What Did You Do in the War, Mutti? Courageous Women ... - iSites

More documents

Recommendations

Info

564 Robert G. Moeller background of ongoing debates over West German rearmament, the Federal Republic’s entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and early signs of the economic prosperity that suggested that the post-war years were coming to an end, films about the war outlined ways in which West Germans sought to understand this traumatic past and make it an acceptable part of their contemporary history. War stories are classic narratives of male heroism, valour, bravery, and courage leavened with pathos, suffering, and even tears. West German films depicted fun-loving enlisted men who often reluctantly put on the uniform, whose first loyalty was to their loved ones and each other, and whose worst enemies might often be superior officers who were supposed to be on their side. They showed men who had been filled with a belief in Führer and Fatherland but quickly learned that they and their country had been betrayed by the Austrian upstart. And they portrayed men of principle who were caught between their dislike—even hatred—of National Socialism and a sense of honour that prevented them from questioning even those orders they knew to be bad. 3 Not surprisingly, films about the war differentiated sharply between front and home front. In most films, women minded the hearth, as they dodged the bombs, cleared away the rubble, comforted children, longed for loved ones, and orchestrated romantic interludes when men enjoyed brief leaves. And in some cases, women of dubious morality and compromised patriotism proved unfaithful to those risking their lives in uniform. The shooting war was, however, a man’s world. Robert G. Moeller, ‘‘In a Thousand Years, Every German Will Speak of This Battle’’: Celluloid Memories of Stalingrad’, in Omer Bartov, Atina Grossmann, and Mary Nolan (eds), Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century, (New York, 2002), pp. 161 90; and Peter Reichel, Erfundene Erinnerung: Weltkrieg und Judenmord in Film und Theater (Munich, 2004), pp. 83 98. Also useful is Helmut Peitsch, ‘Towards a History of Vergangenheitsbewältigung: East and West German War Novels of the 1950s’, Monatshefte, 87 (1995), pp. 287 308. By the late 1950s, war films also included treatments of POWs in the Soviet Union. See Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley, 2001), pp. 148 68. For comparative perspectives on the genre elsewhere in the 1950s, see John Ramsden, ‘Refocusing ‘‘The People’s War’’: British War Films in the 1950s,’ Journal of Contemporary History, 33 (1998), pp. 35 63; Denise J. Youngblood, ‘Ivan’s Childhood (USSR, 1962) and Come and See (USSR, 1985): Post-Stalinist Cinema and the Myth of World War II,’ in John Whitclay Chambers II and David Culbert (eds), World War II, Film, and History (New York, 1996), pp. 85 96; Jeanine Basinger, The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre (New York, 1986); and John Bodnar, ‘Saving Private Ryan and Postwar Memory in America,’ American Historical Review, 106 (2001), pp. 805 17. In part, West German filmmakers simply followed the lead of their American counterparts. The popularity of films like the Twentieth Century Fox production The Desert Fox (1951), a celebration of Erwin Rommel, and Anatole Litvak’s Decision Before Dawn (Entscheidung vor Morgengrauen) (1951), a story of the end of the war on the western front, and the critically acclaimed Austrian Yugoslav co-production, Helmut Käutner’s Die letzte Brücke, provided clear indications that the war could be successful at the box office. 3 For example, 08=15, Parts I and II (Directed by Paul May, 1954 and 1955); Canaris (Directed by Alfred Weidemann, 1955); and Des Teufels General (Directed by Helmut Käutner, 1955).
What Did You Do in the War, Mutti ? 565 Kinder, Mütter und ein General (KMG) a film that premiered in February 1955, was a giant exception to this rule, and it offered a very different description of what Mutti had done in the war. 4 In this article, I want to describe briefly the story that the film tells. And then I want to discuss why I think this film can offer us insights into how West Germans viewed the Second World War ten years after it had ended. KMG also provides compelling evidence of how memories of the Second World War became a part of West German discussions of rearmament, military reform, women’s rights and responsibilities, and the positive traditions on which the post-war Federal Republic could build. An analysis of the film can suggest how reflections on the war became a medium through which West Germans could better make sense of their present. A brief word on method is important. I am not a film theorist, and my skills as a literary critic are limited at best. This article offers no analysis of KMG in terms of its narrative structure, the form of its rhetorical address, or the director’s use of film technique and cinematographic effect to communicate specific emotions and messages. Rather, I approach KMG as a fascinating primary source for understanding the early history of the Federal Republic, and in particular the ways in which West Germans came to terms with the legacy of the Second World War. With few exceptions, social and political historians of Germany in the period after the Second World War—the group to which I pledge my allegiance—have tended to pay little attention to films as a source, leaving this domain to students of film and cultural studies. 5 Film theorists, in turn, have tended to view the films of the 1950s with scepticism, because they are aesthetically and cinematically uninteresting, easily relegated to the margins as an unfortunate way station between the ‘blood and soil’ of Nazi cinema and the artistic breakthrough associated with the ‘Young German Cinema’ of the early 1960s and the proclamation that the ‘old film [was] dead.’ 6 Whatever their artistic merits, however, films from the 1950s belonged to a popular culture that offered intriguing commentaries on the Nazi past and suggested how this past could be selectively incorporated into the West German present. Read together 4 Kinder, Mütter und ein General (Director: Laslo Benedek; Producer: Erich Pommer). Translations from the German are my own. Special thanks to Paul Reichl and Stefanie Löster of Taurus Film, who made a copy of the film available to me. 5 I have been particularly influenced by Fehrenbach’s groundbreaking work in Cinema in a Democratizing Germany. Also extremely instructive is the work of Uta G. Poiger, Jazz, Rock and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany (Berkeley, 2000). 6 An extremely important exception is Johannes von Moltke, who has added much to the discussion of popular films in the 1950s by bringing together approaches from film theory and a deep knowledge of historical context. See, for example, ‘Heimatfilm als Horrorfilm: Rosen blühen auf dem Heidegrab (1952)’, WerkstattGeschichte, 11 (2002), pp. 82 99; and ‘Trapped in America: The Americanization of the Trapp-Familie or Papa’s Kino Revisited’, German Studies Review, 19 (1996), pp. 36 66. His book, No Place Like Home: Locations of Heimat in German Cinema, is forthcoming. On the ‘Young German Cinema’ and the relationship of this movement to the films of the 1950s, see Fehrenbach, Cinema in Democratizing Germany, pp. 221 4.
Page 1: What Did You Do in the War, Mutti?
Page 5 and 6: What Did You Do in the War, Mutti ?

What Did You Do in the War, Mutti? Courageous Women ... - iSites

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?