Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Cinema

by Barbara Hales (Editor), Valerie Weinstein (Editor)

Overview

The burgeoning film industry in the Weimar Republic was, among other things, a major site of German—Jewish experience, one that provided a sphere for Jewish “outsiders” to shape mainstream culture. The chapters collected in this volume deploy new historical, theoretical, and methodological approaches to understanding the significant involvement of German Jews in Weimar cinema. Reflecting upon different conceptions of Jewishness – as religion, ethnicity, social role, cultural code, or text – these studies offer a wide—ranging exploration of an often overlooked aspect of German film history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781800739482
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	03/10/2023
Series:	Film Europa , #24
Pages:	388
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Barbara Hales is a Professor of History and Humanities at the University of Houston—Clear Lake. Her publications focus on film history of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. She is the author of Black Magic Woman: Gender and the Occult in Weimar Germany (Peter Lang, 2021). Along with Mihaela Petrescu and Valerie Weinstein, she also co—edited a volume entitled Continuity and Crisis in German Cinema, 1928—1936 (Camden House, 2016). Dr. Hales is President of the Center for Medicine After the Holocaust.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of Contributors

Introduction: The Jewishness of Weimar Cinema
Barbara Hales and Valerie Weinstein

Part I: Jewish Visibility On and Off Screen

Chapter 1. Humanizing Shylock: The “Jewish Type” in Weimar Film
Maya Barzilai

Chapter 2. Energizing the Dramaturgy: How Jewishness Shaped Alexander Granach’s Performances in Weimar Cinema
Margrit Frölich

Chapter 3. The Jewish Vamp of Berlin: Actress Maria Orska, Typecasting, and Jewish Women
Kerry Wallach

Chapter 4. Jewish Comedians beyond Lubitsch: Siegfried Arno in Film and Cabaret
Mila Ganeva

Chapter 5. Alfred Rosenthal’s Rhetoric of Collaboration, the Politics of Jewish Visibility, and Jewish Weimar Film Print Culture
Ervin Malakaj

Part II: Coding and Decoding Jewish Difference

Chapter 6. Two Worlds, Three Friends, and the Mysterious Seven—Branched Candelabrum: Jewish Filmmaking in Weimar Germany
Philipp Stiasny

Chapter 7. Homosexual Emancipation, Queer Masculinity, and Jewish Difference in Anders als die Andern (1919)
Valerie Weinstein

Chapter 8. Der Film ohne Juden: G.W. Pabst’s Die freudlose Gasse (1925)
Lisa Silverman

Chapter 9. “The World is Funny, Like a Dream:” Franziska Gaal’s Verwechslungskomödien and Exile’s Crisis of Identity
Anjeana K. Hans

Part III: Jewishness as Antisemitic Construct

Chapter 10. Cinematically Transmitted Disease: Weimar’s Perpetuation of the Jewish Syphilis Conspiracy
Barbara Hales

Chapter 11. The Einstein Film: Animation, Relativity, and the Charge of “Jewish Science”
Brook Henkel

Chapter 12. “A Clarion Call to Strike Back”: Antisemitism and Ludwig Berger's Der Meister von Nürnberg (1927)
Christian Rogowski

Chapter 13. Banning Jewishness: Stefan Zweig, Robert Siodmak, and the Nazis
Andréas—Benjamin Seyfert

Chapter 14. Detoxification: Nazi Remakes of E. A. Dupont’s Blockbusters
Ofer Ashkenazi

Coda

Chapter 15. “Filmrettung: Save the Past for the Future!”: Film Restoration and Jewishness in German and Austrian Silent Cinema
Cynthia Walk

Afterword
Barbara Hales and Valerie Weinstein