'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

early 1980s by a wave of historical films. These historical films sought to come to terms
with Germany‟s fascist past through an examination of personal experiences and stories.
Chapter 2 begins with an examination of Neue Subjektivität or “New
Subjectivity” a literary and cinematic trend in the Germany of the 1970s that valued
personal experience and prepared the way for West German women‟s (auto)biographical
filmmaking. Next is a brief discussion about the marginalization of women‟s voices in
the context of German history. I examine how Sanders-Brahms‟ approach of recreating
German war and post-war history from the perspective of individual experience
corresponds to the goals of Alltagsgeschichte or the “history of everyday life” and of oral
history in that it recaptures a history from below. This is followed by a detailed analysis
of two scenes central to depicting a woman‟s gendered experiences of conflict, a birth
scene and a rape scene. In this analysis I examine the cinematic techniques Sanders-
Brahms uses to juxtapose women‟s personal experiences with the generally accepted
memory of actual historical events, such as the interweaving of archival footage with
enacted scenes inspired by her mother‟s own experiences. In my analysis of the rape
scene, I maintain that Sanders-Brahms intended the mother figure‟s stoic response to
being violated as a critique of the silence in post-war Germany surrounding the rapes of
German women by Allied soldiers at the end of the war.
Chapter 3 examines the function of stories as means of conveying cultural
knowledge and personal memory from one generation to the next. I begin by exploring
women‟s traditional role as storytellers. Next, I examine how Sanders-Brahms assumes
the enunciative role of woman as storyteller by fictionally recreating her mother‟s
experiences of the Hitler and post-war era through the public medium of film. In this act
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