Notes

(C) 2006 Continuum Ltd, whose permission to mount this version for private study and research is acknowledged.  The repository version is the author's final draft.

References

1 For an in-depth discussion of many of the issues and films referred to in this chapter, see
my book Hollywood behind the Wall: The Cinema of East Germany (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2005).

2 In view of the limited scope of this chapter, I shall only be able to examine the impact
of unification on DEFA's feature film studio and the legacy of DEFA's feature films in
post-Wall Germany.

3 CIP was a subsidiary of the French utilities and communications conglomerate,
Compagnie Générale des Eaux (subsequently Vivendi and since 2000 Vivendi Universal).
After the take-over, the DEFA feature film studio was renamed DEFA Studio Babelsberg
GmbH. On 9 August 1994, the name DEFA was eliminated from the register of
companies.

4 Barton Byg, ‘Introduction: Reassessing DEFAToday' in Barton Byg and Betheny Moore
(eds.), Moving Images of East Germany: Past and Future of DEFA Film (Washington, D.C.:
American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, 2002), pp. 1-23 (p. 6).

5 The German film company UFA (Universum Film AG), which was founded in 1917,
produced such internationally acclaimed masterpieces as Friedrich Wilhem Murnau's
Nosferatu (1922), Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927), and Joseph von Sternberg's The Blue
Angel (Der blaue Engel, 1930). In 1937 the Nazi Party took over UFA's shares, and in 1942
UFA, alongside other film companies, was subsumed under the UFAholding company
into which the entire Nazi film industry was organized. After World War II UFAceased
to exist as a legal entity when the Reich's film industry was dismantled, but was soon
revived in a different business configuration. Cf. Klaus Kreimeier, Die UFA-Story:
Geschichte eines Filmkonzerns (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, 2002).

6 ‘Ein drittes Leben der Filmstadt Babelsberg ist unwahrscheinlich, aber nicht ausgeschlossen.'
Bärbel Dalichow, ‘Das letzte Kapitel 1989 bis 1993' in Ralf Schenk (ed.), Das
zweite Leben der Filmstadt Babelsberg: DEFASpielfilme 1946-1992 (Berlin: Henschel Verlag,
1994), pp. 328-53 (p. 353).

7 Frank Beyer's Trace of Stones and Kurt Maetzig's The Rabbit Is Me (Das Kaninchen bin ich,
1965/1989) are the most famous forbidden films. For a detailed discussion of the twelve
films that were banned in 1965/66 see Christiane Mückenberger, Prädikat: Besonders
schädlich (Berlin: Henschel Verlag, 1990); Stefan Soldovieri, ‘Negotiating Censorship:
GDR Film at the Juncture of 1965/66' (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, 1998); Daniela Berghahn, ‘The Forbidden Films: Film Censorship
in the Wake of the Eleventh Plenum' in Diana Holmes and Alison Smith (eds.), 100 Years
of European Cinema: Entertainment or Ideology? (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2000), pp. 40-51.

8 The Country Beyond the Rainbow was seen by just 1000 viewers. It took two years for
Miraculi to find a distributor and then it was taken off cinema programmes after just
five days. See Leonie Naughton, That Was the Wild East: Film Culture, Unification and the
‘New' Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), p. 66.

9 Naughton, That Was the Wild East, p. 67.

10 Johannes Klingsporn, ‘Zur Lage der deutschen Kinowirtschaft', Media Perspektiven, 12
(1991), 793-805 (p. 794); Naughton, That Was the Wild East, p. 74.

11 For a discussion of the ‘public sphere' in the GDR's social context see David Bathrick,
The Powers of Speech: The Politics of Culture in the GDR (Lincoln, Nebraska and London:
University of Nebraska Press, 1995); Marc Silberman, ‘Problematizing the "Socialist
Public Sphere": Concepts and Consequences' in Marc Silberman (ed.), What Remains?:
East German Culture and the Postwar Public (Washington, D.C.: American Institute of
Contemporary German Studies, 1997), pp. 1-37.

12 Herzsprung is the name of a village, but literally means ‘crack in the heart'.

13 ‘Besser im Dschungel, als im Zoo.' Cited by Andreas Dresen in an interview with the
author in Potsdam, 19 July 2002.

14 This claim appears to be more justified in the case of Dresen's films. In particular Night
Shapes (Nachtgestalten, 1999), which renders life in Germany's new capital from the
perspective of those on the margins of society, could be set in any metropolis. For a
detailed account of Dresen's and Kleinert's oeuvre to date and the numerous prizes
their films have been awarded, see Kerstin Decker, ‘Neben der Zeit: Die Filme von
Andreas Dresen and Andreas Kleinert' in Ralf Schenk and Erika Richter (eds.), Apropos:
Film 2001. Das Jahrbuch der DEFA Stiftung (Berlin: Verlag Das Neue Berlin, 2001), pp.
328-43.

15 On DEFA's anti-fascist films cf. Christiane Mückenberger, ‘Sie sehen selbst, Sie hören
selbst ...': Die DEFA von ihren Anfängen bis 1949 (Marburg: Hitzeroth, 1994); Barton Byg,
‘The Anti-Fascist Tradition and GDR Film' in ‘Proceedings, Purdue University Fifth
Annual Conference on Film', West Lafayette, 1980, pp. 81-87; Daniela Berghahn, ‘Liars
and Traitors: Unheroic Resistance and Anti-Fascist DEFA Films' in Daniela Berghahn
and Alan Bance (eds.), Millennial Essays on Film and Other German Studies (Oxford and
Bern: Lang, 2002), pp. 23-39.

16 For a discussion of representations of the Third Reich in film since unification, including
an analysis of Aimée and Jaguar, see John Davidson's chapter in this volume.

17 For example, Ulrich Weiß's Your Unknown Brother (Dein unbekannter Bruder, 1982).

18 For example, Frank Beyer's The Turning Point (Der Aufenthalt, 1983), Heiner Carow's
The Russians are Coming (Die Russen kommen, 1968/1987), and Rainer Simon's The Case
of Ö (Der Fall Ö, 1991).

19 For example, The Russians are Coming and Maxim Dessau's film First Loss (Erster Verlust,
1990).

20 Joshua Feinstein distinguishes between ‘films of contemporary life' (Gegenwartsfilme)
and ‘films of everyday life' (Alltagsfilme). The latter, he argues deny the progressive
vision of history inscribed in socialism. Feinstein, The Triumph of the Ordinary: Depictions
of Daily Life in the East German Cinema 1949-1989 (Chapel Hill and London: University
of North Carolina Press, 2002), pp. 6-7.

21 Axel Geiss, Repression und Freiheit: DEFA-Regisseure zwischen Fremd- und Selbstbestimmung
(Potsdam: Brandenburgische Zentrale für politische Bildung, 1997).

22 Alison Lewis, ‘En-Gendering Remembrance: Memory, Gender and Informers for the
Stasi', New German Critique, 86 (2002), 103-34 (p. 105).

23 Braun's story appeared in the journal Sinn und Form in 1975, but when the text's
provocative nature was discovered half of the journal's print run was quickly destroyed.
The text was not published in the GDR until 1988 and was subsequently adapted by
Ulrich Plenzdorf, who wrote the screenplay for Beyer's film.

24 Other films in which surveillance through the Stasi is a prominent theme are Lienhard
Wawrzyn's The Informer (Der Blaue, 1994), Nicolai Church, and Sybille Schönemann's
autobiographical documentary Locked-Up Time (Verriegelte Zeit, 1991).

25 The ‘Wall films' are Frank Vogel's ... And Your Love Too (... Und deine Liebe auch, 1962),
Heinz Thiel's The Knock-out Punch (Der Kinnhaken, 1962), Gerhard Klein's Sunday Driver
(Sonntagsfahrer, 1963) and the episodic film Stories of That Night (Geschichten jener Nacht,
1967), directed by Karlheinz Carpentier, Ulrich Thein, Frank Vogel and Gerhard Klein.

26 The film's original German title, Die Verfehlung, can also mean ‘just missed'.

27 Margarethe von Trotta's German-German love story, The Promise (Das Versprechen,
1991), can be considered as the West German counterpart of Carow's film.

28 The protagonist Johanna of Helke Misselwitz's Herzsprung falls victim to a raciallymotivated
arson attack committed by neo-Nazi skinheads. However, she does not die
in the flames but apparently of a heart failure shortly after the attack. The numerous
incidents of suicide in films, including Herzsprung, Peter Welz's Burning Life (1994) and
Peter Kahane's To the Horizon and Beyond (Bis zum Horizont und weiter, 1999) are
motivated by the disenfranchisement of east Germans in the wake of unification.

29 See Hans-Jörg Rother, ‘Georg, wo ist dein Bruder Sergej?', Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
1 October 1996.

30 Andreas Kleinert and Erika Richter, ‘Anarchie der Menschlichkeit', Film und Fernsehen,
5/6 (1996), 52-55 (p. 53).

31 Lewis, ‘En-Gendering Remembrance', p. 106, referring to Hans-Jürgen Maaz's influential
study Gefühlsstau: Ein Psychogramm der DDR (1992), in which the psychologist argues that
all east Germans have been psychologically crippled and deformed by the experience of
totalitarian control and manipulation.

32 In the original script, Walter was conceived as a high-ranking Stasi official. However, the
actor Hilmar Thate who plays Walter insisted that the protagonist's former profession
be changed in order to make Walter a more likeable character. Hans-Jörg Rother, ‘Das
Spiel ist aus: Wege in die Nacht von Andreas Kleinert', Film und Fernsehen, 3/4 (1999), 8-9
(p. 8).

33 See for example Merten Worthmann, ‘Wege in die Nacht: Oskar Roehlers Film "Die
Unberührbare"', Die Zeit, 19 April 2000. For a further discussion of Roehler's film, see
Paul Cooke, ‘Whatever Happened to Veronika Voss?: Rehabilitating the "68ers" and
the Problem of Westalgie in Oskar Roehler's Die Unberührbare (2000)', German Studies
Review, 27 (2004), 33-44.

34 For a discussion of these comedies, see Dickon Copsey's chapter in this volume.

35 The only genre which DEFA successfully adapted to the requirements of socialist
society was the Western. Between 1966 and 1979 the Babelsberg studio made twelve socalled
‘Indian films' (Indianerfilme). See Gerd Gemünden, ‘Between Karl May and Karl
Marx: the DEFA "Indianerfilme" (1965-85)', Film History, 10 (1998), 399-407.

36 Paul Cooke, ‘Performing "Ostalgie": Leander Haußmann's Sonnenallee', German Life
and Letters, 56.2 (2003), 156-67 (p. 160).

37 Konrad H. Jarausch, ‘Reshaping German Identities: Reflections on the Post-Unification
Debate' in Jarausch, After Unity: Reconfiguring German Identities (Providence and
Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1997), pp. 1-23 (p. 19).

38 Naughton, That Was the Wild East, p.20.

39 ‘Es war einmal ein Land und ich habe dort gelebt. Wenn man mich fragt, wie es war?
Es war die schönste Zeit meines Lebens, denn ich war jung und verliebt'.

40 For a different perspective on Haußmann's film, see Seán Allan's chapter in this volume.

41 Orwo, short for Original Wolfen, is an East German brand of film stock that was
created in the 1960s. Originally, the German company Agfa had manufactured film at
Wolfen, but in the early 1960s reserved the brand name for films produced in West
Germany. From 1964 onwards most DEFA films were made with Orwo, while a few
were made with Eastmancolor. Sonnenalle is made on Kodak.

42 ‘Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen'.

43 ‘Geh zu ihr und laß deinen Drachen steigen'.

44 Personal interview with the author, Potsdam 19 July 2002. Dresen himself has
attributed the spiritual or even religious concern of Night Shapes to the strong influence
which East European cinema had on him. However this existentialist concern can also
be found in the films of Lothar Warnecke, who studied theology before joining DEFA
and who was nicknamed the ‘moralist'.

45 Documentary realism is usually associated with the third generation of DEFAdirectors,
notably Lothar Warnecke, Rainer Simon and Roland Gräf.

46 Eric Rentschler, ‘From New German Cinema to the Post-Wall Cinema of Consensus' in
Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie (eds.), Cinema and Nation, (London and New York:
Routledge, 2000), pp. 260-77.