Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Cinema

Published by Berghahn Books 2020

Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Cinema

Edited by: Barbara Hales and Valerie Weinstein

Volume 24 in the series Film Europa

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781789208733

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

Barbara Hales is an Associate 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, Oxford, forthcoming). She has also co-edited a volume entitled Continuity and Crisis in German Cinema 1928-1936 for Camden House in 2016 (with Mihaela Petrescu and Valerie Weinstein). Dr. Hales is President of the Houston based organization, Center for Medicine After the Holocaust.

Valerie Weinstein is Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Niehoff Professor in Film and Media Studies, and affiliate faculty in German Studies and Judaic Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She is the author of Antisemitism in Film Comedy in Nazi Germany (Indiana University Press, 2019) and numerous articles on Weimar and Nazi cinema. She is co-editor, with Barbara Hales and Mihaela Petrescu, of Continuity and Crisis in German Cinema 1928-1936 (Camden House, 2016).

Barbara Hales is an Associate 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, Oxford, forthcoming). She has also co-edited a volume entitled Continuity and Crisis in German Cinema 1928-1936 for Camden House in 2016 (with Mihaela Petrescu and Valerie Weinstein). Dr. Hales is President of the Houston based organization, Center for Medicine After the Holocaust.

Reviews

“The ‘Film Europa: German Cinema in an International Context’ series is increasingly indispensable for those interested in film history or media studies. This collection appears in that series, and Hales and Weinstein provide a masterful introduction that places the historical bookmark where it belongs: everything starts with Siegfried Kracauer's From Caligari to Hitler: Psychological History of the German Film (1947) and Lotte Eisner's The Haunted Screen (1952)… Highly Recommended.” • Choice

“An important contribution to an understanding of filmmaking in Germany during the Weimar Republic. This volume offers a multi-faceted, in-depth investigation into the Jewish presence in Weimar cinema both on screen, in various genres, and off screen through biographical sketches and film reviews.” • Barbara Kosta, University of Arizona

“Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Film makes a significant and welcome contribution to the study of Weimar film, to German film studies in general, and to German Jewish studies. It presents detailed research and analysis of important Weimar films, artists, and critics; most of them have not been examined in much detail by other scholars, and when they have been, they have rarely been analyzed in relation to Jewishness, a concept that this volume explores in a very nuanced manner.” • Rick McCormick, University of Minnesota

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	V
FIGURES Publicly Available Download PDF	VII
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	IX
Introduction THE JEWISHNESS OF WEIMAR CINEMA Barbara Hales and Valerie Weinstein Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART I JEWISH VISIBILITY ON AND OFF SCREEN
Chapter 1. Humanizing Shylock: The “Jewish Type” in Weimar Film Maya Barzilai Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
Chapter 2. Energizing the Dramaturgy: How Jewishness Shaped Alexander Granach’s Performances in Weimar Cinema Margrit Frölich Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	44
Chapter 3. The Jewish Vamp of Berlin: Actress Maria Orska, Typecasting, and Jewish Women Kerry Wallach Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	67
Chapter 4. Jewish Comedians beyond Lubitsch: Siegfried Arno in Film and Cabaret Mila Ganeva Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	88
Chapter 5. Alfred Rosenthal’s Rhetoric of Collaboration, the Politics of Jewish Visibility, and Jewish Weimar Film Print Culture Ervin Malakaj Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	111
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 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	129
Chapter 7. Homosexual Emancipation, Queer Masculinity, and Jewish Difference in Anders als die Andern (1919) 152 Valerie Weinstein Valerie Weinstein Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	152
Chapter 8. Der Film ohne Juden: G.W. Pabst’s Die freudlose Gasse (1925) Lisa Silverman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	178
Chapter 9. “The World Is Funny, Like a Dream”: Franziska Gaal’s Verwechslungskomödien and Exile’s Crisis of Identity Anjeana K. Hans Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	196
PART III JEWISHNESS AS ANTISEMITIC CONSTRUCT
Chapter 10. Cinematically Transmitted Disease: Weimar’s Perpetuation of the Jewish Syphilis Conspiracy Barbara Hales Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
Chapter 11. The Einstein Film: Animation, Relativity, and the Charge of “Jewish Science” Brook Henkel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237
Chapter 12. “A Clarion Call to Strike Back”: Antisemitism and Ludwig Berger’s Der Meister von Nürnberg (1927) Christian Rogowski Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	257
Chapter 13. Banning Jewishness: Stefan Zweig, Robert Siodmak, and the Nazis Andréas-Benjamin Seyfert Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	278
Chapter 14. Detoxification: Nazi Remakes of E.A. Dupont’s Blockbusters Ofer Ashkenazi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	300
CODA
Chapter 15. “Filmrettung: Save the Past for the Future!”: Film Restoration and Jewishness in German and Austrian Silent Cinema Cynthia Walk Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	325
AFTERWORD Barbara Hales and Valerie Weinstein Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	338
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	342

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 388
Keywords: Film and Television Studies; Jewish Studies; History: 20th Century to Present

eBook

Published: November 1, 2020
ISBN: 9781789208733