Jewish Reality in Germany and Its Reflection in Film Europäisch-Jüdische Studien Beiträge European-Jewish Studies Contributions
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Contemporary Jewish Reality in Germany and Its Reflection in Film Europäisch-jüdische Studien Beiträge European-Jewish Studies Contributions Edited by the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies, Potsdam, in cooperation with the Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg Editorial Manager: Werner Treß Volume 2 Contemporary Jewish Reality in Germany and Its Reflection in Film Edited by Claudia Simone Dorchain and Felice Naomi Wonnenberg An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libra- ries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access. More information about the initiative can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libra- ries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access. More information about the initiative can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org ISBN 978-3-11-021808-4 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-021809-1 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-021806-2 ISSN 0179-0986 e-ISSN 0179-3256 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License, as of February 23, 2017. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliogra- fie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. ©ISBN 2016 978-3-11-021808-4 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Drucke-ISBN und (PDF) Bindung: 978-3-11-021809-1 Duck & Co., Ortsname ♾e-ISBN Gedruckt (EPUB) auf 978-3-11-021806-2 säurefreiem Papier PrintedISSN 0179-0986 in Germany e-ISSN 0179-3256 ISBN 978-3-11-026512-5 e-ISBNwww.degruyter.com 978-3-11-026513-2 ISSN 2192-9602 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License, Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data as of February 23, 2017. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/. A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek at http://dnb.dnb.de. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliogra- fie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über © 2013 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. Typesetting: Michael Peschke, Berlin Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen © 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston ♾ Printed on acid free paper Druck und Bindung: Duck & Co., Ortsname Printed in Germany ♾ Gedruckt auf säurefreiem Papier Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com www.degruyter.com Table of Contents Claudia Simone Dorchain/Felice Naomi Wonnenberg Introduction 1 Claudia Simone Dorchain Cusanus, Nietzsche, and Lacan on Reflection The Mirror as Philosophic and Political Concept 5 Antonia Schmid Alterophilia or Appropriating the Other Images of ‘Jews’ and ‘Gentiles’ in Contemporary German Film 17 A Passage to Modernity – The “Iconic Turn” and “Jewish Reality” Interview with Tommaso Speccher 37 Katja S. Baumgärtner Some Filmic Heroines and ‘Others’ in the GDR Documentary Women in Ravensbrück (1968) 51 Alina Gromova A City of Mind Berlin in the Perception of Young Russian-Speaking Jewish Migrants 71 Lea Wohl von Haselberg Between Self and Other Representations of Mixed Relationships in Contemporary German Film and Television 85 Mareike Albers “Unkosher Jewish” – Jewish Popular Culture in Berlin 99 “Morbid Beauty” as an Aesthetic Concept to Portray “the Jew” in German Film Interview with Felice Naomi Wonnenberg 111 Barbara J. Steiner Between Guilt and Repression – Conversion to Judaism after the Shoa 123 vi Table of Contents Felice Naomi Wonnenberg Can’t Get No Satisfaction The Desexualization of the Jewish Man in Contemporary German Film 139 Katrin Köppert Intra-Activities of the Queer Diaspora – Berlin-Kreuzberg and the “Jerusalem Kings” Phenomenon 157 Claudia Simone Dorchain The Long Shadow of the Holy Cross Jewish-Christian Gender-Images in Max Färberböck’s movie Aimée und Jaguar 171 Tommaso Speccher The Dead Jew as Eternal Other Loss and Identification in the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin 189 Felice Naomi Wonnenberg Sissy and the Muscle-Jew Go to the Movies The Image of the Jewish Man in Film after 1945 and Its Reception in Germany 205 Spaces of Memory – Reflections on Social Transformation at the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe Interview with Irit Dekel 231 Authors 239 Index of Persons 241 Claudia Simone Dorchain, Felice Naomi Wonnenberg Introduction “Who, if not we – when, if not now?” was the impetus for embarking on this project that combines the efforts of young academics from the Colloquium of Jewish Studies in this interdisciplinary anthology. As a kind of hermeneutic introduction, the first essay, “Cusanus, Nietzsche, and Lacan – The Mirror as Philosophic and Political Concept,” by Claudia Simone Dorchain, deals with the concept of reality created by visual acts and visual arts. It functions as the initial presentation of the concepts of “Jewish reality” and “Film,” and shows how the imaginary Divine look produces either hatred or understanding, and thus provokes the idea of differences between individuals, groups, and religions. Antonia Schmid pursues the question of whether, accompanying the political transformations of 1989/90, Germany’s official stance on anti-Semitism and the Shoah have changed as well. Her essay deals with hegemonic images of victims and perpetrators as well as historically specific constructions of the respective ‘Other.’ By use of examples such as the ostensibly innocuous alpinist melodrama Nordwand (Philipp Stölzl, D/A/CH 2008) and the three-part miniseries Krupp – eine deutsche Familie (Carlo Rola, D 2009), Schmid illustrates how, in contem- porary German discourse regarding their status as victims of National Socialism, Jewish victims are replaced by non-Jewish Germans. Concurrently, it analyzes how this development is connected to the resurfacing of anti-Semitic stereotypes when it comes to explicitly Jewish characters, and how images of ‘other Others’ serve to reinstate positive images of the German national Self. In an interview with Claudia Simone Dorchain, Tommaso Speccher debates the importance of the widely discussed “iconic turn” in the theory of culture. They agree with Heidegger’s statement about the age of modernity as an era of the instrumentalization of images, provide examples of this instrumentalization in visual acts and arts concerning Jewish life in Germany, both in everyday life and in the arts, and come to the conclusion that “modernity” is not so much an epochal but a philosophical and political notion that implies the use of images in order to create power. The essay “Some Filmic Heroines and ‘Others’ in the GDR Documentary Women in Ravensbrück (1968),” by Katja Baumgärtner, addresses iconic, sym- bolic, gender-specific forms of memory in the that film. After the inauguration of the Ravensbrück National Memorial in 1959 conducted by the state of the GDR, the commissioned documentary was meant to legitimize an ideologized histor- ical and political perceptive of the Nazi past. However, Women in Ravensbrück 2 Claudia Simone Dorchain, Felice Naomi Wonnenberg installs a gender-specific version of that past by presenting particular female biographies, a feminized, and much more Christianized rhetorics and rituals of mourning at the memorial site. Remembrance at Ravensbrück became political. In this sense, the documentary is almost certainly a national lieu de mémoire (Pierre Nora), a space of memory that enables a visualization of the past, thereby creating a specifically gendered symbolic language. In the next essay, “A City of Mind – Berlin in the Perception of Young Rus- sian-Speaking Jewish Migrants” Alina Gromova explains how Berlin has been constructed as more of a symbolic than an actual, space. Within the framework of cultural and urban anthropology, this article deals with the interaction of ethnic identity and urban space. The protagonists are members of a young generation of Russian-speaking Jewish migrants from the former Soviet Union who live in Berlin. Gromova debates the issue of whether the negotiation of identity by these migrants is closely tied to the construction of city space, including Berlin’s par- ticular history, sociopolitics, and topographical nature. Sociopolitical and historical elements are discussed from a different point of view regarding their filmic representation in contemporary movies in Germany in Lea Wohl von Haselberg’s “Between “Self” and “Other” – Representations of Mixed Relationships in Contemporary German Cinema and TV.” This paper explores popular movies that feature relations between Jewish and non-Jewish characters, and asks whether “mixed couples” provide a traditional