Report: German Studies Association 2002 Session Nr. 19, Nazi Entertainment
Cinema II: (Dis)continuities

Moderator: Erica Carter, University of Warwick

"Viktor or Viktoria? Reinhold Schuenzel's ambiguous Nazi-era Comedies"
Valerie Weinstein, University of Nevada Reno

"A Political Aesthetic of 'The Little Man': Heinz Ruehmann's Nazi-Era Films"
Cary Nathenson, The Public Square

"Complicating the Picture: Hans Steinhoff's The Old and the Young King
(1935) and Frank Beyer's The King and His Jester (1981)"
Evelyn Preuss, Yale University

Commentator: Ted Rippey, Bowling Green State University

The second session on Nazi entertainment cinema featured analyses of
Reinhold Schuenzel's _Viktor und Viktoria_ (1934), Hans Steinhoff's _The Old
and the Young King_ (1935), and the "little man" films of Heinz Ruehmann.
The issue of spectatorship and politics was again at stake, and audience
remarks (continuing the first session's trend) balanced queries regarding
specific points of presenters' papers with a meta-discussion of the
objectives of current scholarship on Third Reich film.

Using _Viktor und Viktoria_ as a case study, Valerie Weinstein pursued the
hypothesis that, "despite their transgression of National Socialist norms,
Schuenzel's films had not only financial but also ideological contributions
to make to the National Socialist film industry."  The fact that Schuenzel's
work was exhibited well after he was forced into exile suggested this
compatibility, which Weinstein sought to specify more systematically in her
analysis of the film's staging of gender and nationality.  Turning first to
gender, Weinstein conceded the disruptive potential of cross-dressing as a
representational strategy but pointed to a number of the film's visual and
narrative aspects that undercut that potential.  Never convincing (to the
audience's eye) as a man, struggling actor/singer Susanne Lohr (Renate
Mueller) is a woman whose initial impulse to cross gender borders (both
morphologically and professionally) fades as she is drawn toward Robert
(Adolf Wohlbrueck) and a more domestic life.  She enjoys great success as a
woman posing as a man playing a woman, and the promise of greater triumphs
looms large even as she unmasks herself, but the lure of the traditional
role, argued Weinstein, ultimately proves more powerful than that of the
lights.  Viktor (Herman Thimig) is more complicated: seemingly marked by
voice, gesture, and maudlin-tragic pretense as an effeminate, Jewish
aesthete, he emerges at film's end as an unmistakably German "born comic."
The conclusion solidifies the comfortable fit between the film and the
ideological and institutional structures in which it was anchored, but
preserves a mildly resistant trace of Schuenzel's Weimar sensibilities.
Schuenzel maintained "faith that there was room [in the Nazi film world] for
a new comedy that had Weimar roots yet that would be substantially different
from its Weimar predecessors."  He hoped both to bow to the demand to
establish and affirm authentic Germanness in entertainment cinema and to
create "comedy that leaves room in its definition of Germanness for misfits,
outsiders and returning expatriates."

Cary Nathenson's paper turned the panel's focus from one screen icon
(Mueller) to another, Heinz Ruehmann, and to the "little man" figure-which
"occupies a foundational position in the history of film comedies"-that
Ruehmann created in a series of successful Nazi-era film comedies.  In
examining these roles (particularly the Knittel character in Carl Froelich's
_Der Gasmann_), Nathenson sought to assess the political implications of
performances by an actor who has recently again become an object of German
public adulation.  (Nathenson cited an address by Gerhard Schroeder at the
opening of the Berlin Filmmuseum's Ruehmann retrospective exhibit to
illustrate the resurgence in Ruehmann fan-interest.)  Marginalized by his
class, physical stature, and emotional and sexual underdevelopment, the
little man is an eccentric outsider.  As Nathenson argued, however, the
little man is also an "everyman" whose "aspirations for self-fulfillment and
social acceptance are portrayed as reflections of universal desires."  In
Ruehmann's case, there was also ambivalence at the physical level: small in
stature, Ruehmann's characters were nonetheless capable of occasional acts
of great strength, "and his gaze could transform from doe-eyed to hawk-like
with exceptional effect."   In _Der Gasmann_, Ruehmann's Knittel character
is a meter reader who receives a sudden, unexpected windfall.  Though the
gain is not ill-gotten, the money elicits a guilt response in Knittel.
Nonetheless he gradually succumbs, at first spending small amounts on
himself, then splurging his way through extensive forays into Berlin
nightlife before ultimately recovering his humility and returning home.
Flagged by tax authorities and put on trial for theft, Knittel then proceeds
through a number of encounters with the German authorities.  These produce
multiple opportunities to laugh at authority's expense and, as Nathenson
pointed out, this "is the danger of a film with a contemporary setting: the
police the audience laughs at are their police, the same ones they will see
when they leave the theater."   This humor never becomes dangerously
subversive, however.  The jokes, Nathenson argued, are "generally fixed on
Ruehmann's screen persona itself," a persona deeply anchored in
de-politicized German notions of petit-bourgeois foibles.  This left the
question of the regime's legitimacy untouched, and even Goebbels himself was
satisfied that the film posed no threat.  In identifying with Knittel and
other Ruehmann little men, German audiences could, suggested Nathenson,
perhaps claim a "German identity based on innocent inferiority rather than
culpable supremacy."  This defused the political potential of the little man
as embodied, for example, by Chaplin in Modern Times and left a figure
perfectly suited for affirmative "domestic consumption" in the Third Reich.

For the panel's final contribution, Evelyn Preuss took issue with some
previous interpretations in her reading of Hans Steinhoff's _The Old and the
Young King_ (1935).  (Time considerations prohibited a comparative analysis
of Beyer's 1981 version.)  Taking the film "seriously as a work of art"
(something that happens too infrequently), Preuss sought to demonstrate the
critical stance vis-à-vis authority that the film establishes within and
without its diegesis.  Frederick William I's regime, she argued, is "a
barely disguised critique" of its Nazi counterpart, and the film offers
"Frederick II as a -however problematic-narrative and political solution."
Preuss found the Soldier King's world preoccupied with corporeality,
austerity, discipline and death.  This was one model of "Prussianness," to
which Frederick the Great's spiritual, sophisticated cosmopolitanism
represents a counterbalance.  Preuss took issue Eric Rentschler's
characterization of Frederick the Great's Rheinsberg as a space of
regimental masculinity, viewing the court instead as defined by the rococo
detail and cheerful ambience that the narrative and lighting accentuate.
Through a series of such scene and character analyses, Preuss illustrated
the contrasts the film establishes and emphasized the critical potential of
those contrasts.

Commentator Ted Rippey thanked the presenters for their contributions to the
continuing discussion of how well entertainment cinema functioned in the
construction of such concepts as nation, gender, and sexuality that were to
under gird individual and collective senses of self during the Third Reich.
He then raised some possible issues for discussion including: 1)
(Dis)continuity: How has the significance of these films changed through
different eras of reception? 2) Nazi film's use of history: How regularly
was the intended effect achieved? 3) The relative weight of the formula
ending: Does it necessarily cancel the subversive potential of "comic
openings" (Nathenson) that occur earlier in the narrative? 4) Resistance:
What avenues must we explore to establish a less speculative sense of its
presence or absence in Nazi film production and consumption?  Audience and
panel discussion centered mainly on the last point, which it connected with
the broader issue of the methods and aims of current scholarship.  One
discussant noted that both panels seemed to return repeatedly to the issue
of resistance, insisting on its possibility yet falling short of finding
extensive contextual evidence of it-a common problem for all who work on
this period of film history.  This raised the related question: Why are we
interested in this cinema and what are the objectives of our study of it?
Initial responses referred to the necessity of establishing a thorough and
nuanced scholarly record of this as yet greatly unexplored period and to the
need to bring marginalized filmmakers to light.  A shared charge is perhaps
to develop an answer that is both more specific and more comprehensive as
work in this area continues.

Ted Rippey, Bowling Green State University

For a complete listing of all sessions at the 2002 German Studies
Association Conference, please visit <http://www.g-s-a.org>.

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