Muhlenberg College Digital Repository

Birgel, Franz. “Kuhle Wampe, Leftist Cinema, and the Politics of Film Censorship in Weimar Germany.” Historical Reflections 35.2 (Summer 2009. Special Issue: “The Politics of French and German Cinema, 1930-1945”): 40-62.

NOTE: This is the peer-reviewed post-print (author’s final manuscript). This version may not exactly replicate the final version, doi: 10.3167/hrrh2009.350204. Copyright 2009 Berghahn Books. The post-print has been deposited in this repository in accordance with publisher policy. Use of this publication is governed by copyright law and license agreements.

Kuhle Wampe, Leftist Cinema, and the Politics of Film Censorship in Weimar Germany

Franz A. Birgel Muhlenberg College

Shortly after the 30 May 1932 Berlin premiere of Kuhle Wampe oder Wem gehört die

Welt? (Kuhle Wampe, or Who Owns the World?, original U.S. title Whither Germany?1) the

journalist Heinz Lüdecke answered the obvious question regarding the film’s title for non-

Berliners: “‘Kuhle Wampe’ is first a tent city on the Müggelsee [Lake Müggel] near Berlin,

second a sound film, and third a ‘case.’” He goes on to explain that Kuhle Wampe is one of

many tent colonies around Berlin where some city dwellers spend their weekends and summers,

while others live there because they have been evicted from their apartments, as happens here in

“Germany’s first proletarian sound film.” The “case” refers to the film’s censorship and its

“exposure of the dishonest, empty chatter about ‘democratic intellectual freedom.’”2

For historians and film scholars, Kuhle Wampe is also noteworthy for being, in Siegfried

Kracauer’s words, “the first and last German film which overtly expressed a Communist

viewpoint,”3 as well as the only film on which Bertolt Brecht collaborated from beginning to

end. When set against the background of the German Motion Picture Law and two other high-

profile censorship cases, Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and Lewis Milestone’s All

Quiet on the Western Front, the Kuhle Wampe case highlights the indecisiveness, fragility, and fears of the late Weimar Republic.

The Motion Picture Law of 1920

Although all censorship of newspapers, literature, theater, and films was officially abolished nationwide in Germany on 12 November 1918, some regional censors continued to 2

assert their rights under imperial pre-World War I laws and prevented the screening of controversial films. Conservative voices raised objections to the many so-called

Aufklärungsfilme (sex education films), including Richard Oswald’s Anders als die Anderen

(Different from the Others, 1919), a plea for the acceptance of homosexuality, which appeared in theaters immediately after the war. Widespread concerns that such films were immoral and potentially detrimental to Germany’s image abroad resulted in the national Lichtspielgesetz

(Motion Picture Law) passed on 12 May 1920.4 Filmprüfstellen (Film Assessment Boards) were established in Berlin and Munich along with a Film-Oberprüfstelle (Upper Film Assessment

Board) in Berlin to hear appeals. The Munich board reviewed only those films made in Bavaria,

Hessia, Baden and Württemberg, which produced less than 10% of all German films. The less conservative Berlin board assessed the films from all the other Länder (states), which totaled

90%. With more production companies moving to Berlin, the Munich board played an increasingly insignificant role, but intense lobbying by the Bavarians prevented the centralization of film censorship in Berlin. The Minister of the Interior chose the chairmen of the boards, who were attorneys with experience in administration or courtroom proceedings. Each chairman was joined by four voting members who were also selected by the minister: one from the motion picture industry, one from the combined fields of art and literature, and two from social welfare, education, and youth services. Since decisions required a majority of the five votes, aesthetic questions played a smaller role in the decisions than social, ethical, and political ones, thereby marginalizing the two representatives from film, art, literature.5

The essence of the Motion Picture Law is stated in Paragraph 2, Section 2:

The release permit is to be denied when the assessment reveals that the screening of a

film is capable of endangering public order and safety, injuring religious feelings, 3

having a morally brutalizing or immoral effect, endangering the image of Germany or

Germany’s relationships to foreign countries. The permit may not be denied because

of a political, social, religious, ethical or philosophical tendency as such. The permit

may not be denied for reasons that lie outside the content of the motion picture.6

Significantly, this policy applied not only to films screened for the general public in commercial

cinemas, but also to those shown in private clubs and to closed groups as well. The only films

exempt from pre-approval were those shown “for purely scientific or cultural purposes in public

educational and research institutions.”7 Because the cinematic experience was considered more

immediate and powerful than the written word in its effect on the audience, the Motion Picture

Law echoed the conservative, moralistic preoccupations of the pre-war cinema reform movement. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the liberal German Democratic Party (DDP) included the clause regarding the non-denial of a permit because of “a political, social, religious, ethical or philosophical tendency”.8 These two parties also successfully resisted a demand from

the conservative German National People’s Party (DNVP) to ban all films that might “foment

class hatred” as well as a demand from the German Center Party (DZP) that local police

jurisdictions be allowed to censor films.9

As Ursula von Keitz notes, despite the law’s lip service to freedom of speech, its

emphasis on impact inherently results in censorship of content, for “a complex of motifs perceived as ‘tendentious’ would only be free of restrictions if it proved not to have any effect.”10 On 6 October 1931, an executive order issued by Reich President Hindenburg and

Chancellor Brüning, The Third Decree of the Reich President to Protect the Economy and

Finances and to Combat Political Riots, added endangerment of “vital state interests” to “public

order and safety” as justifications for prohibiting films. This supplement to the Motion Picture 4

Law also allowed the Film Assessment Boards to rescind previously granted permits at the

request of the Minister of the Interior or of the highest authority of a Land (state). The film

would then be banned until the Upper Film Assessment Board reached a decision.11 Even before

this supplement, individual Länder often tried to exert a type of parallel censorship by having local police enforce bans on films considered dangerous to public order.

In parallel to the American Motion Picture Production Code, German censors often focused on questions of immorality, especially depictions of crime and sex. Although the decisions and political leanings of the Film Assessment Boards have been evaluated differently by scholars, with some claiming an ideological bias in only a few rare cases,12 there is ample

evidence to support Martin Loiperdinger’s claim that during the 1920s, the Film Assessment

Boards were “blind in their right eye, but therefore all the more sharp-sighted in their left eye.”13

The boards’ decisions depended not only on the biases of its members, but also on pressure from above, exerted by various federal government and military officials, and from below, in the form of street demonstrations.

Whereas the German Left was slow to exploit the political potential of cinema,

mainstream films with conservative or reactionary messages were widely produced throughout

the Weimar years, especially after Alfred Hugenberg assumed control of the UFA studios in

1927. Films with anti-republican, monarchical, and militaristic messages such as Arsen von

Cserépy’s four-part Fridericus Rex (1920-23) and Gerhard Lamprecht’s two-part Der alte Fritz

(The Old Fritz, 1927-1928) encountered few problems getting approved for release, with only

minor cuts or an occasional ban for viewers under the age of eighteen. After the leftist press

attacked the Fridericus Rex series and called for boycotts, demonstrations occurred in front of

several UFA theaters in Berlin and police had to be brought in. Fearing that screenings would 5

cause similar riots in its own province and thereby “endanger public order and safety,” the Land

of Hessia appealed the release permit for parts one and two of Fridericus Rex in July 1922.

The Upper Film Assessment Board, however, dismissed the disturbances in Berlin as

“mostly of a momentary type, which have not endangered public order and safety,” concluding

that whether or not the films expressed a “monarchistic or anti-monarchistic tendency … a

release permit may not be denied merely because of a political or philosophical tendency.”

Tellingly, the board also stated that “an explanation of the terms ‘public order’ and ‘public

safety’ is a matter of interpretation. The possibility of a momentary disturbance could not be

designated as such a threat to public order.”14 In practice, as the three cases discussed below

illustrate, films with a Marxist, socialist, or pacifist message were evaluated much more

stringently by the Film Assessment Boards, whose deliberations are symptomatic of the

collusion between the National Socialists, conservative parties, and the military to restrict the

political content of films.

The Battleship Potemkin Case

Knowing the board’s political tendencies and anticipating censorship, the German

Communist production and distribution company Prometheus Film hired director Phil (Piel) Jützi in early 1926 to tone down Battleship Potemkin’s revolutionary message by editing it for content and rewriting its intertitles. Eisenstein himself even reportedly visited Berlin “to smuggle the film past the censors.”15 On 24 March 1926 the permit was denied on the grounds that the film

would “continually endanger public order and safety.”16 Two weeks later, on 10 April the Upper

Film Assessment Board reversed that decision, and granted a release permit for adults aged eighteen years and older. In its deliberations, the Upper Board rejected the argument of an expert witness from the Reichswehr (armed forces) who claimed that the film would endanger military 6

discipline, but it did order that scenes depicting the sailors’ use of force against the ship’s officers and most of the violent parts of the Odessa Steps sequence, in which soldiers massacre unarmed civilians, be cut because of their “morally brutalizing effect.”17 On the same day,

Colonel-General Hans von Seeckt, Commander of the Reichswehr, wrote a letter to the Minister

of the Interior asking him to intervene against this “agitational and demoralizing” film. Seeckt and Admiral Hans Zenker, head of the Reichsmarine (navy), also forbade all soldiers and sailors, under threat of disciplinary action, to see the film.18

Battleship Potemkin had its premier on 29 April 1926 in Berlin’s Apollo Theater. That

afternoon, the Prussian minister-president, the Berlin chief of police, and the senior Reich

attorney attended a screening and approved of the film.19 Soon thereafter, however, the German

National People’s Party (DNVP) unsuccessfully demanded a ban of the film in the Reichstag.

The Bavarian Minister of the Interior, who considered the film subversive Communist

propaganda, worked to ban Battleship Potemkin in Bavaria and asserted the police’s right to prevent public screenings. When he eventually had to accept the board’s decision, public screenings in Bavaria were held under police supervision.20 The Land Württemberg, later joined by the Länder Bavaria, Hessia, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and Thuringia, appealed the release permit and demanded a nationwide ban. Yielding to the pressure, the Upper Film Assessment

Board convened a new hearing, during which the representative from the Prussian Ministry of the Interior shocked the members of the board when he reported that no public disturbances had taken place at the twenty-five or thirty theaters showing the film in Berlin. Nevertheless, the board agreed with the arguments of the Länder and representatives from the military that the film called for a Bolshevik revolution, had the potential to cause riots, undermine the state and military authority, and therefore endangered public safety. On 12 July 1926 the board reversed its previous ruling and withdrew the release permit.21 7

Sixteen days later, on 28 July Prometheus Film submitted to the board a further sanitized

version of Potemkin, from which an additional 196 meters had been removed, and the film’s

release was again approved. This time the censors concluded that the sailors’ uprising was a

spontaneous act, that any parallels to Germany’s current situation were invalid, that the film did

not solicit a sense of outrage against state authority, and therefore it did not endanger public

safety. The decision also permitted the film to be shown to spectators under the age of

eighteen.22 For its part, the Munich Film Assessment Board disagreed with the decision and

issued a letter of protest on 5 August 1926, arguing that even with the newest round of cuts the

film still threatened national security, public safety and order.23 Württemberg, Bavaria, and

Thuringia again appealed the release permit, but were unsuccessful.

The Upper Film Assessment Board reaffirmed the 28 July release permit on 2 October,

arguing that its ban on 12 July had been based on the fear of an endangerment of public safety because spectators repeatedly broke out in spontaneous applause when the Potemkin sailors treated the officers violently and when the mutiny succeeded. Since the violent sequences had been softened by the deletions, the film no longer posed a threat to public safety.24 One probable

reason for the re-release permit was the absence of Captain von Speck (representative of the

Reichswehr) and Ernst Seeger (head of the board). No additional objections were filed against

the film in the immediate aftermath of the decision, and a sound version, shortened by an

additional 68 meters, was approved on 1 August 1930.25

The All Quiet on the Western Front Case

The political climate grew increasingly polemical after the Reichstag elections of

September 1930, when many voters cast their ballots for parties at the extreme ends of the

spectrum. Although the SPD still maintained a majority, its overall percentage of seats fell from 8

31.16% to 24.78%, the National Socialists (NSDAP) increased their share from 2.44% to

18.54%, capturing second place overall, and the Communists (KPD) from 11% to 13.34%.26 The

conservative German National People’s Party (DNVP), slipped from 14.78% to 7.11%, falling

from second to fourth place. In all, nearly three million voters defected from the DNVP and the

German National Party (DNP) to the NSDAP. The increased number of both NSDAP and KPD representatives resulted from the growing dissatisfaction with the government’s handling of the economic crisis and mass unemployment.

By the time of the elections, the prohibition of films “endangering the image of Germany or Germany’s relationships to foreign countries” had become increasingly common and politicized, in large measure because of The Second Decree to the Motion Picture Law, effective

1 July 1930, which stipulated that no foreign film could be presented to the Assessment Boards unless the Reich Ministry of the Interior or its designated representative attested that it had no objections to the film’s release.27 In the case of Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western

Front, the censorship decisions affected not only screenings in Germany, but also in other

countries.28 Anticipating a negative reaction to certain scenes, the German-born owner of

Universal Studios, Carl Laemmle, Sr., had the film’s length cut by almost one-fourth for its

German release, from approximately 140 minutes (3,786 meters) to 105 minutes (2,884

meters).29 Among the scenes deleted were those showing the soldiers beating up the sadistic

Sergeant Himmelstoss, parts of the conversation in which the soldiers blame Kaiser Wilhelm for

the war, and the passing on of a dead soldier’s boots.30 On 21 November 1930, the shortened

German-language version of All Quiet on the Western Front was approved for adults eighteen

and older after additional censor-imposed cuts of 12 meters.

The film premiered on 5 December 1930 in the Mozartsaal on Berlin’s Nollendorfplatz

with prominent politicians, writers, and artists in attendance. The following day Joseph Goebbels 9

and his Brownshirts staged public protests denouncing the anti-militaristic, pacifist tone of

“Remarque’s film,” as they contemptuously called Universal’s adaptation of Erich Maria

Remarque’s novel. Their the ultimate goal was to have the film banned on the grounds that it

endangered public safety. Approximately fifteen minutes into the 7 pm screening, a group of

some 200 Brownshirts began shouting “Jews out,” “Hitler is at the gates,” and “Down with this

starvation government that permits such a film.” 31 Goebbels then rose and made a speech during

which Marxists in the audience started fighting the Brownshirts, who threw stink bombs and

released white mice. The screening had to be canceled, and police were called in to restore order.

The riot continued outside the theater until the police cleared the square by force. Approximately

6,000 National Socialists continued the demonstrations on the Nollendorfplatz on 7, 8, and 9

December. Goebbels initially considered the episode a successful test of the Nazis’ strength until

all demonstrations in Berlin were forbidden on 10 December 1930. Upset that his demonstrations

instead of the film had been prohibited, Goebbels complied, but threatened even larger protests

unless All Quiet on the Western Front was banned.

On 11 December the Upper Film Assessment Board heard arguments for repealing the

release permit on behalf of Saxony, Thuringia, Brunswick, Bavaria, and Württemberg, Länder in

which the film had not yet been shown. As was the case with Battleship Potemkin, the Länder

acted together in their call for stricter censorship. By challenging the decisions from Berlin, they

aimed to assert their own local authority and nullify the section of the Motion Picture Law that

made the decisions of the Film Assessment Board binding for the entire Reich.32 On the same

day that the film was reconsidered by the board, the Berlin government endorsed the screening of

the film, arguing that neither the German nor the American version constituted anti-German agitation. While each of the five Länder presented slightly different arguments, their combined claim stressed that All Quiet on the Western Front, like the Remarque’s, was a one-sided 10

depiction of the war, that screenings could cause strong civil disturbances and thus endanger

public safety and order as well as the German image, that the film had a brutalizing and immoral effect, and, finally, that the board’s approval of the German version of the film implied an

endorsement of the original American version with its even stronger vilification of the German

military.

Based on these assertions, officials from the Ministry of the Interior, the Reichswehr, and

the Foreign Office were called as expert witnesses to testify regarding the likely impact of the

film at home and abroad. Reichswehr representative Lieutenant Commander von Baumbach

argued for a ban, recalling that the German general consul in San Francisco had protested the film to Universal in April 1930 when it was released in the United States. Alluding to the

National Socialists’ demonstrations against the film’s denigration of the military, von Baumbach

stated that “in the matter of national honor and the honor of the army, the Reichswehr will not

allow itself to be surpassed in sensitivity.”33 Dr. Sievers, the representative from the Reich

Foreign Office cited reports from abroad that the film had a prejudicial effect on Germany’s

image. When Universal’s lawyer, Dr. Frankfurter, asked whether and when the foreign office

had changed its opinion on the film, Sievers did not reply, and chairman Seeger disallowed that

line of questioning. Dr. Hoche, representing the Ministry of the Interior, argued that the film

“produces a distressful and depressing effect on the German viewers,”34 speculating that in light of the national economic crisis and the political divisions in the country, continued screenings of the film would lead to more passionate quarrels and endanger public order. Based on this testimony, Dr. Frankfurter stated that the studio would voluntarily withdraw All Quiet on the

Western Front from distribution in Germany entirely if a compromise solution could not be reached—a proposal aimed to safeguard Universal’s business interests in Germany, its largest

European film market. 11

In its decision, the board concluded that although a “permit may not be denied because of

a political, social, religious, ethical or philosophical tendency as such,” the words “as such” do

not grant

a license for the uninhibited advocacy of philosophical tendencies. ... The bearers of

individual fates [in All Quiet on the Western Front] become types … Sergeant

Himmelstoss with his sadistic grin represents German militarism, which turns men into

machines … Katczinski with his Hun-like face is the German barbarian … the volunteer

who takes the amputated comrade’s boots [represents] the materialists, who are bound to

gorging and boozing … the pitifully crying and screaming volunteers—they all embody

the German army in this motion picture.35

This “extremely one-sided depiction … will be perceived as mockery by most of the people who

fought in the war, regardless of their party affiliations,” which explains why “it sparks loud

protests”36— another implicit reference to the demonstrations and riots caused by the National

Socialists. Approving the film would thus “endanger the German image” and acquiesce to the

anti-German tendencies of a foreign production company.37 By avoiding “endangerment of

public safety” as a justification for banning the film, the censors evaded the other objections of

the Länder and created the impression that they were not yielding to the demands of the National

Socialists and other conservative groups.

A few weeks after the ban of All Quiet on the Western Front on 10 December 1930, the

Communists organized demonstrations against UFA’s recently released Das Flötenkonzert von

Sanssouci (The Flute Concert of Sans Souci, 1930), another nationalistic, militaristic film in the

series about Frederick the Great. They denounced Das Flötenkonzert as a war-mongering, fascist 12

film and called it “Fridericus Drex” (“Friedrich Dirt”). Following the example set by the

National Socialists, they interrupted screenings in workers’ districts, forcing some theaters to

withdraw the film from their program. In several theaters, Social Democratic and Communist

militants threw stink bombs, broke the display cases on the walls, and threw eggs filled with ink against the screen. According to reports in the Communist press, the police used excessive violence to break up the demonstrations.38 However, in contrast to its response to the Nazis’ demonstrations and riots against All Quiet on the Western Front, the Upper Assessment Board did not consider the situation sufficient cause to reassess the release permit for Das

Flötenkonzert von Sanssouci.

In the wake of these riots, the SPD, supported by the liberal and center parties, proposed a compromise to allow All Quiet on the Western Front back into the theaters.39 On 31 March

1931, the Reichstag, acting with the support of the Reichsrat (the national legislative body

representing the Länder), revised the Motion Picture Law to include a clause known as the Lex

Remarque, which allowed films denied public screening permits by the Assessment Boards to be

shown in closed, private screenings.40 On 8 June 1931, the Berlin Film Assessment Board again

approved the film, but only for legislative bodies of the Reich and Länder as well as closed

screenings for members of specific organizations and their families. The groups mentioned –

educational, professional, war veterans, and international peace organizations – would know how

to appreciate the film, thereby “guaranteeing an orderly run of the performance.”41

Explicitly excluded from screenings were those groups or clubs founded for the sole purpose of seeing the film, as were all viewers under the age of eighteen. Further cuts of 90 meters were imposed even for these private screenings: the recurring image of recruits crawling between the table legs could only be shown once; the scene with the German soldiers in the

house of the French girls was reduced to a conversation between Paul and one of the girls; 13

Kantorek’s speech and Paul’s words to the students had to be deleted. By allowing a re-release of the film (now 2,784 meters), even with restrictions, the board prevented the total ban demanded by Goebbels, yet “with the Lex Remarque, freedom of opinion and speech were banished into closed organizations.”42 On 2 September 1931, a 2,773 meter version was finally released for all aged eighteen and older. Universal not only agreed to these additional cuts, but also to distribute only the shortened, approved German version in other countries.43

Brecht and the Production of Kuhle Wampe

One month before All Quiet on the Western Front was first approved, Bertolt Brecht was

embroiled in a contentious lawsuit over the film adaptation of his popular play The Three Penny

Opera, which had premiered in August 1928. Brecht’s contract with Nero Film granted him the

right to collaborate on the script, but he proceeded to rewrite the story entirely. Whereas the

stage version of the play reveals a transitional stage between Brecht’s cynical nihilism and

Marxism, Brecht’s film treatment (published as Die Beule, The Bruise, or The Welt) changed not

only its structure, but also intensified his political message, reflecting his own further leftward

political evolution. When Brecht’s revisions were rejected by Nero and the film’s director G. W.

Pabst, he left the production and, together with the composer Kurt Weill, filed a joint lawsuit to

stop the filming that had already begun. The complicated legal hearings were held on 17 and 20

October, during which the judge split the joint suit into separate actions. On 4 November the

court ruled in favor of the producers and Weill.44 Brecht appealed the ruling, but then agreed to

an out-of-court settlement of 16,000 marks offered by Nero films if he withdrew the appeal and

did not write the script.45 The film was shot without Brecht’s further collaboration and, even

though it contained a more conventional structure, it actually maintained the original spirit of the

play. 14

When director Slatan Dudow approached Brecht with the idea for Kuhle Wampe sometime after the trial, the writer eagerly agreed since the project fell outside the commercial industry. Although Dudow was nominally the director, Brecht acted as “Primus inter pares” and took the lead in production, which followed his broadly collaborative, dialectical model.46

Virtually all the major members of the production team were fellow Marxists who had either worked with Brecht previously or were followers of his aesthetics, including composer Hanns

Eisler and novelist Ernst Ottwald, the latter known for his depiction of workers’ milieu. From the very beginning, the entire project was, in Brecht’s words, “a political one”47 and stood apart in form and content from those made by commercial studios. Working with over 4,000 participants, including the members of the leftist Fichte Sports Club, the agit-prop group Das Rote

Sprachrohr (The Red Megaphone), and several choruses, Brecht wanted the production to be a learning experience for all involved. As in his Lehrstücke from this period, the collaborative process was just as important, if not more so, than the final product. In addition, the audience was to be a co-producer of the film. By disrupting the illusion of reality through his well-known alienation technique, Brecht wanted the viewers to become active participants who reflect on what was happening on the screen and relate it to their own lives.

Shot from August 1931 to February 1932 and without financing from a major studio, the film was made on a shoestring budget and most participants received little or no pay. With numerous interruptions because of financial difficulties, Kuhle Wampe was to be the first sound film produced by Prometheus Film, a company founded (in December 1925 and registered at the

Bureau of Commerce on February 2, 1926) with funds from the Workers’ International Relief

(Internationale Arbeiterhilfe, or IAH) and the German Communist Party (KPD).48 In addition to distributing Soviet-made films such as Battleship Potemkin in Germany, Prometheus also produced several films, including Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück (Mother Krause’s Journey to 15

Happiness, 1929). Because of various financial and political limitations—high equipment rental

expenses, unprofitable and limited screenings of their films, lack of further investments from the

IAH, KPD, and the Soviets, demonstrations against so-called Bolshevist films by the National

Socialists, and the international economic crisis—Prometheus filed for bankruptcy during the

production of Kuhle Wampe. The Swiss company Praesens-Film purchased the rights to the film,

became its final producer, and submitted it to the Film Assessment Board.49

The film opens with a montage of newspaper headlines showing rising unemployment

numbers: over 5 million unemployed or on short hours, 315,000 unemployed in Berlin alone and

100,000 of these without unemployment benefits. Men wait on the street for the latest job list and

then race through the city on their bicycles looking for work. Among them is young Bönike who

has been out of work for months. When he returns home from his unsuccessful job search, he is

told that his unemployment benefits have expired, and his parents with their petty bourgeois

pretensions—even though the father has also been unemployed for months—attack him for not

trying hard enough to find a job. His sister Anni comes to his defense, saying that there simply

are no jobs available. After dinner, young Bönike retreats to his room, takes off his watch, and

jumps out of the window. The family is unable to pay the rent, and Anni makes futile visits to get

help from government and welfare offices. A judge evicts them from their apartment and the

family moves in with Anni’s boyfriend Fritz at the tent colony Kuhle Wampe.

Anni becomes pregnant, and Fritz reluctantly agrees to marry her. At the engagement party, Fritz does not join in the celebration, but instead carries more and more cases of beer to the guzzling and gorging guests who get totally drunk. The party reveals some similarities to

Brecht’s humorous early one-act play Die Kleinbürgerhochzeit (The Petit-Bourgeois Wedding), but here it functions as a vicious satire on the politically indifferent older generation. In an act of self-emancipation, Anni breaks the engagement and moves in with her friend Gerda, while the 16

family stays with Fritz at Kuhle Wampe. She returns to the Communist sports club, whose

members have collected money for her abortion, and she thrives in this environment. In the

meantime, Fritz has lost his job and seeks out Anni at the club. They come together again, and it

is implied that they will now stay together, partly for practical reasons—she is still working.

During the preparations for the sports festival, politics are discussed. Fritz is skeptical of Anni’s athletic abilities, but she races with her rowing team. Throughout the film, Anni is the positive, assertive, class-conscious protagonist, but with her limited screen time, she is not always the

focus of attention. At the sports festival, the worker-athletes participate in sporting events, watch

the agit-prop group Das Rote Sprachrohr enact an eviction scene, and sing Eisler’s “Solidarity

Song.” Returning home on the train, a discussion takes place regarding a newspaper story about

Brazil burning twenty-four million pounds of coffee in order to maintain its price. When the

young workers state that there is something definitely wrong with this capitalist practice, a

bourgeois ask them: “Who is going to change the world?” Gerda responds: “Those who do not

like it.” The film ends with the worker-athletes leaving the train and singing the “Solidarity

Song.”

Although Kuhle Wampe echoes standard leftist artistic practices of the era by exposing

the injustices of current social and governmental structures and presenting alternatives for the

working class,50 it avoids traditional, melodramatic narrative devices and emotionally charged

conclusions, instead couching its call for political reform in Brecht’s decidedly unsentimental

aesthetics of realism and alienation. As he noted in his short essay “Kleiner Beitrag zum

Realismus” (“A Small Contribution on the Subject of Realism”), presumably written shortly after the second censorship hearing, Brecht affirms that the censor had clearly understood how the protagonists, particularly young Bönike, are not meant to be distinct individuals of flesh and blood. Instead, they are types representing the fate of an entire class of young people who are 17

irresistibly driven to suicide, abortion, and other desperate acts because the state denies them

employment and housing opportunities.

Brecht sought to emphasize the characters’ abstract function by presenting them in coldly

analytical fashion and minimizing spectators’ opportunity for emotional identification. For

Brecht, a key moment in the film occurs when young Bönike looks directly into the camera, without any visible feelings, just before jumping out the window. Here the cinematic fourth wall collapses, forcing viewers to come to terms—intellectually and politically—with this shocking act without recourse to emotional identification or psychological explanation.51 The suicide is

presented as a purely mechanical rather than an impulsive act, which, as the censor in “Kleiner

Beitrag zum Realismus” asserts, the viewer does not even want to prevent in the absence of

“artistic, human, warm-hearted representation. Great God, the actor does it as if he had to show

how one peels cucumbers.”52 The suicide scene is all the more revolutionary since it occurs at the beginning of the film, flouting the conventions of earlier leftist films such as Phil Jützi’s

Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück (1929) and Hans Tinter’s Cyankali (1930), which save the

death or suicide of the protagonist until the climactic end of the film.

First Denial of a Release Permit

Given Brecht’s reputation and the Film Assessment Boards’ demonstrated bias against

leftist pictures, it is hardly surprising that the Kuhle Wampe case generated controversy and

several rounds of deliberation. Closed screenings were initially held on 21 and 23 March 1932

for representatives of the Reich Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Labor, as well as for invited journalists. After one of the closed screenings, the film critic Rudolf Arnheim foresaw the

difficulties that the film would have securing a release permit and published an article in the

liberal magazine Die Weltbühne expressing his hope that the censors would be sufficiently 18

familiar with mainstream cinema to recognize its “hypocrisy and silliness” and therefore to

appreciate Kuhle Wampe as “a work of naturalness and reality . . . a cherished rarity today, which

dare not be mutilated by petty objections. Intervention would be all the more objectionable since

the actual plot of the film is not political. It proves no political theory. Rather, a report is made at

various scenes of action, the viewing of which may be politically evaluated.” Conversely,

Arnheim criticized the film for its “failure to point out the mechanisms of the ruling system,”

suggesting that such “vagueness should put the censors in a more conciliatory mood” and that

consideration of censorship likely prevented the filmmakers from “being very blunt from the

outset.”53

However, the Film Assessment Board understood the filmmakers’ political intentions and dialectical montage structure better than the reviewers who supported the film, and it produced

perceptive (as well as petty) arguments for denying Kuhle Wampe a release permit on 31 March

1932. In addition to the Motion Picture Law and its revisions, the board now had a new weapon at its disposal to prevent the release of controversial films: The Third Decree of the Reich

President to Protect the Economy and Finances and to Combat Political Riots issued on 6

October 1931. Films could now be prohibited if they were “capable of endangering vital state interests, public order, and safety.” The minutes of the meetings give a detailed summary of the plot, which permits a reconstruction of the subsequently deleted scenes.

The board noted that Kuhle Wampe is not a pure feature film, but rather “a mixture between feature film, propaganda film, and documentary,” with the last three acts having little significance for the preceding ones and functioning as an advertisement for Communist sports clubs.54 Using the arguments of Mr. Erbe, representative of the Reich Ministry of the Interior,

the committee concluded that the Bönike family would be viewed by the audience as a typical

case, just as Brecht intended, and that their eviction, the son’s suicide, and the daughter’s 19

abortion would be attributed to a lack of state welfare, compassion, and judiciousness.

Specifically, the board objected to a reference to a recently-passed emergency decree that

reduced unemployment benefits, to Anni’s futile efforts to avoid eviction by pleading for help at numerous public assistance offices, and to the magistrate’s mechanically fast and indifferent reading of the eviction judgment against the family.

Also at issue was the Penal Code’s paragraph 218 criminalizing abortion, which, according to the film’s implicit criticism, discriminates against the poor since it can be easily circumvented by those with money. In a state unwilling and incapable of managing people’s misery, workers’ solidarity and Marxist revolution are presented as the only viable solutions: the members of the Communist sports club pay for Anni’s abortion; the lyrics of the song by the agit-prop group Das Rote Sprachrohr, sung during their theatrical reenactment of an eviction, glorifies open resistance against authority, as do the early scenes with the Bönikes, which explicitly criticize the recent decree-laws promulgated by President Hindenburg and Chancellor

Brüning cutting state welfare programs. Erbe also claimed that the nude bathing scene (which precedes the sports festival), accompanied by the sound of church bells and images of a church tower in the background, presents “Communist nudist culture in sharp opposition to Christian culture on which the German state is based.”55 The young athletes at the sports festival are

steeling themselves physically and mentally for the new order, which can only be created

through violence. The intention of the film is to create mistrust among the workers against the

state by presenting it as “incompetent and worthy of destruction.” The board, agreeing with Erbe,

concluded that Kuhle Wampe “endangers public safety and order as well as the vital interests of the state.”56

Otto Landsberg, a representative of the SPD in the Reichstag acting as attorney for

Praesens Film, responded by arguing that the film neither attacks social democracy nor explicitly 20

recommends the legally recognized Communist party. Two members of the Film Assessment

Board, the journalist and attorney Rudolf Olden and the actor Paul Otto, concurred with

Landsberg but were overruled by their colleagues. They filed an appeal on the same day,

asserting that the film did not threaten public order or vital interests of the state, and that

allowing criticism of existing economic conditions provided a safeguard against violent

revolution by acting as a necessary release valve for popular frustration. In the report that Erbe

sent to his superiors at the Ministry of the Interior, he cited “the possibility of attacks in the press, especially in the Berliner Tageblatt, which must be countered, in my opinion, just as

fiercely as my position was today.”57

Reaction in the Press

In the days that followed, numerous articles appeared in leftist newspapers opposing the ban. Protests were organized by the German Communist Party, workers’ organizations, the

German League for Human Rights, and other groups. Most of the initial reviews criticized the censorship board and the film’s aesthetic structure while minimizing the film’s tendentious message and potential effect on audiences. In the Berliner Börsen-Courier Herbert Jhering expressed outrage at the Assessment Board’s decision to ban Kuhle Wampe while formulaic commercial pictures—“the foulest thrillers, the most embarrassing sensational trash, and the most dishonest social films”—are approved. “Who will then want to invest money in such a precarious business? German film—constricted by the crisis, constricted by the misled public, constricted by the censors—is losing its international standing.”58 As Erbe predicted, Rudolf

Olden also denounced the ban as hypocritical in the Berliner Tageblatt, charging that the Motion

Picture Law was being grossly abused to “suppress civil freedom” and that “simple-mindedness and arrogance are inseparable ingredients of censorship.”59 21

The anonymous author of an article published on 2 April 1932 in Der Film compared this latest ban with earlier censorship of Friedrich Schiller’s The Robbers and Cabal and Love as well

as Mozart’s Don Giovanni, in which the phrase “long live liberty” (Freiheit) had to be changed in a performance to “long live contentment” (Zufriedenheit). Referring to the subtitle of Kuhle

Wampe, the author concluded by asking rhetorically, “Does the world already really belong to film censors?”60 Although Siegfried Kracauer criticized the film’s aesthetics harshly, taking

Brecht and Ottwald to task for their “fuzzy analyses,” dubious final apotheosis, displacement of

the most memorable scenes to the beginning, and “hateful, mocking” contrast of the resigned

older generation with Marxist youth, he dismissed the need to ban the film precisely because of

its political position was “too confused to be clearly recognizable.”61 As Wolfgang Gersch has

argued, Kracauer and other well-intentioned critics evaluated it according to “traditional aesthetic concepts which hindered their access to Brecht’s new dramaturgy.”62

Second Denial of a Release Permit

Based on Olden and Otto’s appeal, the filmmakers’ right to a second evaluation, and the

growing criticism in the press, Kuhle Wampe was reviewed by the Upper Film Assessment

Board on 9 April 1932, this time with Dudow, Brecht, and Ottwald in attendance. Brecht

scholars from the former East Germany have pointed out that by 1932, most left-leaning and

liberal board members had been replaced by appointees with conservative and nationalistic

tendencies. Ludwig Scheer, chairman of the Union of Motion Picture Theater Owners, had

previously spoken out against the screen adaptation of The Three Penny Opera; Berlin city

councilwoman Rötger was from the German National Party; the artist Langhammer had been

active in censorship, and the teacher Herde was a friend of the Nazis. Upper Film Assessment

Board head Ernst Seeger, a member of the SPD and co-author of the Motion Picture Law, had 22

personally supported a ban on All Quiet on the Western Front and allowed the approval of a

National Socialist propaganda film. In 1933, Seeger continued working as film censor in

Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda and Popular Enlightenment. Erbe, the expert witness from the

Ministry of the Interior, also extended his career during the Third Reich, eventually serving as an

advisor to the author of the notorious Nuremberg Laws. 63

At the appeal hearing, Undersecretary Kurt Häntzschel from the Ministry of the Interior

reiterated Erbe’s previous claims that certain scenes endanger public safety, order, and vital

interests of the state. However, he stopped short of requesting a total ban, instead requesting only

that the scenes identified as objectionable be deleted.64 Speaking in defense of the film, Count

Harry Kessler, Vice-President of the German Artists’ Union and head of the German Peace

Society, argued that no part of Kuhle Wampe was sufficiently powerful to endanger the foundation of the German state, and that the scenes deemed objectionable were in fact quite harmless compared to The Weavers and The Beaver Coat by Gerhard Hauptmann and Carnival

Monday by Otto Erich Hartleben, three critical dramas that offended certain classes, yet did not bring about the collapse of the state. Turning to the board’s other objections, Kessler refuted the contentions that the film endorses Anni’s decision to get an abortion and that her brother’s suicide is linked causally to the emergency decree, thereby implicitly attacking President

Hindenburg. Likewise, Kessler found no disrespect for the church in the nude bathing scene, argued that the words of Das Rote Sprachrohr as recorded on the soundtrack were hard to understand, and pointed out that the lyrics of Eisler’s “Solidarity Song” were quite mild compared to many of those performed in Pabst’s adaptation of The Three Penny Opera.65

Despite Kessler’s eloquence, the Upper Assessment Board decided to uphold the lower

body’s ruling. While admitting that a film cannot be banned because of its political, social,

religious, ethical or philosophical content, the board justified its position based on defense of 23

“vital state interests,” as defined in the executive decree of 6 October 1931. Specifically, the

board concluded that Das Rote Sprachrohr’s theatrical reenactment of an eviction, during which

the people unite to drive away the landlord and the police, called for “resistance to state

authority.” Similarly, the Communist sports club’s collecting money for Anni’s abortion

constituted “a trivialization of a prevailing law and a call to disregard it.” The board also decided

that the film endangered vital state interests by depicting young Bönike’s suicide as a result of

the government’s emergency decrees, and that the judge’s reading of the eviction notice, along

with his pronouncement that the Bönike’s economic misery is self-incurred, shatters the people’s

belief in the legal system. Finally, the board found that the nude bathing scene would have an

“immoral effect,” as would the statement by Fritz’s co-worker, “If you have to pay alimony and taxes as a single person, then you’re better off married,” which degraded the institution of marriage and offended “the moral sensitivities of the viewer.” Concluding that “the entire film is capable of shaking the foundation of the state, and with its unambiguous call for revolution and violence, of shattering the existence of the state,” the board rejected the appeal and reaffirmed the necessity of a total ban.66

Compromise and Approval

The continuing wave of newspaper articles and protest rallies by leftist groups, supported

by intellectuals such as Jhering, Arnheim, and Kracauer, eventually had a positive effect. After

having been rejected twice, Kuhle Wampe was presented to the Film Assessment Board a third

time in April 1932 with voluntary cuts made by the production team: Mrs. Bönike’s words to her

husband regarding their unemployed son (“just don’t hold the emergency decree under his nose now”); a close-up of the magistrate reading the eviction judgments against the two other families

(though the reading of the judgment against the Bönikes remains); a voice-over reading of the 24

law criminalizing abortion (“a woman who kills her fruit in the womb or permits the killing by

others is punished by imprisonment”); two on-screen titles contrasting bourgeois and working class values (“in the life of Kuhle Wampe, petty bourgeois problems still play a large role” and

“quite different problems occupy the masses of worker-athletes on the weekend”); Gerda’s comment referring to Anni’s inability to pay an abortionist (“we lent her some money, and now everything is ok”); the final stanza of the “Song of the Red United Front” as the agit-prop troupe

Das Rote Sprachrohr acts out an eviction scene (“The neighbors stand like a single man, / That’s why the gentlemen also crash … no one gets in. / The landlord, the marshal, police, / under pressure they clear out of the joint”); a newspaper vendor calling out the names of Communist newspapers that he is selling (Der Eulenspiegel, Betrieb und Gewerkschaft, and Der Weg der

Frau).

This edited version satisfied most of the censors’ objections. However, the board also ordered several additional cuts: Mr. Bönike’s reference to the emergency decree (which motivated his son’s suicide), Anni and Fritz’s despairing discussion of abortion prices, a brief shot of a sign advertising Fromms Act (the first high-quality seamless rubber condoms designed by Julius Fromm), and all scenes of nude bathing. In total, the voluntary and censor-imposed cuts reduced the film’s run time from 80 to 76 minutes. Kuhle Wampe was released for public screenings in Germany on 21 April 1932, but spectators under eighteen were excluded. Ernst

Seeger, the chairman of the Upper Assessment Board, appealed this decision, but withdrew it four days later.67 Brecht scholars Roswitha Mueller and Wolfgang Gersch concur that “that the quick reversal of the decision to prohibit the film was primarily due not to these cuts but to the waves of protests associated with this film.”68 Just as the censors had yielded to pressure from the political right in the case of All Quiet on the Western Front, they now yielded to pressure

from the left. 25

Public Reception and Aftermath

Shortly after the censorship hearings, Brecht received an invitation from his friend Sergei

Tretiakov to hold the premiere of Kuhle Wampe in Moscow. They were joined on the train by

Sergei Eisenstein, who was returning to face charges of formalism and decadence under Stalin’s

new call for socialist realism. (Brecht was also considered a formalist, but the Soviets wanted to

maintain friendly ties with leftist writers abroad.) During the film’s screening, the Russian

audience was at first “merely cool, but then turned hostile,” unable to understand how a young

man like Bönike who owned a bicycle and a watch could be considered poor.69

During its first week at the Atrium Theater in Berlin, 14,000 viewers saw the film. In

June 1932 it played in seventeen other theaters in Berlin, but failed to generate sustained interest

either within or outside the capitol. German film audiences were accustomed to traditional,

cohesive narratives allowing emotional identification with protagonists, and even the earlier

leftist films produced by Prometheus relied on traditional forms of the dominant cinema to

present their proletarian content. With an innovative structure influenced by Soviet montage and

elements of Brecht’s epic theater, Kuhle Wampe invited its viewers not to sympathize, but rather

to contemplate and analyze, to be persuaded and take action. In addition to the film’s structure,

the cuts ordered by the censors “further disturbed its cohesion, and confused filmgoers who

expected seamless entertainment.”70

Two months after the film’s release, in the 31 July 1932 election, the Nazis gained the

majority in the Reichstag, increasing their share from 18.54% to 37.83%, outdistancing both the

Social Democrats, who sank from 24.78% to 21.88%, and the KPD, which rose insignificantly

from 13.34% to 14.64%.71 As Marc Silberman notes, Kuhle Wampe “reveals symptomatic

deficits and illusions on the part of the Left at this time of social crisis.”72 The film’s message is 26 in tune with the aims of the KPD as stated in its original program: “The realization of the socialist social order … this task demands a complete reorganization of the state and a complete revolution in the economic and social basis of society.”73 But it must be noted that both the KPD and the NSDAP aimed to bring down the Weimar Republic and, in a sense, collaborated in its downfall. Instead of working with the Social Democrats and the Center Party against the

National Socialists, the Communists, under the leadership of Ernst Thälmann, followed Stalin and the Comintern’s orders not to collaborate with the bourgeois Social Democrats and to treat them as social fascists. Beginning in the late 1920s, the official view of the KPD was that there was no difference between the NSDAP and the SPD who were considered merely the left wing of fascism. The KPD reevaluated this policy in 1932, but not until 1935 did the Comintern decide to form a popular front to fight National Socialism. By then it was too late—Hitler had assumed power in 1933; the unified front ended with the short-lived Soviet-German Non-

Aggression Pact of 1939.

In From Caligari to Hitler, written in exile after World War II, Kracauer’s perspectives on Kuhle Wampe are slightly less critical than his original review, but he again faults the film for

its gross attack against the petty-bourgeois mentality of the older workers—an attack

obviously designed to stigmatize social democratic behavior. At a time when the menace

of Nazi domination was felt throughout Germany, it would have been better strategy to

emphasize the solidarity of the worker masses instead of criticizing a larger portion of

them. In addition, this criticism is spiteful rather than solicitous.74

The “stigmatized” Social Democrats are represented by the Bönike parents and their drunken guests at the engagement party. Considering the 1932 election results in retrospect, one can 27

accuse the filmmakers of political blindness for focusing on the German economic crisis after the

1929 stock market crash and not even mentioning the National Socialists in the film. This

omission raises the question whether they were following Stalin’s social-fascist theory and even

his delusion that a Nazi victory would by itself cause a proletarian revolution. Unsurprisingly,

after the National Socialists came to power, Battleship Potemkin, All Quiet on the Western Front,

and Kuhle Wampe were among the first films banned on 27 March 1933.

Notes

1 35 and 16mm prints of Kuhle Wampe are available for non-commercial screenings from Goethe House, New York. The 1999 VHS version of the film (in PAL format) from the British Film Institute is no longer in print. The Defa Film Library has just released a restored version of Kuhle Wampe on DVD with new subtitles, as well as a separate DVD of Christa Mühl and Werner Hecht’s 1975 East German television docudrama Feigenblatt für Kuhle Wampe (Kuhle Wampe – Censored!), which reconstructs the censorship hearings based on the minutes of the meetings. A codefree PAL DVD of both films, but without English subtitles, has been released in Germany by Filmedition Suhrkamp / absolut Medien. This DVD will play on PCs, but not on North American (region 1) DVD players.

2 Heinz Lüdecke, “Kuhle Wampe,” Magazin für Alle, July 1932, rpt. in Film und revolutionäre Arbeiterbewegung in Deutschland 1918-1932, ed. Gertraude Kühn, Karl Tümmler, and Walter Wimmer, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1975), 2: 180-81.

3 Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler (Princeton, 1947), 243.

4 Martin Loiperdinger, “Filmzensur und Selbstkontrolle. Politische Reifeprüfung,” in Geschichte des deutschen Films, ed. Wofgang Jacobsen, Anton Kaes, and Hans Helmut Prinzler (Stuttgart and Weimar, 1993), 479.

5 Jan-Pieter Barbian, “Filme mit Lücken. Die Lichtspielzensur in der Weimarer Republik: von der sozialethischen Schutzmaßnahme zum politschen Instrument,” in Der deutsche Film: Aspekte seiner Geschichte von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Uli Jung, (Schriftenreihe der Cinémathèque Municipale de Luxembourg, no. 1 (Trier, 1993), 59.

6 “Lichtspielgesetz” (May 12, 1920), http://www.documentArchiv.de/wr/1920/lichtspielgesetz.html. Unless indicated otherwise, all translations are by the author.

7 “Lichtspielgesetz” (May 12, 1920), http://www.documentArchiv.de/wr/1920/lichtspielgesetz.html.

28

8 Christine Kopf, “‘Der Schein der Neutralität’ – Institutionelle Filmzensur in der Weimarer Republic,” http://www.deutsches-filminstitut.de/news/dt2n13.htm#2.

9 Barbian, “Filme mit Lücken,” 55-57.

10 Ursula von Keitz, “Film Before the Court: the Theory and Practice of Film Assessment in Germany from 1920 to 1938,” part 4, http://deutsches-filminstitut.de/dt2tai10.htm.

11 “Dritte Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zur Sicherung von Wirtschaft und Finanzen und zur Bekämpfung politischer Ausschreitungen. Vom 6. Oktober 1931,” http://www.documentarchiv.de/wr/1931/wirtschaft-finanzen-ausschreitungen_reichspraesident- vo03.html#t7.

12 Werner Sudendorf, “Zensurkämpfe sind Machtkämpfe. Im Westen nichts Neues 1930 in Deutschland,” in Im Westen nichts Neues – Materialien für den Bildungsdienst, ed. Wolfgang Bartling et al. (Hanover, 1995), http://www.nibis.de/nli1/bibl/pdf/westen.pdf, 18.

13 Loiperdinger, “Filmzensur und Selbstkontrolle,” 484.

14 Film Assessment Board Censorship Minutes (hereafter CM), no. A.49.22. 21 July 1922, http://www.deutsches-filminstitut.de/zengut/df2tb374z.pdf, 3.

15 This according to Tracing Battleship Potemkin, a documentary by Artem Demenok included on Kino International’s recently released DVD edition of Battleship Potemkin, which features Edmund Meisel’s score for the original German version.

16 CM, no. 12595, 24 Mar. 1926, http://www.deutsches-filminstitut.de/zengut/df2tb394zb.pdf. For a summary in English, see Laura Bezerra and Georg Eckes, “The Affair Potemkin in Germany: strikes, riots and civil commotion.” http://deutsches- filminstitut.de/collate/collate_sp/se/se_04a02.html. The original censorship rulings in German, selected protest letters from officials of the Länder, as well as newspaper and police reports regarding the screening of Battleship Potemkin are reprinted in Kühn, Tümmler, and Wimmer, Film und revolutionäre Arbeiterbewegung, 1: 323-69.

17 CM, no. 349, 19 Apr. 1926, http://www.deutsches-filminstitut.de/zengut/df2tb394z1.pdf.

18 Seeckt’s letters are reprinted in Kühn, Tümmler, and Wimmer, Film und revolutionäre Arbeiterbewegung, 1: 331-32.

19 Hans Helmut Prinzler, “Chronik, 1985-1993” in Geschichte des deutschen Films, ed. Jacobsen et al., 526.

20 Bezerra and Eckes, “The Affair Potemkin in Germany: the Reaction,” Deutsches Filminstitut, http://www.deutsches-filminstitut.de/collate/collate_sp/se/se_04a03.html#03a. See also the links to supporting documents.

29

21 CM, no. 581, 12 July 1926, http://www.deutsches-filminstitut.de/zengut/df2tb394z2.pdf.

22 CM, no. 13346, 28 July 1926, http://www.deutsches- filminstitut.de/collate/collate_sp/se/se_link_149.htm.

23 CM, no. 2546b6768, 5 Aug. 1926, http://www.deutsches filminstitut.de/zengut/35365WAx.PDF.

24 CM, no. 801, 2 Oct. 1926, http://www.deutsches-filminstitut.de/zengut/df2tb394z3.pdf.

25 From the original, already shortened length of 1,617 meters, Battleship Potemkin was cut to 1,421 meters for review on July 28 and October 2, 1926. See the summary outline of censorship decisions regarding Battleship Potemkin, Deutsches Filminstitut, http://www.deutsches- filminstitut.de/filme/f035365.htm.

26 “Das Deutsche Reich. Reichstagwahl 1928,” http://www.gonschior.de/weimar/Deutschland/RT4.html, and “Das Deutsche Reich. Reichstagwahl 1930,” http://www.gonschior.de/weimar/Deutschland/RT5.html.

27 Deutscher Reichsanzeiger of 30 June 1930 in “Quellen zur Filmgeschichte 1920-1932: Filmzensur. Zweite Verordnung zum Lichtspielgesetz,” http://kinematographie.de/LSG1920.HTM, 19.

28 For a succinct summary of the film’s production and international reception, see John Whiteclay Chambers II, “All Quiet on the Western Front (1930): The Antiwar Film and the Image of Modern War,” in World War II, Film, and History, ed. John Whiteclay Chambers II and David Culbert (New York and Oxford, 1996), 13-30.

29 Loiperdinger, however, states that the film was reduced to 85 minutes. See “Filmzensur und Selbstkontrolle,” 487.

30 Erich Maria Remarque – Peace Center Osnabrück, “All Quiet on the Western Front,” http://www.remarque.uos.de/iwnnfilm.htm.

31 Frankfurter Zeitung of 7 Dec. 1930, quoted by Werner Sudendorf, “Zensurkämpfe sind Machtkämpfe. Im Westen nichts Neues 1930 in Deutschland,” http://www.nibis.de/nli1/bibl/pdf/westen.pdf, 19-20. See also Jens Ebert, “Geschichte eines Films nach Erich Maria Remarque,” http://www.dradio.de/kultur/sendungen/zeitreisen/4417770.

32 Sudendorf, “Zensurkämpfe sind Machtkämpfe,” http://www.nibis.de/nli1/bibl/pdf/westen.pdf, 19.

33 CM, no. O.1254, 11 Dec. 1930, http://www.deutsches-filminstitut.de/zengut/dt2tb154z.pdf, 13 (p. 12 of orig. ms.)

30

34 CM, no. O.1254, 11 Dec. 1930, http://www.deutsches-filminstitut.de/zengut/dt2tb154z.pdf, 18 (p. 17 of orig. ms.)

35 CM, no. O.1254, 11 Dec. 1930, http://www.deutsches-filminstitut.de/zengut/dt2tb154z.pdf, 23-24 (p. 22 + 23 of orig. ms.)

36 CM, no. O.1254, 11 Dec. 1930, http://www.deutsches-filminstitut.de/zengut/dt2tb154z.pdf, 24-25 (23-24 of orig. ms.)

37 CM, no. O.1254, 11 Dec. 1930, http://www.deutsches-filminstitut.de/zengut/dt2tb154z.pdf , 26 (p. 25 of orig. ms.)

38 Articles published during January and February 1931 in Communist newspapers such as Die Rote Fahne are reprinted in Kühn, Tümmler, and Wimmer, Film und revolutionäre Arbeiterbewegung, 1: 266-75.

39 An additional motivation for the compromise was the Upper Film Assessment Board’s recent refusal to release the party’s anti-Nazi animated short Ins Dritte Reich (Into the Third Reich). See censorship minutes for Ins Dritte Reich (Into the Third Reich), 29 Jan. 1931, http://www.deutsches-filminstitut.de/zengut/df2tb579z1.pdf. See also “Genre and Censorship. Propagandistic films of German political parties and paramilitary organizations 1928-1932,” http://www.deutsches-filminstitut.de/collate/collate_sp/se/se_05c01.htm.

40 Gesetz zur Änderung des Lichtspielgesetzes. Vom 31. März 1931 [RGBl. 1931, S.127], http://www.kinematographie.de/LSG1920.HTM#NAME17.

41 CM, no. B.29102, 8 June 1931, http://www.deutsches-filminstitut.de/zengut/dt2tb154z.pdf, 28 (p. 4 of original ms.)

42 Sudendorf, “Zensurkämpfe sind Machtkämpfe,” http://www.nibis.de/nli1/bibl/pdf/westen.pdf, 22.

43Erich Maria Remarque – Peace Center Osnabrück, “All Quiet on the Western Front,” http://www.remarque.uos.de/iwnnfilm.htm.

44 Jan-Christopher Horak, “Three Penny Opera: Brecht vs. Pabst,” Jump Cut 15 (1977): 17, 20- 21, http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC15folder/3PennyOpera.html. See also Lotte Eisner, The Haunted Screen (Berkeley and Oxford, 1973), 343-45.

45 John Fuegi, Brecht and Company: Sex, Politics, and the Making of Modern Drama (New York, 1994), 252.

46 Wolfgang Gersch, Film bei Brecht (Munich, 1975), 108.

31

47 Bertolt Brecht, “Tonfilm ‘Kuhle Wampe oder Wem gehört die Welt?’” in Kuhle Wampe. Protokoll des Films und Materialien, ed. Wolfgang Gersch and Werner Hecht (Frankfurt/Main, 1981), 89.

48 The company was founded in December 1925 and registered in February 1926. For surveys of Leftist filmmaking in Germany, see, for example, Bruce Murray, Film and the German Left in the Weimar Republic: From Caligari to Kuhle Wampe (Austin, 1990); David Welch, “The Proletarian Cinema and the Weimar Republic,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 1 (1981): 3-18; Helmut Korte, ed. Film und Realität in der Weimarer Republic (Frankfurt, 1980); Vance Kepley, “The Workers’ International Relief and the Cinema of the Left 1921-1935,” Cinema Journal 23 (1983): 7-23.

49 See Murray, Film and the German Left, 216-19.

50 Reinhold Happel and Margot Michaelis, “Wem gehört die Welt? – Filme der Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik,” in Film und Realität, ed.Korte, 100.

51 For a detailed reading of the film along these lines, see Theodore Rippey, “Kuhle Wampe and the Problem of Corporal Culture,” Cinema Journal 47 (2007): 3-25.

52 “Kleiner Beitrag zum Thema Realismus,” in Kuhle Wampe. Protokoll des Films und Materialien, ed. Gersch and Hecht, 93-96. See also Brecht on Film and Radio, trans. and ed. Marc Silberman (London, 2000), which contains English translations of this and other typescripts related to the film as well as a scene segmentation based on Gersch and Hecht’s scene protocal.

53 Rudolf Arnheim, “Petzet, Kuhle Wampe, Albers,” Die Weltbühne, 29 March 1932; rpt. in Rudolf Arnheim, Kritiken und Aufsätze zum Film, ed. Helmut H. Diedrichs (Frankfurt/Main, 1979), 158; trans. in Rudolf Arnheim, Film Essays and Criticism, trans. Brenda Bethien (Madison, 1997), 93. After the first censorship hearing, Arnheim wrote another article in support of the film “Zensur ohne Hemmung” (“Censorship Without Scruples”) for the 5 Apr. 1932 edition of Die Weltbühne, and then held a speech “So genannte Freiheit” (“So-Called Freedom”) on 13 Apr. 1932 at a protest rally against the ban of Kuhle Wampe. See Kritiken und Aufsätze zum Film, 159-64, and Film Essays and Criticism, 94-98.

54 “Protokolle der Zensur [Erstes Verbot des Films],” in Kuhle Wampe. Protokoll des Films und Materialien, ed. Gersch and Hecht 103 and 110.

55 Gersch and Hecht, Kuhle Wampe. Protokoll des Films und Materialien, 111-17, quotation 116. Solveig Grothe states that in Germany during the 1920s, “Nudist culture was very popular in parts of the socialist worker movement—as a healthful preventive act, it was supposed to steel the revolutionary body for the coming conflict with the capitalists.” “FKK in der DDR: Aufstand der Nackten,” http://einestages.spiegel.de/static/topicalbumbackground/2127/aufstand_der_nackten.html.

56 Gersch and Hecht, Kuhle Wampe. Protokoll des Films und Materialien, 112-113. 32

57 Rpt. in Kühn, Tümmler, and Wimmer, Film und revolutionäre Arbeiterbewegung, 2: 143. This volume also contains several newspaper articles protesting the banning of the film on 158-83.

58 Berliner Börsen-Courier, 1 April 1932, rpt. in Gersch and Hecht, Kuhle Wampe. Protokoll des Films und Materialien, 144.

59 “Kuhle Wampe,” rpt. in Gersch and Hecht, Kuhle Wampe. Protokoll des Films und Materialien, 149.

60 Rpt. in Gersch and Hecht, Kuhle Wampe. Protokoll des Films und Materialien, 152.

61 Siegfried Kracauer, “Kuhle Wampe verboten!”, Frankfurter Zeitung, 5 Apr. 1932, rpt. in Siegfried Kracauer, Der verbotene Blick. Beobachtungen, Analysen, Kritiken (Leipzig, 1992), 343-48.

62 Gersch, Film bei Brecht, 117.

63 Gersch and Hecht, “Der Fall Kuhle Wampe,” in Gersch and Hecht, Kuhle Wampe. Protokoll des Films und Materialien, 173-74; Christa Mühl and Werner Hecht, “Rekonstruktion eines berühmten Zensurfalles: Notizen zur Arbeit am Film Feigenblatt für Kuhle Wampe,” Film und Fernsehen 5 (1975): 34-35.

64 “Protokolle der Zensur [Zweites Verbot des Films],” in Gersch and Hecht, Kuhle Wampe. Protokoll des Films und Materialien, 124-27.

65 Gersch and Hecht, Kuhle Wampe. Protokoll des Films und Materialien, 127-29.

66 Gersch and Hecht, Kuhle Wampe. Protokoll des Films und Materialien, 134. The anti- Communist Häntzschel was relieved of his duties by the Nazis in 1933 because he had advocated for freedom of the press. Ironically, both he and Brecht were deprived of German citizenship at the same time. See Mühl and Hecht, “Rekonstruktion eines berühmten Zensurfalles,” 35.

67 “Protokolle der Zensur [Freigabe des Films],” in Gersch and Hecht, Kuhle Wampe. Protokoll des Films und Materialien, 136-39.

68 Roswitha Mueller, Bertolt Brecht and the Theory of Media (Lincoln & London, 1989), 45, and Gersch, Film bei Brecht, 108.

69 John Fuegi, Brecht and Company, 270.

70 Murray, Film and the German Left, 224.

71 “Das Deutsche Reich. Reichstagwahl 1930,” http://www.gonschior.de/weimar/Deutschland/RT5.html; “Das Deutsche Reich. Reichstagwahl Juli 1932,” http://www.gonschior.de/weimar/Deutschland/RT6.html. 33

72 Marc Silberman, German Cinema: Texts in Context (Detroit, 1995), 34.

73 Protokoll des Gründungsparteitags der Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands 1918 (Berlin, 1972), http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/geschichte/deutsch/kpd/1918/programm.htm.

74 Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler, 246-47.