Cinema in Democratizing Germany: Reconstructing National Identity After Hitler

by Heide Fehrenbach

Overview

Heide Fehrenbach analyzes the important role cinema played in the reconstruction of German cultural and political identity between 1945 and 1962. Concentrating on the former West Germany, she explores the complex political uses of film—and the meanings attributed to film representation and spectatorship—during a period of abrupt transition to democracy. According to Fehrenbach, the process of national redefinition made cinema and cinematic control a focus of heated ideological debate. Moving beyond a narrow political examination of Allied-German negotiations, she investigates the broader social nexus of popular moviegoing, public demonstrations, film clubs, and municipal festivals. She also draws on work in gender and film studies to probe the ways filmmakers, students, church leaders, local politicians, and the general public articulated national identity in relation to the challenges posed by military occupation, American commercial culture, and redefined gender roles. Thus highlighting the links between national identity and cultural practice, this book provides a richer picture of what German reconstruction entailed for both women and men.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807845127
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	05/22/1995
Edition description:	1
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.85(d)
Lexile:	1660L (what's this?)

About the Author

Heide Fehrenbach is assistant professor of history at Colgate University.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

This book is both tightly woven and engagingly written. Providing fresh and provocative ways of approaching the problem of national cinema, Fehrenbach also highlights the hesitant and problematic steps toward the creation of a national identity in West Germany. It is essential reading not only for scholars of German cinema but for anyone concerned to understand the development of postwar German democracy.—American Historical Review

This impressive study of the reconstruction of the West German film industry in the 1950s will become a standard in the historiography of the postwar era. It offers a highly original analysis of the economics, aesthetics, and politics of postwar German cinema, and it convincingly shows that cultural practice and cultural policy were central to the project of delineating national political identities in the 1950s.—Robert G. Moeller, University of California, Irvine

A model of how history and film studies can blend together, each informing the other in unexpected ways.—Steven Mintz, H-Film

Editorial Reviews

"This book is both tightly woven and engagingly written.

"American Historical Review"

A model of how history and film studies can blend together, each informing the other in unexpected ways.

Steven Mintz, "H-Film"

This impressive study . . . will become a standard in the historiography of the postwar era.

Robert G. Moeller, University of California, Irvine

"""This book is both tightly woven and engagingly written.

"American Historical Review""

"A model of how history and film studies can blend together, each informing the other in unexpected ways.

Steven Mintz, "H-Film""

"This impressive study . . . will become a standard in the historiography of the postwar era.

Robert G. Moeller, University of California, Irvine"

From the Publisher