrative, the latter takes apart nearly every aspect of the narrative, featuring

(and exposing) the symbolic, fetishistic hero, the Vorbild, the converted Mitläufer, and the socialist mother, as well as Stalin himself. As Reinhild Steingröver rightly notes, ‘reading the last features [of DEFA directors] through the lens of the preceding films in a director’s career offers an important corrective to the reverse chronological approach: instead of viewing the surreally explosive images of Herwig Kipping’s Land hinter dem Regenbogen solely as the post-wall implosion of GDR iconography (Stalin, Marx, socialist banners and symbols), the film can be seen as a continuation of his sustained interest in German

Romanticism and idealism, begun in his diploma film Hommage à Hölderlin (1982).’395

Nevertheless, it is exactly this “implosion” which is of interest here—not in order to define

Kipping as a director, but in order to examine the general trend of the deconstruction of the tropes of antifascism in the last generation of DEFA films.

Like Zwischen Pankow und Zehlendorf, Das Land hinter dem Regenbogen is set in

1953, this time in the small, fictional village of Stalina. The village is a strange combination of grand and run-down; its people live in ramshackle farmhouses and outhouses, surrounded by the remnants of what appears to be a formerly grand estate, with classical- style statues and follies. The film focuses primarily on the characters of the Rainbowmaker,

395 Steingröver 2014, 11 323 a child who escapes the surreality of everyday life in the village into dreams and fantasies, and Marie, the girl he likes. Their village is led by the Rainbowmaker's grandfather, who worships Stalin like a god, and who has created a religious-style cult around him amongst the other villagers. Meanwhile, his son, the Rainbowmaker’s father, is a drunken and traumatised former soldier, who repeatedly injures himself by leaping out of bed and through a trapdoor while screaming about the partisans, and who has an ongoing conflict with his father over the leadership of the village.

The people of the village are obsessed with casual sex and violence: people have sex in outhouses or even in public, while others repeatedly attack the Rainbowmaker, kill fish in the pond with grenades, shoot flamethrowers, and fire machine guns at random. After

Stalin's death, near the beginning of the film, the village gradually descends into chaos: the grandfather's statues and giant pictures of Stalin are repeatedly destroyed, the

Rainbowmaker’s father is named by the SED as the new leader of the village collective, and the grandfather tries to wrestle back control. Some men arrive and destroy much of the village, as well as the images of Stalin, with flamethrowers while shouting 'Ich liebe die

Sowjetunion', leaving the village a burning wreck. Afterwards, the grandfather unveils a new giant portrait of Stalin. Some state representatives arrive to announce that there was an attack against the state on 17 June 1953; they are driving a prison truck, which the villagers attack with pitchforks and hoes. Eventually, the men who attacked the village with the flamethrowers nail the grandfather to a cross, where he hangs, sobbing, and asking why

Stalin has forsaken him. After this, the Rainbowmaker lists the deaths and disappearances that have happened in the village, over a shot of him painting a rainbow over the giant

(house-sized) Stalin portrait. The film ends with a parade along the sandy coastline near 324 the village, with the villagers holding Stalin pictures and slogans. Marie and the

Rainbowmaker walk away from the parade together, and the camera pans away to a statue of Stalin, alone in the sand.

The film thus tells an utterly surreal story, one which refers to real historical events, but is primarily driven by the whims and obsessions of the various characters. It is the very opposite of socialist realism;396 even more so than another of the K.A.G's films, Letztes aus der DaDaeR, it takes place in a fantastical and bizarre realm, in which people's actions seem heavy with symbolic meaning. Most of the characters each seem to function as metaphors or symbols, their actions otherwise seeming random and unexplainable. The

Rainbowmaker and Marie, meanwhile, although they do take part in some of the events, mostly exist as observers, who passively witness what happens and distance themselves from it through fantasies and dreams.

In terms of the film's undermining of typical positive hero narratives, firstly, various characters represent different typical roles: the grandfather stands in for the Thälmann- like symbolic hero. The Rainbowmaker's mother stands in for the good socialist mother, while the father’s (and grandfather’s) lover represents the apolitical or even anti-socialist temptress. The men who set fire to the village (Heinrich, the former collective leader, the men with the bazooka and flamethrower, and Hans) represent those who wish to destroy socialism from within—the absolute enemy incarnate—while even the GDR's government officials are represented through the "first secretary", who seems to hold office hours in an

396 As Steingröver notes, Kipping had already rejected socialist realism in 1982, in his diploma thesis. She cites Kipping’s thesis as follows: ‘The poetic principle in film consists of utilizing all aesthetic means to produce images that express the subjective position of the director, his values, his opinion, his inner disposition, thoughts, feelings, moods for an allegorical depiction of a conflict that cannot be solved practically or logically.’ Steingröver 2014, 86 325 outhouse, and through those representatives of the state who arrive driving a prison wagon. Beyond that are the children, the Rainmaker, Marie, and the Rainmaker's nemesis,

Hans: typically, the "future of socialism". I examine how these portrayals together reference and subvert the typical narratives of such figures in earlier DEFA films in order to undermine not only Stalin's myth but also the entire system it legitimised and shored up.

The character of the grandfather holds a primary function in this delegitimization.

He is positioned to be perceived as equivalent to the typical symbolic hero figures of earlier

DEFA films, like Thälmann. However, this is then undermined by other aspects of his portrayal. I thus first discuss how the film makes clear that he is supposed to be read as a symbolic hero, and then explore how this is subverted. Firstly, he is specifically portrayed as a vessel of or proxy for Stalin for the villagers. One of our earliest impressions of him in the film is a shot in which he is sat on a throne, with a machine gun in his hands and a

Stalinist flag at his feet--the image of an old resistance fighter, now "crowned"—risen to symbolic hero status—through his actions for the cause. The overdetermined symbolism of the throne is immediately undermined when the Rainbowmaker, his grandson, awakens him—he fires the machine gun in surprise, an erratic and irrational reaction. Together, the pair then hang the flag while the grandfather says what amounts to a prayer to Stalin:

“Großer Stalin, schenke meinem Dorf einen sozialistischen Arbeitstag.” The irony of this statement is immediately apparent—nobody in the village, not least the grandfather himself, appears to be working.

This scene serves to demonstrate the grandfather's dedication to Stalin and his

(presumable) past as a resistance fighter; the next major scene featuring the grandfather then solidifies his role as the proxy of Stalin. In this scene, we first see Marie, wearing 326 white, and reading a eulogy for Stalin from a large red book, in which she imagines Stalin sitting next to Lenin on a bench, with Thälmann next to them, and an accordion playing to thank them. After Marie has finished speaking, the camera cuts to the grandfather’s face in close-up; we see tears dripping down his cheeks. He proceeds to make an emotional speech, addressing the villagers as "Genossen und werktätiger Bauer" and describing Stalin using clearly Christ-like imagery: “In einer kleinen Hütte wurde der Welt der Erlöser geboren. […] Er starb für mich, für dich, für uns." He refers to Stalin as “Bruder,” and finishes his speech by crying “Warum hast du uns das angetan?”—echoing the Bible.

Throughout the film, the grandfather continues to give such speeches addressing and referencing Stalin, while also privately praying to his bust in the woods that he may adequately live up to him, for example in foiling class enemies. The grandfather is thus positioned as Stalin's "messenger" in the village; offering teachings and judgements, particularly to the children, on Stalin's behalf. Indeed, for the children, he is both a leader and a father figure, since many of them seem to be lacking father figures themselves—or, as in the case of the Rainbowmaker, have father figures who do nothing fatherly for them. By the end of the film, he also becomes a Christ figure in his own right, since he is crucified on a cross in the middle of the town square. At this point, Stalin is elevated to the level of God: just like Christ, the grandfather calls out "Vater, Vater, Stalin, Stalin, warum hast du mich verlassen?"

The grandfather may become a communist Christ in the model of Thälmann at the end of the film, but it is really a satire of such “undying deaths” rather than a canonisation, as is his entire portrayal. For instance, as I already noted in the very first scene we see him, he is immediately portrayed as irrational and erratic, firing off a machine gun out of 327 nothing more than surprise at being woken up. This characterisation of erraticism and, indeed, emotional volatility, continues throughout the film: he threatens people with his machine gun, sobs as he makes his speech about Stalin's death, has sex with a woman while shouting for Stalin to forgive him and gazing at Stalin’s image in a locket, and gives a ranting speech in the town square about how the snow on the ground is the fault of the imperialists. Not only does he therefore not conform to the trope of symbolic heroes (and even Vorbilder) being stoic and rational, even in the face of great danger or trauma, he also does not match the flawless, idealized portrayal of symbolic heroes exemplified by

Thälmann, among others. He may have a quasi-religious role in the film and in the village, but he is portrayed as hugely flawed, and not seeking to really redeem himself of those flaws in the way a Vorbild or Mitläufer narrative might allow.

Equally, while he clearly functions as Stalin's messenger in the village, nobody seems to really listen to him, particularly after Stalin's death. In other DEFA positive hero films, it is taken as a given that other socialists (and even unconvinced apoliticals) will automatically pay attention to the symbolic hero when they begin to give a speech—for example, the speech scenes in the Thälmann films, the courtroom scene in Stärker als die

Nacht, or the scene on the train in Mama, ich lebe, where everyone gathers around when the Russian general begins to speak with the four German soldiers. Here, the villagers, aside from the small group of children, mostly seem to ignore the grandfather's speeches, or aren't even present when he's giving them. When he makes the ranting speech in the town square, for example, the only person who really seems to be listening is Marie; everyone else ignores him and goes about their day. Later, he gives a speech about children being created by socialism, but his audience is mostly made up of some of the odd classical 328 statues in the forest--the only other person there is the Rainbowmaker. Indeed, not only does he not have a real audience here, but the content of his speech is just a twist on typical

Christian discourse, not actually any kind of socialist or Stalinistic doctrine! This is a direct contrast to Thälmann's speeches, or to the general in Mama, ich lebe, as two examples, who both cite real socialist doctrine in their speeches and conversations. As such, the character of the grandfather not only does not really teach anyone anything about real socialism in the film, he also cannot function as a didactic figure for the spectator.

The grandfather therefore enacts a perverted form of Christianity in Stalin’s name, rather than appearing as a Christ-like symbolic hero in the mould of Thälmann. This is established even further in a later scene, in which the grandfather arrives uninvited to a feast his son, Franz-Werner, is holding for the other villagers. The mise-en-scene of the opening shot of the scene immediately invites parallels with the famous da Vinci mural painting, The Last Supper. In the middle stands Franz-Werner, the Rainbowmaker’s father, his arm in plaster from his latest sleep-walking accident, which causes it to be permanently raised in the air in a parody of a Hitler salute. Notably, he is now stood in the position of

Christ in the painting, surrounded by the others from the village. The grandfather tries to break into the group sat around the table and begins to make a speech about the wonders of socialism, which creates a paradise for all the workers on earth, and warning against forgetting about the enemies who seek to sabotage their efforts. The others, however, ignore him, and the dinner turns into chaos as the former leader of the group, Heinrich, threatens Franz-Werner, and Franz-Werner's mistress arrives and begins to talk to the pig's head that was the centrepiece of the feast. Franz-Werner, as the central figure in the group, is thus positioned in the scene where Christ stands in the painting, but his raised 329 arm means we cannot forget his past as a soldier of fascism, and indeed, implies (as do his dreams when he sleepwalks) that he has not really left it behind him. It is a permanent reminder of the foundational violence at the root of the reign of law; the War.

His father, the grandfather, then arrives, and begins to "preach", which again signifies his role as the proxy of Stalin and ideology/Party, but the collapse of the trinity as the village descends into chaos after Stalin's death is already evident here. While the guests at the feast ignore the grandfather, Heinrich threatens Franz-Werner and the others by accusing them of all being traitors to the state. Since the state is rejecting Stalinism, within the village of Stalina a split begins to occur: the grandfather is the voice of Stalin and ideology (since he is the only one who voices ideological concerns), but the state is represented by figures such as Heinrich and the men who arrive with the prison wagon to announce the "attack against the state" of June 17 1953, "on behalf of the Minister

President of the GDR". The men are thus specifically aligned with the State, not with the

Party. Meanwhile, the first secretary of the SED (a representative of the Party) remains aligned with the grandfather for longer, and thus also with Stalin: when the grandfather makes his ranting speech in the town square, he is stood next to a wobbling outhouse, which is adorned with a picture of Stalin and a hammer-and-sickle flag. It turns out that the first secretary of the SED is inside the outhouse while he gives the speech. Later, however, the first secretary names the Rainbowmaker’s father the new leader of the village collective, before the feast scene, thus taking the position away from Heinrich; the Party now aligns itself with the State, not with Stalin and his ideology.

The sublime body—represented by the "symbolic hero", the grandfather—which functions as the "little piece of the Real" covering over the violence at the root of the system 330

(the War), thus begins to fail in its role. This occurs because Stalin's death leaves an 'empty locus of power' which397 is not then filled by anyone, either for the villagers or from the perspective of the spectator, because the grandfather, his proxy, is too flawed and erratic to properly function as a symbolic vessel for the sublime body of the People. Prior to Stalin's death, the grandfather is able to function as the 'Lacanian "Plus-One" for the ideological adherence of the people of Stalina: 'The Lacanian “plus-One” […] is precisely this necessary surplus [of the sublime body/"little piece of the Real"]: every signifying set contains an element which is “empty”, whose value is accepted on trust, yet which precisely as such guarantees the “full” validity of all other elements. Strictly speaking it comes in excess, yet the moment we take it away, the very consistency of the other elements disintegrates.'398

The grandfather is the very essence of this 'Lacanian "plus-One" because he appears to hold no actual function in the village beyond his role as messenger of Stalin and the ideology: he is the excess empty element in the village, doing nothing productive but functioning to ensure the ideological consistency of the village. However, Stalin dies and thus his emptiness is exposed; rather than demonstrating the stoicism of the symbolic hero in earlier DEFA films, the grandfather sobs and asks desperately if it's even worth continuing to live during his eulogy for Stalin. His speech focuses on Stalin's death, not the future—a stark contrast to scenes such as Thälmann's death at the end of Fuehrer seiner Klasse, where we hear both his positive message for the future and see Fiete as his potential replacement, or the reading of Hans Loening's letter at the end of Staerker als die Nacht, where the focus moves to his son as the future of the cause.

397 Hell, 27 398 Žižek, 250 331

As a result of this, the system begins to collapse and the violence begins to be exposed: as described above, the State, Party, and ideology begin to separate; and the violent tearing away from fascism which underpinned the founding of the society is exposed, both in the body of Franz-Werner, and the casual violence which becomes more and more frequent in the village (the men with flamethrowers, the boy, Hans, who throws grenades into the pond and eventually blows himself up, etc.). Eventually, this violence turns on both Stalin and the grandfather: the villagers attack and burn down everything with Stalin's picture, leaving the village a burning wreck, and then eventually go so far as to crucify the grandfather on a cross striped with the German flag. Arndt-Briggs characterises the film as the antithesis of the Heimat-film. It is

‘in some way, a nightmarish revisiting of Maetzig’s Schlösser und Katen. […] Whereas

in Schlösser und Katen hard-working farmers convene in neat courtyards and homes

to create fair and democratic institutions, the meetings of the dissolute LPG

members in Das Land hinter dem Regenbogen take place on a huge manure pile,

centrally located near the outhouse that serves as a seat of both official power and

corruption.’399

As in Zwischen Pankow und Zehlendorf, therefore, the void at the centre of the Stalin-myth is exposed, if in a very different way. Equally, children, and their powers of fantasy, are also simultaneously focused upon by Das Land hinter dem Regenbogen, just as in the previously discussed film. There are three children (or youths) featured: the Rainbowmaker, Marie, and Hans. Each responds to the events in the village through different forms of fantasy, and each suffers from its violent realities. Hans enacts violent fantasies by killing ducklings,

399 Arndt-Briggs, 58 332 throwing grenades in the pond, filling animal troughs with glass, and ultimately blowing himself up. Unlike the violence of the villagers, which is almost always directed at Stalin, the grandfather, or each other, Hans' violence seems purposeless—violence for the sake of violence alone. It appears to be the only way he knows how to respond to the world in which he finds himself, and ultimately, prevents him from continuing to live in it. Kristeva pictures a child who ‘to save himself, rejects and throws up everything that is given to him—all gifts, all objects. He has, he could have, a sense of the abject.’400 Where Marie and the Rainbowmaker are able to find beauty or hope in the insanity of the world around them, Hans can only reject it.

Meanwhile, Marie, who is strangely drawn to Hans, is the most connected to the ideological reality of the village of the three. She reads the eulogy at the memorial ceremony for Stalin, and narrates parts of the film, explaining who people are, and at the beginning of the film, telling the spectator that it is 1953. Marie seems pulled between a strange fascination with Hans' violence, and escapism from it through the Rainbowmaker's fantasies. By the end of the film, she has clearly been drawn to the latter; she chooses fantasy over disruption. The Rainbowmaker is identified as central to the film's narrative from the very beginning, not only from his name, but also his habit of wearing a rainbow bandana and creating rainbows with glass and other shiny objects to entertain himself and

Marie. He is a kind, dreamy, quiet child, who tries to cheer Marie up whenever Hans does something cruel to her, and who is regularly set upon by the two men who act as the village's chief troublemakers. While he quietly listens to his grandfather speak about Stalin and socialism, he does not seem particularly interested in any kind of ideology. Instead, he

400 Kristeva 1982, 6 333 only wants people to be happy. The only real sign of any deep emotion we see from him is at the very end of the film, when he paints the rainbow over the giant poster of Stalin, and lists the deaths and disappearances that have happened in the village in voiceover, saying that he still cries when he thinks of his mother (Franz-Werner's wife) who left them forever.

Like Susanne in Zwischen Pankow und Zehlendorf, in his fantasies he finds a place where ideology, and the problems it causes his everyday life and his family, is irrelevant.

However, Kipping's film is perhaps also more critical of the Rainbowmaker than the previous film is of Susanne. In Susanne's case, the depoliticization of art and her ability to lose herself in it and avoid ascribing to an ideology is a positive trait, one that she can maintain at the end of the film in victory over those who would have her change. Here, it is implied that the Rainbowmaker's rainbows (his fantasies; his art) are perhaps simply another means of covering over the truth of the system in which he exists. Indeed, he even goes so far as to shoot the SED representative who, it is implied, has sexually assaulted a girl in the outhouse; when he cannot hide from the reality of the village in fantasy, he is able to take direct action. Indeed, the title of the film can be understood in two ways. On the one hand, it could refer to the dreamland "somewhere over the rainbow" where no troubles exist anymore, and everyone is happy. This is certainly what the Rainbowmaker intends with his rainbows. Equally, it's the place Marie seems to imagine when she talks to the camera, describing how one reaches the "Land hinter dem Regenbogen", and later, how milk and honey flow there, and how there is free chocolate ice cream there, every day.

For Marie and the Rainbowmaker, therefore, the "Land hinter dem Regenbogen" is the place their fantasies allow them to escape to. On the other hand, the film's portrayal of 334 an allegory of the GDR also implies, using that phrase as its title, that the GDR (or "Stalina") is the idealised country beyond the rainbow; the socialist paradise which German communism prior to 1945 (represented by the grandfather) had always dreamed of. One reviewer calls the film ‘Kipping’s farewell to utopia’—but401 it is more the unmasking of utopia as an impossibility, than a farewell. The film exposes the country’s realities, and the illegal violence at its root, and thus also exposes the country which is behind the rainbows: the truth behind the ideal. In other words, the film is exposing the truth hidden beneath all earlier DEFA films, which, like the Rainbowmaker’s sparkling shards of glass, covered over the truth with fantasy.

Another reviewer, writing in tip, is perhaps closer to the mark, remarking that the children in the film represent the poetic identity of the director.402 With their focus on creating rainbows and fantasies to hide behind, so that they may ignore the everyday, they become complicit in this covering-up of the truth; or, as Steingröver posits, ‘childlike innocence is systematically poisoned by the power-hungry violence of ideologies that are born from perverted idealist utopian dreams.’403 This is particularly exemplified by the shot at the end of the film of the Rainbowmaker painting a rainbow over the giant poster of

Stalin: while his voiceover talks about the deaths and disappearances that have occurred since Stalin's (and implicitly, the grandfather's) death, his only action is to cover Stalin over—with a rainbow. The camera then cuts away to a shot of Marie's crying face, and then the final sequence of a parade with Stalin pictures and slogans, which ends with a shot of

Marie and the Rainbowmaker walking away together, from which the camera pans away,

401 Hanisch and Byler, 276. 402 Donner, “Jüngstes Gericht” 403 Steingröver 2014, 97-98. 335 ultimately coming to rest on the statue of Stalin. He may have been covered over; social order may have been restored by the creation of a new fetish, the fantasy of the rainbow, so that they may grow up in relative peace; but his violent truth still underlies it.

In both Zwischen Pankow und Zehlendorf and Das Land hinter dem Regenbogen, therefore, depoliticised and peaceful fantasy is contrasted with destructive and even violent ideological adherence. The myth of Stalin is deconstructed and exposed, symbolically undermining or destroying altogether the system which rests on it. As in the first section of this chapter, typical characters found in earlier DEFA positive hero narratives are presented and then subverted. All in all, the ideological system shored up and didactically disseminated by positive hero and antifascist films is here criticized, deconstructed and even, in the case of Das Land hinter dem Regenbogen, satirised.

One interesting thing to note about both films is that, while they seek to delegitimise

Stalin and the Party/State/ideology trinity, they don't attack one key figure in the GDR's foundational mythology: that of Ernst Thälmann. While he is mentioned by Marie during her eulogy for Stalin in Das Land hinter dem Regenbogen, neither film thematizes him or tries to undermine his legacy or myth. Indeed, where earlier DEFA films often have

Thälmann references present in the landscape of the film, even if not in the dialogue itself

(for example, graffiti of his famous statement "Wer Hitler wählt, wählt den Krieg" on walls, or even just places named after him), here, he is conspicuously absent. While this may simply be because the films are both focused on destabilising the ur-myth of Stalin on which all other GDR myths to an extent rested, it may also be because of the success of the

Thälmann myth in comparison to other attempts at mythologizing elements of GDR's culture and foundational narratives. As Lemmons notes, Ernst Thälmann was practically 336 the only figure from the GDR's pantheon of heroes who remained indubitably popular even beyond the Wende.404 As such, it may also be that Seemann and Kipping both realised that, for their films to have an impact, they could not criticize Thälmann, because he was still held with too much affection by their potential viewership (even in former West Germany, where, for example, the Thälmann films are still regularly screened in his hometown,

Hamburg, as cult classics!). On the other hand, by 1993, Stalin and the SED leadership were had already been definitively rejected by the (East German) public.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have shown that by the early 1980s, the positive hero narrative had begun to be put to more ambiguous uses, with its tropes applied to characters whose respective

Bildung goes unfinished or whose ideological adherence remains suspect. Consequently, after the Wende, positive hero narratives were then utilised to deconstruct the ideology and system they had previously shored up and protected.

As I have shown in the first three chapters of this dissertation, antifascist DEFA films in the first three decades of the GDR's history made use of positive heroes, both Vorbilder and symbolic heroes, to disseminate and reinforce a particular conception of socialist ideology in a German context. This was constructed around the trinity of Party, State, and ideology, which was represented in the films by symbolic heroes, who act as fetishes, covering over the violent ending of fascism through the invasion of Germany by the Soviet

Unionat the end of the Second World War and the lack of true socialist revolution, which is

404 Lemmons describes the resistance to the removal of the Prenzlauer Berg Thälmann Monument, citing one resident: ‘Thälmann was an important resistance fighter. We shouldn’t simply throw him away just because the SED used him to pull its wagon.’ Lemmons 2013, 360 337 at the root of the reign of law—at the foundation of the GDR. They do this by functioning as embodied vessels for the Party/State/ideology; as representations of the sublime body of the People, that which is held by the leader and his proxies until the time that the real people themselves (the masses) are ready to give birth to it.405 The films position the spectator as part of the masses, but also as able to identify with the Vorbild, who plays a key role in the socialist victory over fascism led by the symbolic hero(es). The Vorbild’s narrative, of Bildung from passive belief in socialism or antifascism to true action in support of the cause, is foregrounded as possible to emulate for the spectator, unlike the symbolic hero's stoic and infallible perfection.

These two types of positive hero thus function together to connect ideological adherence, legitimation of the state, and East German identity, in a way that will be elaborated on further in the Conclusion to this dissertation. The films discussed in this chapter therefore demonstrate how these narratives could also be co-opted to portray the doubt and uncertainty over the infallibility of the ideology and the reign of law that underlies the fetish—a focus on the "I know very well" rather than the "nevertheless" of the fetish's construction. The films of the 1990s show how these narratives and archetypes could be, after the Wende, utilized and subverted by directors no longer bound by the strictures of GDR cultural policy to help deconstruct belief in, and the consistency of, the very system and identity they previously functioned to support.

405 Žižek, 262: ‘By conceiving of himself as an agency through which the People gives birth to itself, the Leader assumes the role of a deputy from (of) the future; he acts as a medium through which the future, not yet existing People organizes its own conception.’

DEFA’s Positive Heroes: Conclusion From the establishment of the antifascist genre in the 1940s and 50s, to the DEFA films of the 1990s which subverted those established conventions, this dissertation has demonstrated the important function of positive heroes in antifascist historical films. It has also shown that the portrayal of positive heroes, particularly in the last decade of the GDR’s history, often contained contradictory or even paradoxical elements. Furthermore, it has explored the ways in which portrayals of positive heroism represented a means through which forms of GDR identity—what it meant to be a good socialist German—could be explored.

In my analysis of the Thälmann films in the first chapter of this dissertation, I examined how the films established many of the characteristics of both types of positive heroism: the symbolic hero, who is synonymous with the Party, State, and ideology, and who thus functions as a vessel for the body of the People; and the Vorbild, whose onscreen

Bildung means they act as a role model for the spectator, as well as for the on-screen masses. The symbolic hero’s role is that of the Lacanian ‘Name-of-the-Father’; the masses

(and spectator) desires to be part of the reign of law he represents, but cannot desire to become him. On the other hand, the spectator is encouraged to identify with the Vorbild, to the extent that the Thälmann films provide both male and female Vorbilder: the fictional

Fiete and Änne Jansen. They demonstrate how one can best support and uphold the reign of law that Thälmann, the symbolic hero, represents.

The symbolic hero also serves to cover over the ‘empty locus of power’ at the root of the reign of law. As discussed in the first chapter, Žižek states that, in a monarchy, the locus

339 around which the identity of a state’s citizens is oriented is the sublime body of the King406.

However, in a totalitarian state, this locus must be the sublime body of the People—in other words, not the citizens as disparate individuals, but rather the ‘People-as-One’, in

Lefort’s terminology407. As the people (the masses) in a real existing totalitarian state, such as Soviet Russia in Žižek’s example, or the GDR in this context, have not yet reached this stage of history, the totalitarian leader must act as a ‘deputy from (of) the future408,’ who holds the future body of the People until the people are ready to birth it. Thälmann is represented as this ‘deputy from (of) the future,’ describing himself and Fiete as

‘Geburtshelfer eines neuen Lebens.’ However, while the end of the film implies that his death in reality is more a form of eternal life, the ending ultimately highlights the fetishistic nature of the symbolic hero: that he serves to cover over the lack, the ‘empty locus of power’, at the root of the reign of law and at the base of the foundational narrative on which the GDR rested its legitimacy. We ‘know very well409’ that the real Thälmann is dead, and that the German communists did not defeat National Socialism. Nevertheless,

Thälmann’s portrayal in the two films positions him as both the GDR’s proxy for Lenin,

‘Geburtshelfer’ for the sublime body of the (GDR) People, as well as the undying embodiment of the GDR reign of law, drawing a direct, corporeal line from communist resistance prior to and during the Third Reich and the foundation of a socialist German state.

Where the first chapter of this dissertation thus focused primarily on the symbolic hero, the second chapter examined the role of the Vorbild in more detail, particularly the

406 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 255-56 407 Lefort, 24 408 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 262 409 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 252 340 connections between motherhood and positive heroism. Where the symbolic hero represents the ‘Name-of-the-Father’—the reign of law—with which each member of the masses must ultimately learn to identify in order to become an accepted member of society, the films discussed in the second chapter explore the other cornerstone of the

Oedipal triangle: the role of the mother in the Bildung of the Vorbild. My analysis of several films featuring motherhood shows how the mother must sacrifice herself, ‘make herself anonymous410’, to ensure her son’s socialist maturity and entrance into the reign of law.

The only mothers who do not do this are those whose children have been killed or are missing, and who must thus continue to ensure the correct ideological upbringing of their grandchildren. Mothers are thus tasked with ensuring the future of the ideology—but are also strongly associated with the past, that which the Vorbild must leave behind in order to complete his Bildung. Those who successfully do this in the films discussed in the second chapter are almost uniformly soldiers, who fight for the socialist (or sometimes more explicitly the Soviet) cause against fascism; socialist masculine maturity means joining the fight.

In the Mitläufer films discussed in the third chapter of this dissertation, motherhood is equally associated with the past, but far more strongly equates to fascism. In these films, the equation of fascism and the mother, socialism and the symbolic father (hero) allows for the protagonist’s conversion from fascism to socialism to be read as an Oedipal process, in which only his identification with a symbolic hero allows for his true maturity as a socialist, and his entrance into the reign of law. As discussed, several of these films provide more cautionary tales, showing what happens if such a symbolic hero is not present; and thus

410 Kristeva 1985, 149 341 underscoring the importance of the antifascist foundational narrative and its positive heroes to a cohesive GDR identity. Through the lens of Kristeva’s concept of abjection, I examined how such films serve to delineate the boundaries of GDR identity and the reign of law through their positioning of fascism as abject, rather than object; something expelled from the bodies of the people. As such, I demonstrated how these films highlight the necessity of a continued fascist threat to the cohesion of the GDR identity: the boundaries of the reign of law are reinforced through the continued exclusion of the fascist abject.

The final chapter of this dissertation demonstrated how, having become a central pillar of the genre of antifascist historical film, the lack inherent in the function positive hero began to be laid bare in the DEFA films of the 1980s and early 1990s. As I have shown, the films thus expose the fetishistic nature of the symbolic hero by employing such characters to highlight, rather than cover over, the fissures and paradoxes in the GDR’s antifascist foundational narrative and thus in the reign of law. As Žižek states,

‘In ideology […] the fantasy-construct is a way for the subject to fill out the “missing

link” of its genesis by assuring its presence in the character of pure gaze at its own

conception—by enabling it to “jump into the past” and appear as its own cause. […]

The crucial point here is that the synchronous symbolic order fills out the void of its

“origins” by means of a narration: fantasy has, by definition, the structure of a story

to be narrated.’411

By the late 1980s, and especially after the end of the GDR, the crumbling of the

‘synchronous symbolic order’—the reign of law—results equally in the crumbling of the narration of its conception, and the increasing ambiguity of the positive heroes on whom

411 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 211 342 such a narrative rests. The ‘deputy from (of) the future’412 can no longer become the

‘Geburtshelfer eines neuen Lebens’, because the future new life in question already seems impossible to reach.

There is further work to be done in this regard. This dissertation focuses solely on positive heroism in the context of antifascist historical films; representations of positive heroes were, however, a concern for all DEFA’s filmmakers, both of feature films and documentaries. Equally, there was not space in this dissertation to consider the importance of objects such as flags in relation to the sublime body of the People, considering

Kantorowicz’s work on the Crown and its connection to Kingship413. Furthermore, while this dissertation examines some of DEFA’s last films, completed in the early 1990s after the

Wende, it does not explore the extent to which the archetype of the positive hero continued to be featured in films later in the 1990s and into the 2000s. Future scholars may also see a link between the increasing uncertainty and ambiguity in these portrayals of positive heroes (and their corresponding conception of a cohesive GDR identity) and portrayals of heroism in the German media today, at a time when what it means to be German is increasingly in question.

412 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 262 413 Kantorowicz, 381

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Filmography Das Land hinter dem Regenbogen. Directed by Herwig Kipping, DEFA, 1992.

Dein unbekannter Bruder. Directed by Ulrich Weiss, DEFA, 1982.

Der Aufenthalt. Directed by Frank Beyer, DEFA, 1983.

Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt. Directed by Joachim Kunert, DEFA, 1965.

Die Buntkarierten. Directed by Kurt Maetzig, DEFA, 1948/49.

Die Russen kommen. Directed by Heiner Carow, DEFA, 1968/87.

Die Toten bleiben jung. Directed by Joachim Kunert, DEFA, 1968.

Ernst Thälmann - Führer seiner Klasse. Directed by Kurt Maetzig, DEFA, 1955.

Ernst Thälmann - Sohn seiner Klasse. Directed by Kurt Maetzig, DEFA, 1954.

Ich war neunzehn. Directed by Konrad Wolf, DEFA, 1968.

Ich zwing dich zu leben. Directed by Ralf Kirsten, DEFA, 1978.

Königskinder. Directed by Frank Beyer, DEFA, 1962.

Leute mit Flügeln. Directed by Konrad Wolf, DEFA, 1960.

Mama, ich lebe. Directed by Konrad Wolf, DEFA, 1977.

Meine Stunde Null. Directed by Joachim Hasler, DEFA, 1970.

Rotation. Directed by Wolfgang Staudte, DEFA, 1949.

Stärker als die Nacht. Directed by Slàtan Dudow, DEFA, 1954.

Stielke, Heinz, fünfzehn. Directed by Michael Kann, DEFA, 1987.

Zwischen Pankow und Zehlendorf. Directed by Horst Seemann. DEFA, 1991.