'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

3.1 Intergenerational Dialogue in Deutschland, bleiche Mutter
In her film, Deutschland, bleiche Mutter Helma Sanders-Brahms takes up the
enunciative role of woman as storyteller by recreating her mother‟s and her own
experiences of the Hitler years and post-war era. Through using the public medium of
film to portray this narrative, Sanders-Brahms preserved her story as a cultural artefact,
making it accessible to a wide audience at the time of its release, today, and for
generations to come. The theme of communication between generations is one that is
central to Sanders-Brahms‟ project. She seeks to open up an intergenerational dialogue
through three specific cinematic techniques. These include: a dramatic reading of a
Brecht poem by his daughter, the director‟s commentary on her fictionalized recreation of
her mother‟s life through the authorial voice-over, and Sanders-Brahms‟ daughter playing
a role in the film.
Deutschland, bleiche Mutter takes its title from Brecht‟s prophetic poem
“Deutschland” (“Germany”) written in 1933 during his exile from Germany (Brecht,
Poems 555). In the prologue to Sanders-Brahms‟ filmic action, Hanne Hiob, Brecht‟s
own daughter, reads her father‟s poem. This reading is accompanied by twelve shots of
the poem‟s text in small print on a black and white background. Through having
Brecht‟s daughter read his lyrical allegory of Germany as a mother despoiled by fascism,
Sanders-Brahms traces a thematic connection between the post-war generation of
daughters and their interrogation into their mothers‟ roles in Germany‟s fascist past.
Hiob‟s reading sets up the idea of an interaction between generations in which a “German
daughter” of the post-war generation reads a poem that questions the “German mother,”
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