The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Pandora's Box and Die Nibelungen
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Projections of Identity and Alterity in Three Weimar Films: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Pandora’s Box and Die Nibelungen By Willow Elise Randles 1 Dedicated to Horst Kaiser Many thanks to Karen Koehler, Eva Rueschmann, Will Ryan and my mother for all their support and guidance. 2 Table of Contents Introduction 4 Literature Review- Meta-Myths of Weimar Cinema 30 Chapter One- The Mythic Man and His Mythic Nation 39 Chapter Two- The Master Mesmerist and Jewish Otherness 49 Chapter Three- The Uncanny Feminine 67 Conclusions 93 3 Introduction At the close of World War I, the German nation and people were in a state of ideological and political upheaval. The period between the two World Wars, known in Germany only as the Weimar period, was an era of magnificent chaos and profound artistic accomplishment. Often called the golden age of German film, some of the most extraordinary and original films arose out of the political and social chaos and search for meaning in the lost war effort. Many Germans lost their lives in World War I and the reasons for entering the war seemed inadequate in retrospect. The desire to find meaning is visible in the art and politics of the Weimar Republic. In this work I will discuss the role of three films from this period in order to show how they reflect the historical moment of their production. Films from the Weimar era, especially art films have frequently been grouped under the term Expressionism, which as a descriptor for film quickly grows problematic. Expressionism, like any other -ism is full of contradictions. It over-simplifies a body of work that has not yet been fully understood. Andrew Tudor offers one of the best attempts to define and capture something shared by all Expressionist films: Whether distortion depends primarily on the grotesque angles and impossible perspectives of expressionist design, or the strange shadings of the chiaroscuro tradition, seems immaterial. Generally there is a mixture and the result is largely the same. A world at odds with itself, peopled by the phantoms of both mind and spirit... disharmony is the keynote whatever the melody. The tortured characters of the German silent cinema are part of an alien malevolent world, permeated by fate. They are constrained 4 by the unknown; powerful forces wash over them; their world is dislocated within itself. They must inevitably pay Faust's price. Of course this cluster of meanings is very generalized. By its nature artistic style deals in such generalities. It communicates an ethos, a mood, a sense of fatalism and disorder. The whole pictoral character of these visuals makes a mockery of harmony between man and environment.1 Tudor manages at the very least to recognize how “very generalized” his words are but perhaps he recognizes something of the disunity, incongruity that we do see in the Weimar films. Tudor leaves space for something unsaid in his description; “A world at odds with itself” or “dislocated within itself.” Even within this definition, one of the more interesting ones, there is something left unnamed. It is uncertain. He does not claim to understand why the world represented is so at odds with itself. These films about sleepwalkers and the undead, about ancient heroes, and an unknown element that comes from within humanity itself seem indefinable. The problems of Expressionism as a label for film as multiple as they are, is not however the focus of this work.2 I will explore how each film attempts to mythologize German nationhood, especially as it stood in opposition to an equally mythical but dangerous “other.” The “othered” stereotypes that appear in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1921), Die Nibelungen (1924-25), and Pandora’s Box (1929) are the Jewish puppet-master and the uncanny feminine. These othered characters depart from the conventional German gender model from the turn of the century, which establishes the woman’s place at the center of the family, taking care of the home and putting her own desires last. Women who stepped 1 Andrew Tudor, Image and Influence, 160. 2 See Appendix I 3 Mary Fulbrook. History of Germany 1918-2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 15. 5 outside of the home and Jewish characters are depicted as dangerous and threatening to the unity and sanctity of an already destabilized German identity. I will argue that film serves as a version of myth to mitigate and frame experiences that are frightening or unknown. Myths are especially important during times of transition because they create a sense of continuity and precedent. The three films act as myths creating identity but also undermine and complicate the very identity being constructed. Beginning with a consideration of myth and its relationship to the Weimar era film, I will then summarize the films and give some general background on the study of Weimar era film as it pertains to myth. Finally, I will analyze the mythic elements of the three films, with a focus on how Die Nibelungen becomes a metaphor for the loss of WWI and the unfair terms of the Versailles Treaty. My study will continue with a comparative study of the types of Jewish and uncanny feminine characters that appear in each film, in an attempt to show how they are defined and how their threat escalates, culminating in a justification for a fascist response to these stereotypical tropes. While focused on one film, each chapter also works comparatively, establishing contrasts, and showing the development of that character or theme. Weimar Germany This era in German history is among the most discussed and also the most contested in part because of its culmination in the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party.3 For many scholars the question is how could a nation of rational, good-spirited, pragmatic, philosophical people such as the Germans allow for this to happen. There is no singular 3 Mary Fulbrook. History of Germany 1918-2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 15. 6 answer to this question, as the Weimar period is a most complex and chaotic time in German history. There were seven different governments over the relatively short period from 1919 to 1933. The Weimar era included Germany’s uneasy first attempt at a democratic system and extreme shifts in economic balance due to rapid industrialization. These conditions further complicated efforts to achieve stability. Due to the fact that there were several nation states that only truly became unified under Bismarck, fifty years earlier, there remained many questions of how to define Germany or Germanness. Was the nation to be defined culturally, linguistically or otherwise? Goethe and Schiller, two of Germany's most prominent writers both ask: “What is Germanness?” and “How can Bavarians be considered the same as people from Berlin?” Schiller asked, “Deutschland? Aber wo liegt es? Ich weiss das Land nicht zu finden.” 4 (Germany? But where does it lie? I do not know how to find the country.) Goethe wrote, “Zur Nation euch zu bilden, ihr hoffet es, Deutche, vergebens;/ Bildet, ihr könnt es, dafür freier zu Mensche euch aus.” (Any hope of forming yourselves into a nation, Germans is in vain; develop yourselves rather—you can do it—more freely as human beings!)5 These two men capture something of the essential question that plagued Germany from its outset as a nation. This question can be seen as a driving factor for much of modern German history. Stefan Wolff writes that the German question is one of the defining questions of the European continent, one which shapes the politics and power dynamics of the European continent in the 19th and 20th centuries.6 In most cases, the Weimar era is separated into three distinct categories. The first 4 Mary Fulbrook. A Concise History of Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, 1. 5 Ibid, 1. 6 Stefan Wolff. The German Question since 1919; An Analysis with Key Documents. Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2003, 1. 7 section from 1919 to 1923 is often called the years of crisis. The second part from 1924 - 1929 is considered to be the golden years, when there was relative stability and order. However, these golden years abruptly ended when the American stock market crashed, and the already unstable German fiscal balance was sent into uproar. The years from 1930-1933, are know as the years of decline and are also marked by Hitler’s rise to power. The ‘years of crisis’ 1919-23 follow on the heels of World War I, which left Germany decimated and seemingly at fault for a war they had felt justified in waging, a war which they expected to be over quickly. One argument why Germany supported Austria in starting the war was that they themselves were on the brink of civil war, and hoped that a war against other foes would bring Germany’s feuding parts in unison against a common enemy.7 The defeat was very difficult for Germany to accept. A popular myth arose that Germany had been stabbed in the back. The myth attributed German losses to the dangerous internal forces such as Jews, Socialists and Bolsheviks who betrayed Germany to her enemies.8 It is important to note that while blame was gradually shunted off to minority groups, the original stab-in-the-back myth was also directed at the very government that sought to make peace with the allied nations at the end of the war. The first mention of the stab-in-the-back myth comes from an interview by the Committee for Investigating the Cause of German Defeat in the fall of 1919. Paul von Hindenburg quoted an English general who allegedly said, “The German army was stabbed from 7 Fulbrook, 1991, 151.