'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

1.3 Images of History: The West German Reception of Holocaust
Apart from the German Autumn 1977, a second important impetus for young
German filmmakers‟ turning to history was the West German telecast of the American
mini-series Holocaust in January 1979. The National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC)
mini-series, televised over four consecutive days on the Third Channel of West
Germany‟s largest regional television networks, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, caused the
West German public to engage with repressed German history in a way no film had done
before. An estimated 20 million viewers – about half the adult population of the Federal
Republic – watched Holocaust (“Holocaust” 18). Approximately 40 percent of the West
German television audience watched the program every night, more than 35,000
telephone calls (four times the number reported by NBC during the American showing of
the film) were received by television stations, and an equal number of letters and
telegrams were sent. Moreover, over 20,000 information booklets published by the West
German government to accompany the show disappeared in an avalanche of orders
reaching 255,000 (Markovits and Allen 13-17). During each of the four episodes
telephone numbers were shown at the bottom of the screen inviting viewers to phone in
after the show to discuss their experiences – before the whole country – with experts
from academia and the press. These open-ended discussions following each episode of
Holocaust lasted for hours (Kaes 30). Heinz Höhne, writing for one of West Germany‟s
largest weekly magazines, Der Spiegel, captured the mood of public opinion:
Eine amerikanische Fernsehserie von trivialer Machart, produziert aus mehr
kommerziellen als aus moralischen Motiven, mehr zur Unterhaltung als zur
Aufklärung, hat geschafft, was mit Hunderten von Büchern, Theaterstücken,
Filmen und TV-Sendungen, Tausenden von Dokumenten und allen KZ-Prozessen
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