'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

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defeat and loss which is often accepted as the public memory of Germans‟ reaction to their country‟s capitulation. In contrast, Lene‟s personal reaction to Germany‟s surrender and Hitler‟s death is one of joy and relief. Thus, Sanders-Brahms juxtaposes the public collective traumatic memory of the German experience of the end of the war with Lene‟s personal joyful reaction. The themes of the “Maikäferlied” also emphasize elements of Lene and Anna‟s personal story. Like the cockchafer, Lene and her daughter are living through a period of conflict. The song encourages the cockchafer to flee, lest it be lost in the destruction of war. Lene and Anna have also had to flee Berlin to avoid the aerial bombing raids. Moreover, the cockchafer‟s father is in battle as Anna‟s father, Hans, is absent from his family as he has been enlisted to fight. Further, the small insect‟s mother is in Pomerania, and Lene and Anna are in the German east, having fled the air raids in Berlin. Sanders-Brahms‟ film does not show the flight of German civilians from the advancing Russian army and the raping of German woman by Russian soldiers. However, her original film script depicted Lene and Anna fleeing from the Red Army, Lene‟s rape by Russian soldiers, and the subsequent termination of her pregnancy by a female Russian doctor (Sanders-Brahms, Film-Erzählung 77-80). 51 Just as the cockchafer‟s mother is caught up in the destruction of Pomerania, so Lene too, in the film script, is caught up in the destruction of the German east by Russian troops. Therefore, in many ways, the circumstances of the small beetle in Maikäferlied parallel those of Lene and Anna in the film narrative. 51 In her film, Sanders-Brahms decided to insert Lene‟s telling of the “Räuberbräutigam” fairy-tale instead of her rape by Russian soldiers and the subsequent abortion. Sanders-Brahms regarded the substitution as one of the more successful aspects of the film (Sanders-Brahms, Film-Erzählung 116). 67
Why does Lene sing the Maikäferlied to Anna in this sequence? Gabriele Weinberger claims that Lene‟s singing of the song reinforces her isolation from her historical reality and her “naïve perpetuation of patriarchal, bourgeois myths” (84). She states: Instead of becoming aware and active, Lene gets lost in her fairy-tale world and does not perceive the real world around her. By association, Lene‟s world that she created for herself and her daughter is identified as a fairy-tale world. Her joyous reaction to the real world, to Hitler‟s suicide and Germany‟s capitulation, is the childlike recitation of the children‟s song Maikäfer flieg. She is incapable of finding her own language and thus can only reiterate for her daughter the male discourse. (84-85) I disagree with Weinberger that Lene sings the Maikäferlied to Anna because she cannot find her own words to express her happiness. In my opinion, Lene sings this song in order to make Anna aware of the necessity of their journey in terms that the child can comprehend and in a fashion that will not terrify her. Through identifying with the cockchafer and its need to flee danger in a war-torn country, Anna can confront her personal situation in a manner that is not too direct. As Landwehr explains, reciting and listening to stories can have a therapeutic effect in coping with traumatic experiences. She claims: Stories enable us to confront our own sufferings through empathy with the protagonists. They also draw a boundary through the world of fiction and our reality, establishing a safe distance between the tribulations of protagonists and our world. This dual role of narratives […] in evoking empathy with the characters while also protecting us from direct confrontation with difficult issues provides the effective mechanisms of a trauma narrative. (135) Lene‟s singing of the Maikäferlied reflects her desire to provide her daughter with a safe locus in which to consider their circumstances and the reasons for their journey. The song allows Anna to become aware of her situation in an indirect fashion, by 68
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Storytelling and Survival in the
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Supervisory Committee Dr. Helga Tho
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3.1 Intergenerational Dialogue in D
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I would like to dedicate this thesi
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Sanders-Brahms describes a phenomen
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that Sanders-Brahms uses the fairy
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early 1980s by a wave of historical
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Deutschland, bleiche Mutter. Moreov
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audience. One of the most popular g
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1.1 The Oberhausen Manifesto and Ne
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audiences. This film movement of th
Page 23 and 24: e beholden to him, for only through
Page 25 and 26: political events that took place in
Page 27 and 28: Verdrängten eigentlich gar nicht g
Page 29 and 30: (Deutschland im Herbst n. pag.). 14
Page 31 and 32: in drei Jahrzehnten Nachkriegsgesch
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Page 35 and 36: If German films are to make use of
Page 37 and 38: 1.4 Deutschland, bleiche Mutter as
Page 39 and 40: story must be hidden as much as pos
Page 41 and 42: Chapter 2: New Subjectivity and Wes
Page 43 and 44: Reich” opposes fascism, but who e
Page 45 and 46: direct and personal confrontation w
Page 47 and 48: context has only become part of the
Page 49 and 50: perpetrators are defined predominan
Page 51 and 52: Thus, Sanders-Brahms creates a coun
Page 53 and 54: In the birth sequence, Sanders-Brah
Page 55 and 56: ombs fall downward from the upper r
Page 57 and 58: narrator‟s sadness at the destruc
Page 59 and 60: essentialize men or women‟s exper
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Page 63 and 64: emotional connection between mother
Page 65 and 66: endurance and stoic acceptance of b
Page 67 and 68: texture which is both social and hi
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Page 71 and 72: y war. A final interesting point of
Page 73: Maikäfer flieg. dein Vater ist im
Page 77 and 78: Beginning with the so-called recons
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Page 81 and 82: a series of forty-one volumes publi
Page 83 and 84: 3.1 Intergenerational Dialogue in D
Page 85 and 86: geworden” (Brecht, Werke 253). 55
Page 87 and 88: Eure Unarmung kann ich mir nicht de
Page 89 and 90: 3.2 Retelling a Grimm Tale: Voice a
Page 91 and 92: and springs into the lap of the hid
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Page 95 and 96: 3.4 “Der Räuberbräutigam,” Po
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Page 99 and 100: Further, the absence or presence at
Page 101 and 102: can imagine the chimney blowing out
Page 103 and 104: Chapter 4: Three Images of Woman in
Page 105 and 106: Moreover she demonstrates insight a
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Page 109 and 110: in an effort to help, Lene quickly
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Page 113 and 114: knowingly or unknowingly, to make p
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Page 117 and 118: Contrastingly, in the middle and la
Page 119 and 120: traditional gender roles and emphas
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and calm camera movements. In contr
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The dentist and Hans completely ove
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4.4 Summarizing Remarks Sanders-Bra
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Chapter 5: Conclusion Mother’s Vo
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forced back into the oppressive dep
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daughter in what becomes an interge
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authentic documentary footage of th
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evocation of the Holocaust through
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Brahms articulates represents an ac
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H.S.-B.: Well, one answer to this q
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H.S.-B.: There is a very small baby
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only when you forget about scientif
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R.R.: So an example of that would b
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political context of the fictional
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was a wonderful image, like the May
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H.S.-B.: Yes, you‟re right, it‟
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R.R.: Some critics say that she is
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They just appeared during shooting.
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film represent the woman who respon
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R.R.: So, by telling your story, yo
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H.S.-B.: This happened to my mother
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irritated the critics terribly. It
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opening up, but actually, the strug
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---. Brecht on Theater. Ed. and Tra
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Herbst, Philip. Wimmin, Wimps and W
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---. “Gender, Film, and German Hi
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Sander, Helke and Barbara Johr. Eds
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'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

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