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Muhlenberg College Digital Repository 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.
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