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PHRYNE PAVES THE WAY FOR THE WIRTSCHAFTSWUNDER: VISIONS OF GUILT AND “PURITY” FED BY ANCIENT GREECE, CHRISTIAN NARRATIVE, AND CONTEMPORARY HISTORY Barbara Schrödl Parallel to the founding of Federal Republic of Germany in May 1949, West Germany was on the lookout for new sources of national self-esteem. The concept of a “nation of culture” was a suggestion from intellectual circles, and one which met with broad acceptance until the beginning of the Wirtschaftswunder (“economic miracle”) in the mid-1950s. In a country which had been forced into unconditional capitulation, whose economic system had collapsed, and whose political order had disintegrated, culture had very few rivals. The notion of the Kulturnation depended on aspects of not only recognized high culture but also contemporary art. Particular attention was devoted to classical antiquity, Christian motifs, and mod- ern aesthetics. This was especially true for the fine arts. References to the immediate Nazi past were employed in parallel with the Passion or ancient statues of gods, as we see in Otto Dix’s “Ecce Home” or Gerhard Marks’ sculpture, “Gefesselter Prometheus.”1 Classical or Christian themes often appeared in an explicitly “modern” form as a way of bringing up to date a past which, with the general social consensus being to avoid allu- sions to actual historical events, had taken on a character of eternal valid- ity, though not one which was entirely divorced from history. This was repeatedly integrated into the context of individual and collective identity constructs, and in this cinema played a significant role. The apparently apolitical entertainment film proved to be a suitable medium of commu- nication about the nationalist socialist past, contemporary events, and future developments. Traditionally, cinema is regarded as an interface between the individual psyche and social discourse. Popular films take up the longings and fears of a wide audience and lend them a specific aes- thetic form which in turn informs the audience’s imagination and ideas. As Stephan Lowry argues, film, the individual, a nd society all shape each other. In the period after the Second World War, the task at hand was to 1 Otto Dix, “Ecce Home II mit Selbstbildnis hinter Stacheldraht (Ecco Homo II)” (1948) or Gerhard Marks, “Gefesselter Prometheus” (1948/50). © Barbara Schrödl, 2013 | doi:10.1163/9789004241923_017 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.Barbara Schrödl - 9789004241923 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 06:30:47PM via free access 300 barbara schrödl restructure the political system, the economy, and society, and to inte- grate the individual into this new community. Cinema became important in this context. The film Die Sünderin (The Sinner, 1951) by Willi Forst provides a good example of cinema’s role in the post-war period. I argue that the film cre- ates a complex web which, while pointing to the future, alludes to clas- sical antiquity, Christian narrative, and National Socialism to make the death of a woman in the contemporary present interpretable as a sacrifice legitimated by the cultural tradition and required for the creation of a new state community unencumbered by the legacy of the past. The film tells the story of the love between a male artist and his female model, a motif which has a long tradition in what we might call “artist myths.” Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz find its beginnings already in ancient narratives, as in those relating that the woman depicted in some of the works of the early fourth-century Athenian sculptor Praxiteles was the art- ist’s mistress.2 Breaking out of this tradition, however, the focus here is not on the artist but the model, who through her relationship with the painter is elevated from a prostitute into a loving and self-sacrificing partner, who eventually helps the terminally ill artist to end his life and then takes her own. Through a convoluted flashback structure, the story is told back to front, so that the film begins and ends with the death of the painter and the model. Two conflicting patterns of interpretation are suggested. Seen as the story of a relationship, the film tells of the failure of a great love. In the death scenes, the images signalize deep intimacy while the plot is driven by betrayal and loneliness. The painter believes that his lover has a great future before her, but she secretly follows him into death. Seen as an art film, on the other hand, the outlook is much more hopeful. The death of the pair is underscored by a slow fade-out, but then the final frame shows a close-up of a female nude entitled “Phryne.” Completed just before the death of the lovers, the painting represents both the painter’s magnum opus and the pinnacle of the collaboration between the painter and the model. The scene is slowly illuminated until the painting is resplendent in bright light. A new day seems to have dawned. This use of lighting suggests to the audience that the work is a masterpiece, and encourages the belief that both painter and model will live on in art history. 2 Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz, Die Legende vom Künstler: Ein geschichtlicher Versuch, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1980) 148–150. The volume was published the first time in 1934 in Wiener Krystall Verlag. Barbara Schrödl - 9789004241923 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 06:30:47PM via free access phryne paves the way for the wirtschaftswunder 301 “Phryne” depicts a female nude reclining in a wide landscape contain- ing a classical temple. The figure takes up most of the canvas. The upright upper body is painted face on, while the lower body, with legs bent, is depicted from the side. The head is turned towards the observer, but the eyes are lowered, prohibiting eye contact. The description signalizes both timelessness and a rootedness in time. While the idealized nudity and classical background allude to an idealized place, the figure’s waved blonde hair smacks of contemporary fashion. This tension transforms the human into what appears to be eternal. In art-historical terms, the painting belongs to the tradition of the reclining Venus. Venus, who in ancient Rome was identified with the Greek goddess Aphrodite, has been a favourite motif in art since the Renaissance. In the picture in question and especially in the way it is presented during the death scene in the film, the body is clearly outlined so as to stand out from the background, and the almost sculptural painting technique lends it a particular physi- cality. The body appears as a clearly outlined unity. What is drawn is an anatomically correct picture of physical beauty. The artistic language is akin to photography. A photograph appears to have been translated to a large format oil painting, which in turn takes on monumental dimensions as it shines forth from the cinema screen. This is reminiscent of Nazi art. Nationalist Socialist painting can be described in the words of Berthold Hinz as an amalgamation of naturalistic and idealistic tendencies, which are “simplified, smoothed and harmonized” by means of the New Real- ism.3 The painting “Phryne” is also indebted to Naturalism, Idealism, and New Realism. A “clean” nudity is staged here, one that resembles the Nazi ideal of “Aryan” beauty. “Phryne” does not just recall Nazi art through the lens of art history but almost certainly triggered the same associations in the contemporary cinema audience. Even those who had never shown a special interest in the visual arts were likely still to be familiar with examples of Nationalist Socialist art around 1950, as Nazi art propaganda had, by turning “high art” into mass culture, reached an incredibly wide audience. In the film, however, “Phryne” is not created in the Nazi period but in the present. The nude takes the audience out of the postwar period, into the Nazi past, and back into the present. Die Sünderin thus celebrates as a contemporary masterpiece a painting which, from the perspectives of art 3 Berthold Hinz, “ ‘Entartete Kunst’ und ‘Kunst im Dritten Reich,’ Eine Synopse,” in Kunst und Macht im Europa der Diktotoren 1930 bis 1945 (Berlin: Oktogon-Verlag, 1996) 330–333, here 331. Barbara Schrödl - 9789004241923 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 06:30:47PM via free access 302 barbara schrödl history, the audience, and the logic of the film, is connected with National Socialism. I would like to examine this surprising observation in more depth and to consider what effect the recourse to ancient Greek refer- ences may have had in this context. Portrayals of visual artists are not a rarity in cinematic history, and in the German cinema of the postwar period they were all the rage. In the 1950s, the tension between modern art and tradition became increasingly important in this context. The question of whether art should be traditional and representational or modern and abstract took on deep significance. The representational artist was usually portrayed as a positive figure, the abstract artist as a negative one. In some films the representational and the abstract artist were, as the result of the illness narrated by the film, one and the same person. This is the case in Die Sünderin. Phases of ill- ness connected with the production of abstract pictures alternate with phases of health in which representational art, including the masterpiece “Phryne,” is produced. Interestingly, the positive portrayal of representationality in cinema was actually at odds with the high cultural discourse of the time. In exhi- bitions, art criticism, and academic art history post-1945, a demonstrative rehabilitation had taken place of the “modern” art that had been defamed by the Nazis.

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