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DAS BOOT: EINE REISE ANS ENDE DES VERSTANDES By PATRICK EDWIN YOUNG A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2014 © 2014 Patrick Edwin Young To Sherry ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my mother for her love and support during my time as a graduate student, and the professors on my committee who made this all possible. My wonderful friends also deserve thanks for their constant encouragement and assistance. I am also grateful to the University of Florida for providing me the opportunity to study in Germany and conduct research abroad. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4 ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................6 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................7 Project Outline ..........................................................................................................................8 Defining Vergangenheitsbewältigung ....................................................................................10 2 WORLD WAR I & WEIMAR GERMANY ..........................................................................13 Siegfried Kracauer and Anton Kaes .......................................................................................13 Representations of U-Boats in the First World War ...............................................................17 Representations of U-Boats in Weimar Germany ..................................................................20 Morgenrot ...............................................................................................................................23 3 REPRESENTATIONS OF U-BOATS DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR ..............33 4 THE POSTWAR ERA ...........................................................................................................47 5 CONCLUSION.......................................................................................................................66 LIST OF REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................68 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .........................................................................................................71 5 Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts DAS BOOT: EINE REISE ANS ENDE DES VERSTANDES By Patrick Edwin Young May 2014 Chair: Dr. Barbara Mennel Major: German Studies In the vast literature composed about Wolfgang Peterson’s Das Boot, no scholar has yet undertaken an examination of the film’s historical implications. When compared to previous U- Boat films, Das Boot shows a clear break from nationalistic productions from 1914-1945, as well as from postwar films seeking to absolve U-Boat sailors of collective guilt. As such, Das Boot can be understood as fulfilling Vergangenheitgsbewältigung since it confronts and corrects false representations of submarine warfare. 6 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION At its debut in 1981, the poster for Wolfgang Peterson’s Das Boot read “A journey to the end of understanding.” Indeed the film challenges the viewer to comprehend the incomprehensible, to understand the futility and the senseless of war. This film was Peterson’s largest project, and represented the most expensive film in Germany at the time. The vast monetary resources at his disposal allowed him to hire hundreds of actors, a massive supporting cast, and conduct extensive research to build extremely detailed and accurate film sets. There has been much discussion in film studies regarding the shift Das Boot represents in the era of New German Cinema as a result of its large budget. It marked a distinct break from low-budget, small auteur-based productions by directors such as Werner Herzog, Rainer Fassbinder, Alexander Kluge, and Hans-Jürgen Syberberg. Following Das Boot, cinema in Germany began to become reminiscent of Hollywood, incorporating large budgets and special effects, captivating audiences and bringing in huge profits.1 The literature concerning this shift in German cinema is enormous, and a further examination of it would be a superfluous contribution to an already saturated field.2 However scholars have largely ignored the shift in historical thinking that Das Boot represents. More important than representing a shift in German cinema is its unique and progressive interpretation of history. Wartime film and literature concerning the U-Boat war in general share a common theme of mythologizing war, and present battle as a heroic undertaking worthy of the highest praise. If one were to die in battle, this death would be for a noble and admirable cause, for the 1 Baer, Hester. “Das Boot and the German Cinema of Neoliberalism.” The German Quarterly 85.1 (Winter 2012): 19. 2 Hake, Sabine. German National Cinema. New York, NY: Routledge, 2008. Cooke, Paul. Contemporary German Cinema. Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press, 2012. 7 Fatherland, and for National Socialism. A heroes’ death was equated with eternal martyrdom, and through this lens death turns into a positive event. Das Boot however presents a completely contradictory image of war. It is something terrible, horrific, something that nobody desired and whose participants are only concerned with their own personal survival; dying for Germany is the farthest thought from their minds. Death in the film is not heroic, but senseless, as is war itself. In this paper I claim that this shift in representations of the U-Boat war is a significant effort at Vergangenheitsbewältigung. As such, Das Boot can be understood as not only ushering in a new direction for German cinema, but also as an attempt to work through the past and come to terms with it. Project Outline In order to discuss the role Das Boot plays in Vergangenheitsbewältigung, we must first place the production within German Film Studies discourse. Historically speaking, U-Boats have always been considered separate and distinct from the rest of the German Navy. After a disastrous defeat at the outset of the First World War, the Kaiser refused to allow the surface fleet to leave port without his express permission. As a result, U-Boats came to bear the brunt of the conflict, just as they did a few decades later during the Second World War. The theme of independence abounds in U-Boat films and literature, and as such it must be considered its own genre. U-Boat films cannot be considered naval films since that would include the surface fleet, which accomplished very little and was disdained by submarine sailors in both world wars. As its own genre, submarine films have gone through three major phases of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, and they are divided into respective sections in this project. The first period occurred from 1914-1945, which includes Weimar and Nazi Germany. During this time, U-Boat films were extremely nationalistic and portrayed patriotic sailors who would willingly give their lives for the fatherland. Following the conclusion of the Second World War, 8 U-Boat films took on a moral conscience, and sailors began asking whether their actions were justified. This period of questioning the war leads to the third phase of U-Boat productions, culminating with Das Boot. This film is the first not only to question, but to contradict the war directly and reject all previous notions of heroism in battle. The viewer is presented with the futility of war and the irrational waste of life. All three of these phases share a common element: they all reach back to the past in order to work through it, a crucial element of Vergangenheitsbewältigung. This project will consist of three chapters, preceded by an introductory chapter to specifically define Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Following this, a section for each period of U- Boat films will closely analyze these productions to demonstrate the precise traits that differentiate them from Das Boot, a discussion of which occurs in the fourth chapter. A conclusion will briefly summarize the main points. For the purposes of Weimar Cinema, a dialectic between two premier scholars examines whether films of this era either foreshadow the Third Reich or reflect the First World War. In order to argue that Das Boot represents Vergangenheitsbewältigung when compared to Weimar, one must first prove that Weimar Cinema is looking back to the past instead of pointing to the future. Consequently a comparison to Weimar Cinema has the potential to be problematic, for if as Siegfried Kracauer states, that Weimar Cinema was predisposed to support the Third Reich, these films could not be attempting to work through the past since they were predicting the future. By proving that Weimar Cinema reaches back to the past instead of the future, a comparison to Das Boot then be undertaken in relation to Vergangenheitsbewältigung. In order to accomplish this, in chapter two I will outline the Kaes-Kracauer opposition to demonstrate that U-Boat films of the Weimar period have roots in the past and not in National Socialism. A detailed analysis of films from all three periods will 9 follow in order to demonstrate fully that Das Boot is a distinct break from