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Children in Frank Beyer's Holocaust Films

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Children in Frank Beyer's Holocaust Films University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses November 2016 Children in Frank Beyer's Holocaust Films Delene M. White University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Film and Media Studies Commons, and the German Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation White, Delene M., "Children in Frank Beyer's Holocaust Films" (2016). Doctoral Dissertations. 815. https://doi.org/10.7275/9052390.0 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/815 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CHILDREN IN FRANK BEYER’S HOLOCAUST FILMS A Dissertation Presented By DELENE CASE WHITE Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY September 2016 German and Scandinavian Studies © Copyright by Delene Case White 2016 All Rights Reserved CHILDREN IN FRANK BEYER’S HOLOCAUST FILMS A Dissertation Presented by DELENE CASE WHITE Approved as to style and content by: __________________________________ Barton Byg, Chair __________________________________ Sky Arndt-Briggs, Member __________________________________ Jonathan Skolnik, Member __________________________________ Jon Olsen, Member _____________________________ Andrew Donson, Member and Program Director German and Scandinavian Studies _____________________________ William Moebius, Department Chair Languages, Literature, and Cultures DEDICATION For Jack, my own child with the most agency of all. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have many people and institutions to thank for their support of many various kinds. First, thanks to the program of German and Scandinavian Studies in the department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Massachusetts, I was invited to attend the Ph.D. program, stick with it, and continue this dissertation project. This program also funded some research trips and my conference travel so that I could grow as a professional and scholar. I am also grateful for the many courses the program assigned to me while I was a graduate student. I also thank the Univeristy of Massachusetts Gradute School for granting me funding for dissertation research, and for the dissertation writing workshop. I also owe a huge debt to the members of my dissertation committee. I thank my advisor, Barton Byg, for introducing me to Jurek Becker’s works and to his widow and editor, Christine Becker. I am also grateful for Professor Byg’s interest and investment in my project, and remembering “the forest” when I was stuck in metaphorical “trees.” I am thankful for Sky Arndt- Briggs’s dedication to this project as well. She spent many hours mentoring and coaching me on writing as well as developing as a professional and maintaining some semblanc of work-life balance. I also thank Andrew Donson for being a mentor and guiding me to be a better scholar of Holocaust history and representation, and for helping me be a better writer and teacher. Jonathan Skolnik is also central to my development in German-Jewish studies, and I thank him for the time we spent discussing the changes and progress of my project, as well as mentorship in teaching a film course to undergraduate students. I am grateful to Jon Olsen, with whom I did not take a course, but yet felt welcomed as a student nevertheless. I am thankful for our many conversations about German memory and material culture. v There are many people to thank who helped me with research simply because they enjoyed it, or supported my research trips in unofficial ways. For this assistance and support, I thank Hiltrud Schultz of the DEFA Film Library for helping me locate sources and connecting me with filmmakers and scholars. I also thank Christine Becker for letting me interview her in the early stages of my work, meeting with me in Berlin, letting me see Jurek Becker’s records in her home, and even having me over for dinner on the terrace. I thank Johnny Becker for his insight into his fahter’s work as well as our discussions about translation and trying to get the “voice” just right. I also thank my friends Ina Berghoff and Jochen Stiewe for hosting me many times, giving me a free place to stay and much valued friendship on my travels to Köln and Bonn. If it “takes a village” to raise a child, it also takes one to complete a dissertation get through grad school, and all of the major life events that occur on the way. My friends and family offered the support network that I needed to sustain myself in the tough times. Many stepped up, picked me up, and pushed me to keep going. I am most grateful for husband, Donavan White, who shared all of the good times and all of the hard times, and is still around after all of it. I thank my son, Jack, for trying to understand why I have my laptop out most of the time, and stopping me to play and enjoy fun times with him, too. I thank my parents, Deborah and Larry Case for believing in me and offering support. I’m grateful for my sister, Tracy Case Koslowski for making me start to learn German with her when I was just eight years old. I have spent years with some brilliant people who are also very kind and supportive of others among my grad student colleagues in the German program and from my church community. Thanks to my colleagues Victoria Rizo Lenshyn, Rachael Salyer, Jamele Watkins, Kevina King, Katrin Bahr, Diane Liu for being supportive and willing to discuss my project vi maybe too many times. I also thank colleagues who were not in my department, but who offered support anyway: Julie de Chantal and Kathryn Julian. I thank my friends who have become some of my best confidants and supporters: Sadie Dybizbanski, Kathy Charland, Chrissy Holesovsky, Wendy Mollins, Tiffany Marcy, Nikki Bradley, Gary Roux, Steven Neveu, Ron Capers, Tom Atimbo, Rev. Kenny Hebert, and Rev. Ryan Bradley. Also, a million thanks go to other moms who have shared the burden and joys of parenting with me, taking my son at the last minute when I couldn’t get childcare and had “just a little more” to write: Lisa Szostec, Claudia Bermudez, Andrea Blanchard, and Cynthia Caporale. For all of this support, I will always be grateful. vii ABSTRACT CHILDREN IN FRANK BEYER’S HOLOCAUST FILMS SEPTEMBER 2016 DELENE CASE WHITE, B.A. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH ALABAMA M.A. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH ALABAMA Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Barton Byg This dissertation is about central functions children play in the Holocaust films of (East) German director Frank Beyer: Nackt unter Wölfen (Naked among Wolves, 1963), Jakob der Lügner (Jacob the Liar, 1974), and Wenn alle Deutschen schlafen (While all Germans Sleep, 1994). Beyer’s child characters contribute to resistance and challenge oversimplified ways the Holocaust and German division have often been remembered. Beyer’s films do not elide truthful representations of the Holocaust, and they avoid clichéd representations of children, Jews and Germans. Released over a 31-year span, characters in these films demonstrate increasing agency, drawing out universal humanity in people around them—even German soldiers—in the form of storytelling, play, and the desires to protect others and live ordinary, worthwhile lives. Over time, these films also reveal changes in Beyer’s filmmaking artistry, as well as his collaboration with the author Jurek Becker. I explore the intertwined evolution of Beyer’s child characters and his filmic approach in four central chapters. The Introduction sets the stage by outlining German and international films about the Holocaust and reviewing Beyer’s biography. Chapter One provides an overview of adaptation theory, moral philosophy, and methods for analyzing representations of war and the gaze of the child, as well as the biographies of Bruno Apitz and Jurek Becker, the authors whose novels Beyer adapted to film. Chapter Two examines how viii Naked among Wolves, which is ensconced in antifascist ideology and conventions of Socialist Realism, nevertheless challenges tenets of each, by decentering Communist heroes and focusing on a child. In discussing Jacob the Liar, which is set among Jews in a Polish ghetto and completely displaces Communists, Chapter Three explores how Beyer deploys the narrative devices of fantasy, flashbacks and flashforwards to depict how characters preserve their humanity in the midst of the Holocaust. Finally, Chapter Four shows how Beyer takes his abandonment of antifascist and social realist conventions a step further in While all Germans Sleep, which departs from fantasy and flashbacks in favor of a more objective narrative style, while challenging conventional views of the Holocaust through depictions of childhood autonomy and agency. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ……………………………………………………………………..…v ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………………………………viii INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………………………......1 CHAPTER 1. THEORY AND METHOD ………………………………………………………………..36 Adaptation and Biography ………………………………………………………36 Adaptation Theory ……………………………....………...…………….36 Artists’ Biographies ……………………………………………………..42 Bruno Apitz …….………………………………………………..43 Jurek Becker ……………………………………………………..47 Becker’s Jewishness
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