The following paper was written for my undergraduate thesis, a graduation requirement for German majors at UMASS Amherst.
When I was enrolled in the German program I was told that my graduation requirements were changing and I would be required to pay for an additional three credit class where I work on an undergraduate thesis. When I wrote to the Dean's office and various administration at UMASS about this essentially being fraud, I was told that the German Department could set whatever graduation requirements whenever they wanted.
This paper was a waste of time and was fluff between me and finally being able to achieve my degree. I'm sharing it under fair use. Do whatever you want to it, outright plagiarize it if you can get away with that, and go do something you love with your time instead.
During the Cold War
divided Germany
served as the front line between the West and East. From 1945 to 1989 while no
shots were fired, various forms of mass-media were pumped into West and East Germany by
both the Americans and Russians. Along with the media came the ingrained
cultural values of each respective side. This struggle of values played a
central role in the Cold War. From early Russian-backed East German rubble
films to musical performances on top of the destroyed Berlin Wall, these
commodities differed in meaning and significance not only in what side was
broadcasting them, but also in the context of which time period which they were
being broadcast and what the Americans or Soviets were trying to say changed
with time. What these values were, the purpose they had to serve in terms of
the Cold War and Germany,
how they were conveyed through media, and the long term impact they had on the county of Germany all deserve examination. This paper
intends to present an assessment of the media produced by the Soviets for
German audiences and the history of the American and Soviet policies in
regards to media, specifically film, during the Cold War.
Part of winning the Cold War included battles of
and for culture. Immediately after the Second World War German society was
turned on its head. The whole physical and emotional landscape of the country
had shifted. Cities demolished into rubble would be used not only as a
background for the first films to come out of the country, but would also be
used as a metaphorical representation of the destruction of Germany (Shandly 2001, 2). DEFA, the East German film studio was founded in 1946 and was the
first film company established in postwar Germany. While in existence
DEFA would produced over 800 motion pictures and made for TV films (Kohlhaase
1987, 2). In a time where what was left of industry in East Germany was
dismantled and shipped back to the Soviet Union in the form of war reparations,
the fact that the Soviets were eager to give German film makers the materials
for making films almost immediately after the war reflects how important German film making was outside of the country; that already before 1945 German cinema
was considered a world treasure. DEFA’s first films were a response to Nazism,
and would contribute to a new German consciousness and identity being developed
in post-war Germany.
Originally
titled The Man I Am Going to Kill, The Murderers Are Among Us, 1948 was originally
going to end with the main character shooting his former captain, Brueckner, at
the end of the film as repayment for the captain's decision to murder Polish
civilians during the war. The ending of the film was shifted in order to not
encourage vigilantism. One of the last scenes in the movie, the film is almost
lacking without the closure one would expect from a thriller or drama. Earlier in the film,
the doctor seemingly fails to kill Brueckner, and right when we think that the
doctor finally has him, we are instead given what is equivalent to a civics
lesson. The whole end shootout scene is an expressionist work. The shadow of
the doctor grows as he approaches his old captain with the gun, who in turn,
shrinks with his shadow as he back against the far wall. This is an obvious
reflection of not only a shift in power in that moment, but also a
manifestation of the what the real shootout
scene would have been. Right before the shot should ring out, Brueckner and his
shadow are completely enveloped by the doctor's shadow as they both move away
from the camera and towards the back wall. The interjection of Susanna, a woman
who returned to the city and earlier in the film finds the main character Hans
living in her apartment, stops the action of firing the gun, and the shadow of
the factory gate is cast over Brueckner who approaches and grasps it while
wailing “I am innocent”! The gate is eventually replaced with actual prison
bars. Regardless of this scene, the vision cast on the back wall tells us that
Bruekner might as well have been shot! (Shandley 2001, 41) Instead the
characters of the film decide to put Bruckner on trial.
Susanna’s role in the film is particularly fascinating.
Despite many films dealing with the motif of men in or returning from War such
as Berlin Ground Zero and When I was 18 dealing with men returning home from
war, post was audiences would have been predominantly female. The first films
produced after the war all dealt with coming to terms with Germany’s absolute defeat in the
war. Susanna’s entrance on the train at the beginning of the film invokes the intro
of the 1927 Film Berlin: The Symphony of
a Great City where the audience is taken into the city aboard a train. However,
this time we return to 1945 Berlin
on trail full of refuges returning to the city. While not made overtly apparent
as to why she was imprisoned by the Nazis, Susanna states she was imprisoned because
of her father. An important fixture of the ending is that Susana is the person
that calls for justice despite her past. Throughout the film, Susanna is also
the person who helps “repair” the doctor, and parallels can be drawn between
the doctor's mental states and the condition of their shared apartment, which
she seems to constantly be fixing. The last time we visit this motif in the
film, the doctor has taken it upon himself to replace the large broken window
in the apartment with his old X-rays from medical school.
For the
sake of the film, the doctor’s emotional recovery is still not enough for him to not attempt murder. Before the final scene, we revisit the window
motif when we see the doctor looking in through the window at a Christmas
celebration. We are then brought to a flashback to the Christmas where the
Polish civilians are murdered. After this is revealed to us, we learn that the
account of the story we are being told is Susanna reading the doctors written
account back in the apartment right before she rushes to the scene of the
premeditated shooting. We are told that the flashback is something that is a
memory, or something that has happened in the past, because there is a haze
around the edges of the film. Besides being an expressionist work, the scene is
also melodramatic: Susanna runs out of the room and all on its own the diary flies
open to “Brueckner still lives, the murderers are among us”! She makes it to
the final scene just in time, and is able to console the suffering protagonist
one last time. After Brueuckner's implied imprisonment we are shown images of
civilians and crosses superimposed over one another. The faux shootout scene is
not a fantasy or vision of power; it is
a shift of power and submission. The movement of the shadows happens on the
back wall, and is constant until the doctor moves away from the doctor and to
Susanna, now in a space that did not exist before. This new space has a
complete large window in the background; an object that stands out in a
destroyed Berlin.
This interaction leads me to argue that the shadows during the final scene do
not exist, but are instead a representation of the doctor’s destruction of
Brueckner.
There
is very little, if any reference to the prosecution of Jews in Germany in the
film, and Susanna’s own concentration camp story line instead seems to be
completely subverted so that she can better assist the doctor. Independent and
tough when she rolls into Berlin,
because she has to be, Susanna
assumes a domestic role as soon as she is able to again. Something else that
rings dissonant here is that during the war, the Russians at times were guilty
of war crimes in Poland
just as much as the Germans were. However, there are no Russians or
occupational forces in this film. The
Murderers Are Among Us is focused squarely on the expressionist
reconstruction of the doctor and very little else. This is an artifact of the
filmmakers as Germans coming to terms with their past and gives insight into
German consciousness and awareness in the immediate postwar period (Shandley
2001, 44).
The Murderers Are Among Us is a great example as to how film could be used to
push certain key ideas and concepts. Early on, Allied use of film was not
nearly as well thought out and immediate Allied reaction was to shame to German
people for the atrocities of the Holocaust. Initially, allied officers regulated
the media in their respective zones, and in contrast to the Russians, did not
give the Germans resources to once again produce their own film and media. In
fact, the publishing, production, distribution, and exhibition of any film or
media was initially banned by the American government in their sector
(Bergfelder 2002, 154). And still fearing the impact of Nazi Germany’s
propaganda, Americans sized all German films (Fehrenback 1995, 54). It was apparent early on that if any films
were to be produced in the American sector, it would not be coming from the
Germans. Furthermore, all German cinemas were closed, and in some cases used as
storage or barracks for soldiers (Shandley 2001, 10).
The United States were
more concerned with having their own open channel in which to provide its
cultural commodities to the German audience. It is important from here on out
to clarify that the use of the title ‘United
States’ is twofold and from here on out there is a need to
specify the difference between the American military and Hollywood. On one hand there is Hollywood which now had a
captive audience in which to provide their products to, and as a result, German film making would have been contrary to their interests. One the other hand
there is the American military that immediately following the war was tasked
with occupation and denazification.
The
American military, like the Soviets, were also weary over exposing German audiences to the idea of
vigilantism or films that would incite the populace to take up arms. Immediately
following the war two American propaganda films; Air Force, 1943 and The Sullivans, 1944 were not brought over to Germany because they “extolled the martial spirit”
(Fehrebach 1995, 55). Both films taking place around the events of Pearl
Harbor; the former is about a squadron of American pilots who are inspired and
impassioned to attack the Japanese after the attacks and subsequent death of
their squadron leader while the latter is based on the true story of the
Sullivan brothers, five Irish-American brothers who subsequently enlist after
the attacks and are killed or maimed. The film ends with the destroyer USS: The Sullivans being christened.
Other
examples of censorship around this time include the removal of the film Das
Beil von Wandsbek, 1951 after being shown in East Germany for six weeks, the
film was withdrawn for portraying the executioner of anti-fascist resistance
fighters in an ambiguous light (Bergfelder 2002, 153). Soon after, the East
German government employed the Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle der
Filmwirtschaf, (FSK) a censorship panel. Although the name suggested
that the organization was made up of volunteers, the actual members of the
organization were appointed by the GDR government. Many of these members worked
in the film industry prior to the split of Germany
(Kostetskaya 2016, 69).
Despite
the Soviets and American military not having similar ideals in terms of film, it
is apparent that they did nonetheless have similar goals. The American military
wanted to use film as a means to reeducate the German population, denazify
them, and prepare them for their reentry into public discourse and the world
stage. The Soviet government also had the same idea, however, while the Soviet government
did want to establish economic control in post war Germany; it was American business
that primarily waned to establish economic control. Already in the autumn of 1945, film was shown in the Western sectors
(Bergfelder 2002, 154). While one would think that movie going would not have
been an immediate concern for average German citizen, the reality of the situation
is that film not only gave audiences an escape from their impoverished
conditions, it also gave them a warm place to sit for a few hours without
having to use their ration card or pay black market prices.
Led by General Lucius Clay, it was The Office of
Military Government of The United States (OMGUS) that was tasked with providing
the “moral and cultural reeducation of the German population” (Poiger 2000, 37).
While there was originally a plan of implementing the Four D’s (denazification,
demilitarization, decartelization, and democratization) this ended up being
impractical. First, while the Americans wanted to make sure that no former
Nazis were appointed to any positions of bureaucracy or power, it soon became apparent
that this was not possible in order for Germany to function as a country.
Anyone in any sort of bureaucratic profession; from business owners, to
professors, or train operators would have had to have been a member of the Nazi
Party in order to be employed in the Third Reich. Second, despite the
Allied ban on distribution of film, around 200 films produced under National
Socialism were gradually released to cinemas in Western zones (Bergfelder 2002,
154). DEFA would also end up censoring and re-releasing films produced by the
Third Reich, which would provide initial funding for the studio.
Once the Federal Republic of Germany was formed
in 1949 OMGUS was transformed into The Civilian Office of The High Commissioner
for Germany,
or HICOG. This office comprised of representatives from the three allied
countries and was lead by John McCloy, an American lawyer and banker who was
the Assistant Secretary of War during World War II. The representatives’
position of military governor was abolished, and instead each of the Allies in
the western zones named a High Commissioner. It would not be until 1994 that
the Allies would fully withdraw American military staff from Berlin.
Initially, American
authorities were bound by a derivative that did not allow them to fraternize
with Germans as demonstrated in the military training film Your Job in
Germany, 1945, which as the film puts it, was to “put an end to the cycle
of war and phony peace”. The film warns that it is the German people, not their
leaders that are responsible for “the wars and atrocities committed since Bismarck”. The film warns
that German history is and has been written by the German people and insinuates
that history will repeat itself if the Germans are left unchecked. American
soldiers were instructed to observe the local laws, respect (Germans’) customs,
religion, property rights, and not be friendly or make friends, not to
ridicule, argue (which is mentioned twice), or change Germans’ point of view,
as “other Allied representatives will concern themselves with that”. Soldiers
were warned to be aloof, watchful and suspicious (Fehrenback 1995, 54). The
film also warns that German youth are the most dangerous group as they are completely
indoctrinated. Your Job in Germany gives a good idea of the approach the
American military took in terms of the German people: media and culture came
only as an afterthought of occupation, and would arise as more of a response to
the Soviets.
The American military
did try to curtail potential fraternization between German civilians and
American soldiers. The American military built a planned community or military
officers and administration in a village
of Dalham; now a borough of Berlin. Americans there had
their own library and a theater for example. The former is now the Outpost
Theater, an Allied forces museum today, after its construction in 1953 it was
the most modern American theater in Germany and played the American
national anthem before every screening. Despite the military’s efforts, the initial
interactions with American soldiers were the primary source of cultural contact
for West Germans (Poiger 2000, 39). By 1949 over 20,000 German women married
American soldiers and immigrated back to the US (Elfrieda 1988, 20).
In July 1945, twenty theaters
were allowed to be opened in the American sector, and by the end of the year,
730 cinemas were open (Fehrenback 1995, 54). Hollywood was requested to donate films which
were expected to convey understanding of American life and democratic institutions.
In the summer of 1945 a deal fell through between the military and Hollywood due
to royalties (Shandley 2001, 16). Consequently Hollywood
ended up shipping fewer films over to Germany than met demand. This was
when German films made before 1945 were put through a censor system and
re-released back in theaters in the fall of 1945. This demonstrates that
Americanization was not one single force but instead a multivalent effort
between the US military and
Hollywood.
By the fall of 1945, only months after the
fall of the Third Reich, one could expect to find a cavalcade of films being
shown in postwar Germany:
Hollwood, Soviet, French, British, and censored unpolitical Nazi era film were
all being shown. By September 1948, there had been 112 different American films
screened in the American sector. Film companies often requested parity when it
came to censoring films. If the military decided that a Universal film
shouldn’t be screened in Germany,
they in turn had to pull a film from each other companies’ catalog. Hollywood also expressed
concern with the military and government trying to intervene in the creation of
their products (Fehrenbach, p.55). The military had control over which products
entered the German market, and were weary of any material that might shine
light on the more unsavory aspects of American society. Grapes of Wrath,
1939 and Gone With The Wind, 1939 for example, failed to have a
German release. Other films were often victims of the military’s censorship. The German release of Casablanca, 1942 removed the character
Major Strasser from the film and changed the resistance fighter character into
a scientist (Bergfelder 2002, 155). German audiences at the time were
previously accustomed to the Nazi’s high production and quality film product,
and the films from the Weimar era before that; the films from Hollywood that
were available to be screened would have fared pale in comparison to what was
available in the past, or what DEFA could provide, especially considering the
American films at first were not dubbed or subtitled. Furthermore many actors
or actresses that German audience would have recognized in American films, such
as Peter Lorre, were often pigeonholed into roles as sinister characters such
as in The Maltese Falcon, 1941.
Newsreels
were a part of the cinema experience before broadcast television, and for
German audiences in West
Germany immediately after the war, the reels
focused on gilt and shame in regards to the Holocaust. Special attention was
given to the Nuremburg Trials, which in themselves, served as an example of the
of the American justice system to the German people. Film reels would consist
of American newsreels spliced together with content that was filmed in Germany and
focused on the process of denazification (Fehrenback 1995, 56). Early efforts
by the Americans during denazification revolved around pointing the finger of
shame directly at the German people. For example, American planes would drop
fliers from the air that said “You are guilty”, they walked locals through
tours of concentration camps, and filmed the results for newsreels and
documentaries such as KZ (Death Camp). Sometimes it was required to get
your ration card stamped at a theater where such news reels were of shown. In
some cases, a bait and switch would be pulled and a documentary would be played
instead of the main feature. German people responded resoundingly negative
toward these efforts, and also identified the films as being just as much
propaganda as the documentaries produced by the Third Reich.
It
was important to the US
military that they demonstrate the tenants of American and democratic civics
such as open competition; opposed to state control of media and industry. As a
result it was inevitable that the current system of American film
monopolization to have to cease. The Americans would have to eventually allow
the Germans to develop their own film industries. In response to these
concerns, the American military brought in outsider Erich Pommer to help
revitalize German film in the American zone. Once again, this would demonstrate
how the American military and Hollywood
were at odds with one another. Revitalization of any sort of German film
industry was in direct conflict of Hollywood’s
interests, and the Motion Picture Export Association of America (MEPA), a trade
association representing American film production companies, went as far as to
appeal the US military to
recall Erich Pommer back to the US
(Fehrenbach 1995, 66). Despite their interests to maintain a monopoly in the
American sector, Pommer stayed, and soon German films produced outside the Nazi
era were being exported out of the country such as Anni, 1948 a Vienna
film which was filmed in both Germany and Austria, and Berliner Ballade,
1948. These films would help pay for studio space, film stock, and other
materials which were needed and without such were limiting the distribution of
West German films. It was also Pommer’s job to fill the void of film products
in Germany, and in the
spirit of an open market, films were imported from other countries such as France and the UK
(Fehrenbach 1995, 65).
All four of the Allied powers had established
groups in which to try to distribute their media. From 1946 to 1955 American
culture centers, Americahaeuser, were established in West German cities growing
from one which was originally established in Frankfurt, to twenty-seven by 1951
(Poiger 2000, 39). Americahaeuser featured libraries, lectures, music and
educational films. Jazz music was not performed at Americahaeuser until the
1950s as American elites at the time considered Jazz music low culture. East Germany
on the other hand embraced jazz. In July 1948, during the Berlin Blocakade,
Rex Stewart was the first American Jazz musician to play in front of German
audiences. While his concerts were in West Berlin, the East German record
company Amiga manufactured more Jazz records than all of the West German record
companies combined between 1946 and 1948 (Poiger 2000, 43) In terms of the
other Allied powers, the French and British hosted film clubs. Attended generally
by students, these clubs mostly focused artistic qualities of film rather than
political (Fehrenbach 1995, 170).
Back in the Eastern
Sector, by 1946 twelve German produced films were being filmed under the
watchful eyes of the Soviets. Filmmakers who would have wanted to work with the
Americans or in the American zone initially were unable to due to bureaucracy,
stemming primarily from background checks. Staudte, for example, originally
wanted to film The Murderers Are Among Us in the American sector but was
unable to attain the authorization to do so. American interest in German film making would only end up coming as a response to the Soviets.
What we see today is
that by letting the German people produce their own content allowed them
a way to discuss and come to terms with their own history rather than having
their own history imposed on them by someone else (Shandley 2001, 17). Early
DEFA did little to interfere with film production as long as production moved
along. While being an Italian film maker, Roberto Rossellini who directed Germania, Anno Zero, 1948 commented on the
ease of film production. He stated that DEFA was willing to work with him and
did not interfere with his work (Shandley 2001, 117) Furthermore, Germania
Anno Zero is also an example of how open the Eastern Zone was at this time.
The film was directed by an Italian, funded by a French company called Union
Générale Cinématographique, and received equipment trough DEFA. It seemed that
early on the Eastern sector would stand as a hub of European filmmaking.
By 1949 the GDR would
start grooming their own directors and hand selecting directors based on
political backgrounds. The first example of this is the film Razza, 1947
(Police Raid). Directed by Werner Klinger, the film is a detective story
about the black market in Berlin
and has a very pedagogical narrative. Klinger was selected in order to not
create a classic film per se, but instead have a set piece that has a discourse
over the black markets in Germany
(Shandley 2001, 146). The film is about the police in Berlin trying to bust a black market
smuggling ring. The film sets a precedent for punishment for those that
participate in the black market and why (Shandley 2001, 127). Everyday people
struggling to get by are treated to a slap on a wrist while those that profit
in the black market are roughed up. Citizens, such as an old lady purchasing an
overpriced bottle of brandy as an anniversary gift, or physicians trying to get
medicine for children, participating in the black market are given the slap on
the wrist while it is the suppliers who are pursued and punished by the police.
The message is that those who profit from black market trade are the criminals,
not the consumers caught up in the circumstances of the situation. The black
market was a reality to Berliners and Germans in 1947, people were taken advantage of especially in the years
immediately following the end of the war. As Marlene Dietrich sang in the song Black
Market from the film A Foreign Affair, 1948 “You take art, I take
spam, to you for your K ration: my passion”. Preciously and valuable heirlooms,
or even one’s own body might be traded for basic necessities.
By the 1950s American
films made up the majority of films in all of West Germany. In East Germany by comparison only six
American movies were shown in the 1950s, and none were shown in
the 1940s. Nevertheless, thousands of Germans still crossed the border into the
Western zones to watch American films (Poiger 2000, 32). Americans
purposely set up radio and television towers to broadcast into Eastern
Germany. Specifically Voice of America, Radio Liberty,
and Radio Free Europe were
meant to play the same material as the stations back home in the United States.
These stations would not just penetrate East Germany, but also some of the
Soviet satellite states as well. Certain regions, however, were unable
to receive television transmissions from the west. Dresden, for example, was referred to as Das Tal
der Ahnungslosen, although they still could receive some Western radio
broadcasts. Dresden gives an interesting insight into the role Western
television played in East Germany because people there were actually less satisfied with conditions in East
Germany than the rest of the country. The majority of appeals to leave East Germany came from
Dresden (Gleye 1991, 12).
From the 1940s to the construction of the Wall
in August of 1961, East Germans flocked to Western theaters, purchased bootleg
western records, and watched Western Television shows despite efforts of the
GRD (Gleye 1990, 150; Poiger 2000, 32). Before
construction of the Wall, there was a constant stream of people and goods
between both East and West Berlin and Germany. People from all over the
GDR would cross over into West Germany to specifically to purchase clothes and records, and go to border theaters; which projected American,
British and French films usually at a lower rate for customers with ostmarks. By
1947 and 1948 Cold War tensions had started to rise, the West had started the
formation of the deutsche mark, a new currency for West Germany. The Berlin
blockade had also started by this time. East
Germany in turn began to ramp up anti-west
propaganda. The East German newspaper Taegliche
Rundschau published stories about alleged rapes caused by American soldiers
(Poiger 2000, 44). Neues Deutschland,
the official newspaper of the East German SED reported in 1948 that the
cultural values of the West were sinking rapidly. Broadcast television and
radio permeated and extended through the border between East and West Germany.
While consumption of Western broadcasts would eventually be outright banned in Eastern Germany, this of course did not stop people from
listening to them in the privacy of their own homes.
Later in the cold war, in 1953 the author Karl
Bednarik published the book The Young
Worker of Today, A New Type. He says that these new (male) workers where
characterized by their love of westerns and jazz. Later that same year the East
German government would try to pin the same characteristic type of men for the
East German uprising of that year. In the days after the uprising the East
German media also accused “American imperialists” of recruiting “SS-Kommandeusen”, “Tangojuenglinge”, prostitutes, and the aforementioned new types as agent provocateurs. The GDR
would republish the same image of a young man slumped against the wall with a
cowboy t-shirt on, bad haircut, and a tie with a nude woman on it draped over
his shoulder. He was described as having a Texas
shirt, Texas tie, and Texas haircut (Poiger 2000, 63). This
picture demonstrated the end result of consuming Western media
The US government did fund programs in
the west to help 'improve moral' in the East, which is to also say cause
dissidence and dissatisfaction among East Germans. These efforts however were
nothing like the East German media was claiming. Between 1953 and 1958 the US government spent 30 million dollars on food
relief (food packages which could be picked up in West Berlin), and reimbursement
for East German adolescents’ travel expenses to West
Berlin, as well as a par
diem for their escorts. Part of these par
diems included an allotment for theater visits, and within one year of the
program, under eight thousand adolescents had visited West
Berlin (Poiger 2000, 131). In May of 1957 the GDR banned student
travel to West Germany
and NATO countries, and also restricted distribution of jazz and rock and roll
music, a stark change from just a few years ago when East Germany was producing more jazz records than the west! After these measures, travel to West Germany dropped by 80 percent
(Poiger 2000, 130).
In response to the travel ban,
for the Christmas of 1958 the American government set up a program where West
German children in youth groups would send gifts to East German children.
Deutsche marks were provided to youth groups to collectively purchase and then
individually mail out Christmas gifts to children they knew in the East. The
idea of the program was not to provide charitable necessities, but to offer
contact with East German youths and provide something that was a high-quality
consumer good (in comparison to an East German counterpart) of substantial
value that would remind the recipient of friends in the West. Recommended gifts
included clothes, sports equipment, leather bags, and fountain pens (Poiger 2000,
132). Ironically, despite the military’s claim ten years earlier in Your Job in Germany that German
youth were most dangerous group of Germans because they are “completely
indoctrinated”, the Americans chose to reach East German youth because they
though them to be less “immune” to communist indoctrination. Nevertheless the
American Embassy dispatch from Bonn on December 1948 recommended youth
organizations to select recipients that were ”open-minded to Western ideology…
whose attitudes leave them open to influence of this kind of contact”.
By the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, there were risks and disadvantages to consuming Western media in East Germany.
Though before the wall, in the 1950s, the GDR took an interest in the quality
of film being produced by DEFA; for example in 1951 the GDR and DEFA organized
a conference to discuss “the artistic difficulty of transferring socialist
realism in films featuring convincing positive heroes”. And after the worker’s
uprising of 1957 DEFA announced that more entertainment films would be made. After
the wall was built, the GDR took a more restrictive approach. In 1965 twelve
films were outright banned from being shown on the grounds of being critical of
the GDR (Bergfelder 2002, 153).
All this talk of censorship in the GDR does not
mean that the BRD was censorship free. By 1950 federal and local government in
the BRD were able to excise control over what films were shown. The Allied
powers also had their own review board. A committee was established to inspect
scripts from a political, economic, and dramatic standpoint (Bergfelder 2002,
154). For the first wave of applications 44 our off 126 applications were
rejected. Films that were approved would have 30 percent of their production
budget subsidized by the government with the stipulation that that the loan
would have to be repaid if the finished film could “offend moral or religious
sensibilities or contravene the constitution or any other law”. It seemed that
even at this point sensationalizing the German people was a main concern of the
West German government as it was for the American military immediately after
the war.
Both the Protestant and Catholic churches were
able to influence cultural policies within West Germany. At the time, it
seemed that authorities were of the opinion that consumption of media was
responsible for oversexualisation and violence. (Poiger 2000, 46). Since the
Soviets were ideologically opposed to religious institutions, the church had no
influence in the East. The West German Parliament passed two youth protection
laws in 1951 and 1953. The first law regulated youth access to dances, movies
and alcohol. The second restricted printed matter; specifically pornography and
pulp fiction (Poiger 2000, 47). Events against pulp fiction were sponsored by
West German states where children could turn in their dime novels for “better
literature”. Dime novels did not receive a favorable reception in East Germany
either.
In the 1960s the GRD released a documentary film
justifying the construction of the wall called Schaut auf diese Stadt, 1962. Dime novels were blamed for inciting
a young boy to commit murder. The film also accused the American sector radio
station RIAS of being a spy organization that had committed acts of arson and
espionage. No other present day sources support this claim. Western objects and
currency were almost always more-so desired than any of their counterparts due
to their scarcity and value. West German marks by the early 1960s were often
five times more valuable than the East German marks, and visitors to the
country often had to abide by forced exchange laws. As a result of the black
markets which had still carried over from the Second World War, checkpoints
still existed between the two sides of Germany. There were some East
German goods of value, which were shipped outside of the country for foreign
currency. It was possible that an East German could actually run into trouble
trying to procure certain East German goods if the state found it more
beneficial to send these goods abroad. Therefore, western commercials created an
avenue for East Germans to compare their standard of living with Americans and
their West German counterparts. All the same, Western objects in the East, were
means of depicting or reflecting the status
of the individuals. Gleye notes of a certain woman made a point of prominently
displaying here shampoo products in here bathroom; questioning if she even used the products (Gleye 1990, 176).
The documentary goes on to condemn western
media, criticizing American policies, specifically that of Operation Paperclip;
bringing over Nazis to America for research secrets. They also criticized the
fact that the Americans utilized members of the Nazi party after the war,
refusing to try them for War Crimes. While this was true, for example judge
Hans Globke who had drafted laws during the Third Reich which allowed the Nazi
Party to take control of Germany, and later revoke the citizenship of German
Jews, went on the become an aide to the Chancellor of West Germany. On the
other hand, there is no mention of the Nazi-Soviet Non-aggression pact. It was
not until the fall of the Soviet Bloc that they soviets would even acknowledge
a secret provision in the pact that would split up Eastern European regions
between the two powers.
By the time that television had become a fixture
in homes in the mid-sixties, the Members of The Free German Youth in East Germany
would climb roofs and turn around antennas pointed towards the west; clever
homeowners would go as far as to hide their antennas, placing them in an attic.
Children at school might be asked at school which clock they saw on the evening
news. This created an interesting social dynamic, where one would have to
decide carefully in which social spheres to discuss Western television shows
and news. Being caught could result in disadvantage; not
receiving any of the many things that the party provided the people with the the
communist GDR (Gleye 1990, 2).
In closing, there are many avenues film development, production, and distribution took
on both sides of the iron curtain in the years following the end of World War
II. In epilogue, by the late eighties an American Fulbright teacher in Weimar
noted just how steeped the East Germans were in American culture: “Springsteen’s
Born in the USA, and The Doors, were both incredibly popular, most people he
encountered in East Germany exclusively watched western television, and that
school teachers in Weimar were required to
see the Nick Nolte film Teachers, 1984
as a sort of documentary on the American school system. Gleye says that they
audience took such a presentation of the film in stride, although it perked
interest and questions about American suburban life. Few if any actual
restrictions were left; he documents children wearing Alf t-shirts in public. (Gleye
1990, 152). It was obvious that even before the fall of The Wall it was apparent which side
had won.
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