4

FILM AND THE COMMUNIST LEFT: LEFTIST RADICALISM VERSUS DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM AND THE CONSEQUENCES FOR A COMMUNIST FILM PROGRAM

While the SPD and its coalition partners worked with varying degrees of enthusiasm to build a parliamentary democracy within a capitalist economic system, the revolutionary German left looked for opportunities to transform Germany into a soviet republic with a socialist economy.¹ While most Social Democrats continued to assimilate dominant concepts of culture, the revolutionary left scrutinized Germany’s cultural heritage and considered the possibility of establishing a proletarian alternative.² It is important to note that as long as inflation, unemployment, and political reaction threatened Weimar’s stability, the revolutionary left concentrated on political and military campaigns to overthrow the republican government. For most revolutionary leftists, cultural work played a secondary role between 1919 and 1924.

At the end of December 1918 the Spartacus Union (composed to a large extent of former SPD members who had left the party during the war) met with a recently consolidated group of leftist radical organizations called the Internationale Kommunisten Deutschlands (International Communists of Germany, IKD). Their purpose was to found a new party that would strive for changes in German society more fundamental than those being suggested by either the SPD or the Independent Socialists.³ Although the Spartacists and the International Communists agreed to unite within a single organization, their tactical and strategic approaches differed from the beginning. At what turned out to be the founding convention of the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (German Communist party, KPD), the International Communist and Spartacus delegates disagreed on questions concerning party organization and policy toward existing unions. An especially heated debate erupted over participation in the National Assembly. The proposals expressed in the debate represented the basic choices for the KPD’s ideological development over the next four years. Although it focused on political issues, the debate also influenced the discussion of cultural activity, including the potential use of film.

Spartacus leaders such as Paul Levi, Rosa Luxemburg, and Karl Liebknecht conceded that cooperation in the National Assembly would result in undesirable compromises. But, they argued, the German people were unprepared for more radical change. The three-class voting system had just been abolished in Prussia, women had been granted voting rights, and large segments of the population struggled to accept parliamentary democracy. According to the Spartacists, the KPD’s first task was to broaden its base of support. They argued that the party could accomplish that task only by participating in the National Assembly and exposing the counterrevolutionary tactics of the SPD and others. The Spartacist delegates proposed the creation of a centrally organized party, a party hierarchy, and a strong program to influence the political awareness of the working class.

The IKD’s opposition to the Spartacist approach corresponded to its political platform. The IKD consisted of antibureaucratic, antiparliamentarian, and (to some extent) anti-Bolshevist groups primarily from northwest Germany.⁴ The oldest and most influential of the groups was from Bremen. The Bremen group emerged around 1910 in stiff opposition to the SPD’s increasing reliance on parliamentary politics. Its leaders, including the Dutch intellectual Dr. Anton Pannekoek, Paul Fröhlich, and Karl Radek, noted that parliamentarianism minimized the active participation of workers in the democratic process. It encouraged them to delegate most political responsibility to a few party representatives, who often compromised the interest of their constituents for personal gain. As Pannekoek explained in Weltrevolution und Kommunistische Taktik (World Revolution and Communist Tactics):

While parliamentarianism on the one hand strengthens the superiority of the leaders over the masses, thus exerting a counterrevolutionary influence, on the other hand it has the tendency to corrupt these leaders. When personal skills must replace what is lacking in the strength of the masses, a petty diplomacy emerges. The party, whether it began with other intentions or not, must strive to acquire a legal foundation, a parliamentary predominance. In the end the relationship between the ends and the means becomes reversed, and the parliament does not serve communism, rather communism functions as a slogan in the service of parliamentary politics. (138)

Between 1919 and 1924 the strength of the radical left in the KPD and in the entire communist movement significantly influenced the relationship between the revolutionary left and the Weimar government. During the period, the policies of the SPD and its coalition partners, the activity of reactionary political and military groups, and economic hardships associated in part with the Versailles Treaty reinforced the leftist radical opposition to parliamentary democracy. Members of the radical left repeatedly discouraged most forms of cooperation with the SPD, and in crisis situations they initiated violent campaigns to overthrow the republican government. They hoped that large segments of the German working class would rise up and join the fight once such campaigns were under way.

The defeat of Communist uprisings in 1919–1920 and the merging of the left wing of the Independent Socialists with the KPD in December 1920 strengthened the position of the more cautious Spartacist minority.⁵ The minority accused the leftist radicals of adventurism and argued again that the party would have to develop a strong, centrally organized vanguard of the most class-conscious workers who would be able to work within the existing system to raise the political awareness of German workers. According to their point of view, the KPD could win the support necessary to defeat the republican alliance only in this way. It was one of the greatest shortcomings of the revolutionary German left during the crisis years that the leftist radicals, who were justifiably skeptical of central party organization, and the Spartacist minority, which accurately assessed the balance of power in the Weimar Republic, were unable to unite to build a grass-roots movement strong enough to challenge the reformist and reactionary Weimar alliance.

In addition to the counterproductive competition between opposing factions, the relationship between the German communist movement and the Russian Bolshevists greatly affected the KPD’s development. The KPD’s submission to Bolshevik leadership began at the founding convention of the Kommunistische Internationale (Communist International, Comintern) in March 1919. The party followed Bolshevik instructions for revolutionary activity at key points throughout the initial period of crisis, a practice that alienated many of those Germans who were concerned about national sovereignty.⁶

CULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS WITHIN THE COMMUNIST LEFT

The influence of the Soviet Union and opposition between leftist radicals and more moderate members of the German communist movement also characterized the cultural development of the revolutionary left during the postwar crisis years.⁷ Among the first news to reach Germany about the changes in Russian society following the October Revolution in 1917 were reports that new proletarian cultural, or Proletkult, organizations were emerging everywhere. Leftist intellectuals and artists in Germany exhibited so much interest in the phenomenon that by 1919 almost all left-oriented literary journals included writings by Proletkult theoreticians and reports about the practical achievements of Proletkult organizations. Works such as Die Kunst und das Proletariat (Art and the Proletariat) by Alexander Bogdanov, the leading theoretician of the Proletkult movement, appeared in German translation in 1919. Bogdanov’s ideas provided new impulses for those who sought radical alternatives to the SPD’s political reformism and cultural conservatism.

Bogdanov’s concept of culture derived from his view of modern society’s division of labor. He asserted that the separation of mental labor from manual labor, or organizers from those who carry out orders, created a relationship of power that discouraged laborers from participating in the process of social organization. He claimed further that art figured prominently in that process as a medium for the ideological organization of everyday experience.

Bogdanov also believed that the artist’s allegiance to a specific social group determined the character of the artist’s production. He perceived proletarian art as the effort of workers or artists with a working-class perspective to organize their specifically proletarian experience. He emphasized that the character of proletarian art, in contrast to feudal art’s authoritarian spirit and bourgeois society’s individualism, could be described in terms of collectivity. Proletarian collectivity, he suggested, was created by urban living conditions and mass industrial production.

Bogdanov’s concept of proletarian culture included two important insights for radical intellectuals and artists in Germany. It defined proletarian culture as unique, justifying an absolute rejection of the cultural heritage. It also outlined the conditions for the development of proletarian culture in capitalistic societies, negating claims that proletarian culture could emerge only after a dictatorship of the proletariat had established a socialist economic system.

Bogdanov’s theory almost immediately stimulated a wide variety of experiments in Germany. In the fall of 1919 a group of writers, painters, and architects, including Max Barthel, Arthur Holitscher, Hans Baluschek, and Bruno Taut, joined workers at the Siemens plant in Berlin to found the Bund für proletarische Kultur (Alliance for Proletarian Culture).⁸ They also established their own theater to motivate the working masses to foment revolution. The experiment, which was directed by Rudolf Leonhard and Karlheinz Martin, proved too radical for most Berlin workers and soon failed. However, it did provide the impetus for a second attempt, the Proletarisches Theater—Bühne der revolutionären Arbeiter Groß-Berlins (Proletarian Theater—Stage of the Revolutionary Workers of Greater Berlin), organized by Erwin Piscator and Hermann Schüller in the fall of 1920.⁹

Piscator and Schüller had studied Bogdanov’s writings and Platon M. Kerschenzev’s views in Das schöpferische Theater (The Creative Theater). In contrast to Leonhard and Martin, who restricted “collectivity” to the interaction between players and imposed their revolutionary perceptions on the audience, Piscator and Schüller developed collective forms of production, reception, and administration. From October 1920 until April 1921, when Berlin’s SPD chief of police closed it, the Proletarian Theater performed over fifty times and attracted over five thousand working-class members.

At the same time, radical literary critics and authors discussed Proletkult concepts and attempted to write proletarian literature. Among the most active and influential participants in the literary debates was Franz Jung.¹⁰ Jung believed that the interaction of human beings, especially in working situations, created a sensation of pleasure and that a positive concept of collectivity emerged from the association between human interaction and pleasure. He argued that modern industrial society rejected collectivity in favor of individualism and competition. However, he also stressed that uncertainty about workers’ chances of succeeding in competition with those who occupied higher positions in the social hierarchy rendered them only cautious supporters of individualism. According to Jung, proletarian literature should thematize the struggle of exploited workers in a way that would encourage already receptive workers to reactivate their latent sense of collectivity.

Jung sought to intensify the experience of collectivity by sharing the text’s production with readers: “I wish to tell the reader in advance what I want to accomplish and what technical problems I will experience. While reading, the reader is supposed to help in solving the problems and in producing the text, to check for disruptions in the narration and in that way to establish a real connection between author and reader.”¹¹ Jung’s theoretical writings and his stories, novels, and dramas gained widespread attention between 1919 and 1924. Some of his ideas also surfaced in the KPD’s discussion of proletarian alternatives to mainstream cinema.

There were many debates about the nature of proletarian culture, but most radical intellectuals and artists agreed that it would have little in common with what they perceived as an outdated bourgeois culture and that they should begin to work on it immediately. Most Proletkult advocates aligned themselves politically with the Kommunistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (KAPD), the party whose antiparliamentarian position coincided most closely with their cultural collectivity. The KAPD was also attractive because it emphasized cultural activity. The party’s leaders argued that although the material conditions for revolutionary change were present, the German working class was spellbound by the conservative ideology of the existing cultural institutions. In Vom Werden der neuen Gesellschaft (On the Emergence of a New Society), Karl Schröder, one of the KAPD’s leading functionaries, summarized the party’s program with the following comments:

The essence of the new order, its absolute opposition to the bourgeois-capitalist world… necessitates that among the tasks of a proletarian party … is the task of becoming a leader in the struggle for a proletarian world view. Everything that corresponds to the task, above all the Proletkult (as it is conceived in Russia), is not a luxury, for which there now is no time; rather it is now, in this moment when the economic conditions for upheaval prevail, precisely the decisive factor for the acceleration of the social revolution. The problem of the German revolution is the problem of developing the class-consciousness of the German proletariat. (15)

While radical intellectuals and artists enthusiastically assimilated Proletkult concepts, initiated Proletkult experiments, and aligned themselves with the KAPD, influential voices within the KPD remained skeptical. Gertrud Alexander, for example, who was the first editor of the feuilleton for Die Rote Fahne, strongly criticized the Proletkult. She used the arguments of her mentor, Franz Mehring, to assert that revolutionary changes in the economic base must precede revolutionary changes in the ideological superstructure.¹² For her the experiments of such activists as Piscator and Schuller were frivolous and irresponsible. She condemned their attempts to facilitate a radical change in working-class consciousness with a proletarian theater while true revolutionaries were fighting in the streets and in parliament to create the economic and political foundation for a proletarian culture.

Until 1922 the KPD had no official cultural program. During that period, the KPD’s cultural policy was determined foremost by older members who had matured with the SPD. These included individuals such as Alexander, August Thalheimer, and Edwin Hoernle who regularly published statements in the feuilleton of Die Rote Fahne. Although they often criticized the cultural views of the Social Democratic press, their insistence on the primacy of the economic base suggests that, at least initially, most of the KPD’s cultural activists still supported cultural concepts they had acquired while working with Mehring and others for Die Neue Zeit and Vorwärts. The attempt within the KPD to overcome bourgeois cultural concepts was a long, slow process. It was marked by numerous debates in which younger members who sympathized more with the radical intellectuals and artists struggled to win support for their concepts and programs.

FILM AND THE COMMUNIST LEFT

Until 1921–1922 leading members of the KPD considered film to be a distraction to the revolutionary working class.¹³ At that point the KPD abandoned its Offensivtheorie and established a policy of united fronts with progressive political and union organizations. Cultural work, too, began to play a more significant role. Edwin Hoernle campaigned for an official cultural program, the KPD held its first Reichskonferenz der Bildungsobleute und Kurslehrer (Reich Conference of Educational Chairmen and Teachers), and cultural activists began publishing articles about film in Die Rote Fahne. Instead of referring directly to the need for a new approach to cultural activity in general, the articles described the powerful influence of cinema on the working class and suggested that the KPD must do something to counteract it. Unlike the cinema reformers and SPD journalists who had rejected commercial film because of its perceived negative influence on morality, the KPD journalists expressed their opposition almost exclusively in political terms.

The screening of Fridericus Rex motivated the KPD’s first substantial criticism. In its review entitled “Kinokönige. ‘Es war ein König in Thule’” (“Cinema Kings: ‘There Was a King in Thule,’” 19 March 1922), Die Rote Fahne condemned Fridericus Rex as a capitalist instrument for the ideological indoctrination of the economically and politically oppressed. The review focused on Fridericus Rex but asserted that the entire industry promoted a conservative to reactionary ideology, supporting the claim with a discussion of the treatment of specific subjects in the films of popular genres: “society films” (Gesellschaftsfilme) and historical pageants. According to the article, society films portrayed the lives of the social elite as enviable and suggested that upward social mobility was inevitable for the talented. Historical pageants such as Fridericus Rex glorified the national heroes of the past and promoted a return to a monarchical system. In substantiating these claims, the review never transcended the level of content analysis. Although it was among the first reviews in Die Rote Fahne to discover a direct relationship between film and politics, it did little to explain how commercial films communicated an ideological point of view, and it offered no suggestions for alternatives.

The next major article on film appeared anonymously with a title reminiscent of Bogdanov’s Art and the Proletariat. However, the perspective of “Kino und Proletariat” (“Cinema and Proletariat,” 11 June 1922) differed significantly from Bogdanov’s perspective. The article outlined the German film industry’s development by referring to competition between young film companies and the powerful theater institution before World War I. It argued that the financial interests of theater owners, investors, and others had motivated the critique of film as artistically inferior. It stressed that the critique did more than protect the theater institution’s monopoly on entertainment before World War I. It alleged that by promoting pedagogical uses for film, cinema’s critics helped political and religious organizations to recognize the medium’s potential ideological impact. Although its supposition about the powerful influence of a few individuals on cultural development was difficult to document, the article accurately cited the activity of the Navy League, the Catholic church, the Supreme High Command, and similar organizations abroad.

The article repeated the earlier criticism leveled against historical films and society films that had appeared in the review of Fridericus Rex: “Both film types, more clearly than all others, have transparent plot characteristics that render them instruments for class oppression and enable them to exert ideological pressure without inhibition on proletarian spectators. One can speak of a film ideology today that portrays seductively the ‘upward mobility of the talented,’—the economic carrot—in the society film while it glorifies a reactionary model of the state—the political stick—in historical films.” The assessment suggests that KPD journalists had developed a more advanced understanding of film content than had their counterparts in the SPD who uncritically affirmed as recreational cinema’s fictional portrayals of past and present. At the same time, they lagged behind more radical intellectuals and artists who began to question the existing institutions of artistic production and reception. “Cinema and Proletariat” did mention factors that influenced film production and reception: the dependence on the interests of investors, the employment of full-time screenwriters, the cinematic adaptation of literature, and the construction of palatial movie theaters. But its criticism and suggestions for alternatives ignored such factors and concentrated on film content.

It is here that the article’s perspective differed from that of Art and the Proletariat. In contrast to Bogdanov, who emphasized collective forms of aesthetic production as an integral element in the process of social change, “Cinema and Proletariat” referred simply to the tasks of a socialist Arbeitermacht, to a postrevolutionary workers’ regime. Instead of discussing the necessity of developing alternative forms of film production and reception within the existing system, it focused on the content of films that might be produced under socialist conditions.

When and how would this transpire? The reference to a socialist Arbeitermacht implied that work could begin on a proletarian culture only after the working class had established a socialist system. Could socialist conditions be created within the existing system? What were those conditions? What should the role of film be in the present situation? What would the role of film be under socialism? Would a proletarian film be defined merely by its subject matter? Would it suffice to replace bourgeois enlightenment with socialist enlightenment in pedagogical films? “Cinema and Proletariat” offered no answers to these questions. Nevertheless, it initiated a discussion about the ideological quality of mainstream cinema and about proletarian alternatives, a dialogue that continued throughout the Weimar era.

In Die Rote Fahne Axel Eggebrecht contributed to the discussion by focusing on the allegedly damaging influence of commercial films on working-class audiences. Eggebrecht began his “Die bürgerliche Kinogefahr” (“The Danger of Bourgeois Cinema,” 14 June 1922) with a description of cinematography. For him it was a purely mechanical process that could be employed to control the speed of any filmed event. Film’s value lay in its ability to aid human beings in mastering nature. Although his understanding of the film medium’s technical capacity was extremely limited, Eggebrecht’s comments were significant for two reasons. First, in contrast to “Cinema and Proletariat,” which only mentioned the danger of ideologically conservative film content, Eggebrecht opened the discussion to questions of form and its effect on reception. Second, he expressed an attitude that appeared again and again in the KPD’s documents on film: no matter how much KPD cultural theoreticians rejected the bourgeois cultural heritage, they joined the SPD in uncritically affirming instrumental reason. Proletarian films would provide a scientific Marxist understanding of natural and social phenomena that would allow workers to discover the reasons for oppression and enable them to control their destinies.

Following his thoughts on film’s potential, Eggebrecht turned his attention to its development in capitalist society. Using Mehring’s theory of decadence, he asserted that members of the dominant but decaying bourgeoisie who controlled the film industry were incapable of producing films that would fulfill the medium’s technical potential. Instead, he argued, film producers used film to promote conservative ideology. Eggebrecht characterized films that compensated artificially for the unfulfilled needs of workers as ideological weapons in the service of Weimar’s reactionary forces. He also warned against seemingly neutral scientific and educational films, focusing specifically on Ufa’s cultural film department and implying that its films, too, advocated a conservative viewpoint.

At this point, the KPD’s response to commercial cinema concentrated on exposing the industry’s ideological orientation. Eggebrecht, for example, encouraged class-conscious workers to combat the influence of entertainment and pedagogical films by discussing them with their families and friends. He and the other cultural activists of the KPD made no proposals for alternative film production. Their orientation changed when the Volksfilmbühne was founded in Berlin. The emergence of a concrete, union-based alternative to commercial cinema stimulated new discussion: the KPD now considered more seriously the nature of proletarian film activity, including production under the existing economic and political conditions.

A representative from the Kommunistische Jugend (Communist Youth, KJ) named Stephan (pseudonym?) reported on the union movement’s efforts with his “Volks-Film-Bühne” (“People’s Film Theater”) in Die Rote Fahne on 3 October 1922. Stephan reiterated the statements of previous critics, claiming that the forces of capitalism had appropriated the film medium to manipulate public opinion and distract workers from revolutionary struggles. Like earlier critics, he offered very little detailed evidence to support that claim. Instead, Stephan praised the efforts of the Volksfilmbühne to counteract the conservative influence of films on workers. His suggestion for production illustrated that he also rejected fictional portrayals that distorted everyday reality. Stephan called for films that would expose the contradictions of capitalism and present strategies to resolve them. He criticized the Volksfilmbühne for selecting a sentimental film about an individual family and asserted that proletarian films must demonstrate the class character of social contradictions, as well as suggest strategies to dissolve them.

As had been the case in “Cinema and Proletariat,” the perspective here differed significantly from that of cultural activists who had promoted Proletkult concepts. On the surface, Stephan’s remarks seem similar to those of Franz Jung. Like Jung, Stephan believed that under the existing circumstances revolutionary artists should strive to increase the perception among workers that their experiences were shared and that they were engaged collectively in a struggle against other social classes. But Stephan’s suggestion for the cultivation of proletarian collectivity centered almost exclusively on film content. Although he encouraged KJ members to participate energetically in monitoring the quality of Volksfilmbühne films, Stephan seemed interested primarily in creating a medium for the most class-conscious members of the KPD to enlighten workers, from a position of superior insight and authority.

His article reinforced that impression by describing what would transpire if the Volksfilmbühne followed his directions for film production: “Then it will become a powerful tool of the proletariat to arouse the feeble and halfhearted, to… steel the workers for new battles.” Whereas Piscator, Schüller, Jung, and others developed forms of collective production and reception that would help workers to organize their experiences cooperatively and increase their sense of solidarity, Stephan preserved the narrative authority. He relied on the filmmaker’s ability to use film content in a way that would raise the class consciousness of workers. Just how the filmmaker would accomplish that task remained unclear.

In “Der revolutionäre Film” (“The Revolutionary Film”), which appeared in Die Rote Fahne exactly one week after Stephan’s article, Béla Balázs responded directly to Stephan’s proposals and explained how film content could influence audiences.¹⁴ Belázs supported Stephan’s appraisal of mainstream cinema, suggesting that absolutely no product of the existing industry could be of use to the revolutionary working class. Like those before him, Balázs detected a conscious effort among conservative capitalists to use film as an ideological weapon. He criticized the portrayal of specific subjects, noting, for example, that revolutionaries appeared in many films as corrupt and villainous figures. Balázs proclaimed that the only alternative for the KPD was to move quickly to begin producing its own films.

He shared Stephan’s vision of proletarian film as a tool to be used in raising class consciousness and increasing the desire to fight. However, his proposal demonstrated that Balázs understood more deeply than his predecessors how commercial films influenced their audience. The films evoked emotional responses, exciting and inspiring exhausted workers who longed for entertainment. Balázs rejected the conservative ideology of commercial films, but he accepted and even promoted the prevailing forms of cinematic expression. He perceived proletarian filmmakers to be in competition with influential film companies for the attention of working-class filmgoers. Balázs asserted that the KPD should establish film studios and produce films that would be just as exciting and inspiring as the ostentatious bourgeois films.

Only the subject matter had to change. Balázs called for films about revolutionary events with revolutionary heroes to replace the detective films, royal dramas, Indian hunts, and Oriental fables that dominated the market. Instead of investigating how standard aesthetic forms might reinforce authoritarian structures, promote uncritical reception, and reproduce the need for entertainment, Balázs encouraged proletarian filmmakers to use the dominant forms in their films, also suggesting that such an endeavor could succeed financially.

“Das proletarische Kino” (“The Proletarian Cinema,” 11 November 1922) temporarily concluded the discussion of the film medium in Die Rote Fahne with a reply to Balázs. The article’s author, Barthel-Baßler (pseudonym?), began with the typical critique of commercial cinema’s conservative ideological orientation and the need to counteract the industry’s influence. However, this article questioned the possibility of making proletarian films in what it characterized as a bourgeois-capitalist society. Barthel-Baßler argued that many of the civil servants who enforced film censorship laws remained loyal to the Prussian monarchy. They tolerated the new republican society but were more likely to allow films such as Fridericus Rex than those with a progressive orientation. Barthel-Baßler used the argument to support the claim that economic and political change would have to precede revolutionary cultural change. The article cited the birth of proletarian film in Soviet Russia as a model. By 1922 the Aufbau, Industrie und Handels A.G. (Construction, Industry, and Trade Inc., AIH), an organization of the IAH, had begun to distribute Soviet films in Germany. Barthel-Baßler had seen some of the films but made no mention of possible cooperation between the Soviet Union and the KPD in making and distributing films. Such films only demonstrated to German workers what they could have as soon as they succeeded in their struggle for revolutionary economic and political change.

Although articles on film appeared with relative frequency in Die Rote Fahne in 1922, the KPD’s discussion of film remained unsystematic. As the deterioration of Germany’s economy accelerated in 1923, the party once again focused on political struggles. The increase of hunger seemed to spur interest in those activities perceived as more likely to bring about rapid social change. The Communist press only occasionally published articles on film, and plans for the production of proletarian films gained little support.

According to the existing research, before renewed revolutionary fervor could postpone work on a proletarian cinema, the defeat of Communist uprisings and the cultural heritage of the SPD had fostered skepticism.¹⁵ The defeat of uprisings, culminating with that of March 1921, allegedly had rendered the Communist left insecure and relatively submissive to Weimar authority. It seems likely that similar attitudes influenced Communists like Barthel-Baßler who considered it inappropriate to advocate the production of revolutionary films that conservative Weimar censors easily could reject. Those who asserted the primacy of the material base and argued that revolutionary economic and political change was necessary to create the foundation for proletarian film production based their judgments to a large extent on what they had learned from Franz Mehring, Karl Kautsky, and others.

The continuing discussion of film in the Communist press suggests that at least one other factor limited the party’s interest in film production before 1924. In “Der proletarische Film” (“The Proletarian Film,” Internationale Presse-Korrespondenz, 7 April 1923), Edwin Hoernle, the KPD’s leading cultural advocate, expressed his skepticism by referring to the strength of the film industry. Hoernle agreed with Eggebrecht, Stephan, and others who asserted that dominant capitalist forces had utilized film consciously to promote a conservative and often reactionary ideology. He also believed that the only way to counteract the influence of mainstream cinema was to challenge it with an alternative cinema. According to Hoernle, proletarian filmmakers should produce dramatic films with just as much suggestive power as commercial films, but with a revolutionary perspective. They should produce humorous films, satirizing and ironically portraying the dominant social forces. They also should produce newsreels and pedagogical films, exposing the accounts of natural and social phenomena in commercial films as superficial and slanted.

But Hoernle was less optimistic than Balázs about the possibility of competing successfully with the film industry under the existing conditions. In contrast to Barthel-Baßler, who cited the constraints of censorship, Hoernle emphasized economic constraints. It was difficult for him to imagine how the young and relatively weak German Communist party could compete with the industry’s impressive studio system, extensive theater network, and experience in making films, which were attracting over one million customers daily.

Although Hoernle questioned the KPD’s ability to compete prior to a proletarian revolution, like Balázs he was unable to do anything but develop plans within the context of direct commercial and ideological competition with the existing industry. They felt compelled to counteract the powerful influence of commercial film, but at least initially, their only model for such an endeavor was that of the existing cinema. As a result, they borrowed from it what they thought would help them in competing with it. Hoernle and Balázs were far ahead of their counterparts in the SPD insofar as they began to investigate the relationship between film and politics. However, their understanding of the film industry and the ways in which it communicated and reinforced an ideological point of view remained fairly superficial.

All of the participants in the KPD’s discussion of film perceived the influence of politically conservative individuals in film companies and suggested that such individuals determined the subject matter and the portrayal of specific character types. They criticized filmmakers who preferred historical films that glorified the Prussian monarchy and idolized its political and military leaders. Some of them also recognized the tendency of commercial films to appeal to the unsatisfied desires of workers and to suggest that talented people would be rewarded with upward social mobility. But no one articulated that, in addition to political orientation, capitalist competition and the profit motive influenced the choices of decision makers in the film industry. There was no discussion of the fact that one commercially successful film about the Prussian monarchy would motivate the production of similar films relatively independent of ideological considerations. Furthermore, no one mentioned the efforts of producers to market films using stereotypical stars, sensational publicity, and palatial theaters. Questions about the ideological impact of standardized production and about the degree to which competing proletarian filmmakers would be forced to use similar methods remained unanswered.

Most KPD critics of mainstream cinema concentrated on film content, arguing that proletarian filmmakers should replace conservative subject matter with revolutionary subject matter: proletarian films should portray the October Revolution, the life of Karl Marx, and the concepts of dialectical materialism, not the Seven Years’ War, the life of Frederick the Great, and concepts of metaphysics or positivism. Eggebrecht, Stephan, and others seemed less concerned with the organizational structure that enabled individuals to determine subject matter than with the decisions made by such individuals. Their critiques also ignored aesthetic factors and their effect on reception. Even Hoernle and Balázs, who discussed film’s suggestive power, were vague about the aesthetic techniques that produced the effect. Moreover, they encouraged proletarian filmmakers to strive for a similar effect. Their proposals opened the door for the uncritical appropriation of forms of production and reception that reproduced authoritarian relationships among filmmakers, as well as between films (as the authoritative and suggestively appealing portrayals of natural and social phenomena) and uncritically responding, misinformed, and uninformed audiences.

Only Hoernle considered an alternative. Instead of restricting his discussion to film content and tacitly affirming conventional forms of production and reception, Hoernle advocated the establishment of a Proletkino in which revolutionary workers would make suggestions about subject matter and critically evaluate the final product. According to him, though, the Proletkino would become a reality only under socialism. It was another five years before the KPD participated in building an organization similar to Hoernle’s Proletkino to facilitate social change within Weimar’s capitalistic economic system. (See the discussion of the Volksfilmverband in Chapter II.)

In the meantime, the moderate factions in the communist movement gradually suppressed political and cultural forms of leftist radicalism. Their growing strength increased the likelihood that proletarian filmmakers would reject Hoernle’s concept of a Proletkino in favor of a cinema that employed conventional forms of production and reception. The last article on film to appear in Die Rote Fahne during the postwar crisis years, P. M. Kerschenzev’s “Aufgaben des staatlichen Kinos” (“Tasks of the State Cinema,” 4 February 1923), offers a good example. Kerschenzev, who had been a leading proponent of Proletkult ideas in the Soviet Union and who in 1920–1921 had provided Piscator and Schüller with important impulses for their experiments, proposed an approach to socialist cinema that differed remarkably from the Proletkult approach to culture. The change in Kerschenzev’s perspective was a result of the confrontation between the Bolshevik party leadership and the Proletkult movement.

In 1920 an adversary relationship developed between the Russian Communist party (Bolshevik) and the Proletkult movement. To a large extent it resembled the political and cultural disputes between more moderate KPD members and leftist radicals in Germany.¹⁶ Lenin accused the Proletkult leaders of expecting too much change too soon. When, by the end of 1920, the Proletkult organizations had attracted over five hundred thousand members, the Bolsheviks moved to weaken their influence. The measures succeeded. By 1922 the Proletkult movement had submitted to party rule, and its leading theoretician, Bogdanov, had been discredited. The Proletkult slowly disappeared.¹⁷

The Proletkulfs submission to party control and the effect of that submission on cultural development in the Soviet Union is apparent in Kerschenzev’s comments on film. (The appearance of his article in Die Rote Fahne also demonstrated the growing unity between the Bolsheviks and the KPD on cultural issues.) As the title suggests, Kerschenzev subjected film production to the control of central state authority. Nowhere in the article did he mention the potential value or even the possibility of collective production and reception at the grass-roots level. On the contrary, Kerschenzev’s proposals imply an authoritarian relationship between the state’s filmmakers and uneducated, uninformed audiences. Film would function as a medium with which filmmakers could teach workers and peasants about the class struggles of the past and present.

Kerschenzev criticized the treatment of history in commercial films, but he expressed none of the Proletkulf’s skepticism about the value of history for contemporary struggles. He advocated the production of historical films in which individual participants in past struggles would appear as heroic leaders. He made no reference to the possibility that such films might reinforce a trust in authoritarian personalities and hinder the development of democratic proletarian collectivity.

Kerschenzev made a similar suggestion for a film chronicle. Here, too, he mentioned nothing about the advantages of allowing workers and peasants to collect their own information and organize their own experiences into an ideological viewpoint. The state’s film chronicle would assume responsibility for informing about and explaining current events. According to Kerschenzev, the film chronicle would be most effective if it posited simple binary oppositions. Instead of presenting the complex contradictions inherent in all social phenomena and challenging spectators to produce an ideological view in dialogue with the film, the film chronicle should juxtapose czarist conditions with socialist conditions or compare conditions in the capitalist West with those in the Soviet Union. It should portray czarism and capitalism as evil and the socialist system of the Soviet Union as good.¹⁸ He also suggested that Soviet films could be very important in spreading socialist ideals and news about the Soviet Union to foreign countries. He was affirming the type of activity the IAH had initiated in cooperation with Soviet filmmakers beginning in 1921.

THE FILM ACTIVITY OF THE IAH: 1921–1924

In the fall of 1921 the executive committee of the Comintern organized the IAH to coordinate efforts to aid Russians suffering because of a severe drought in the agriculturally vital Volga River region.¹⁹ The IAH almost immediately commissioned Soviet filmmakers to produce short documentaries on the effect of the drought on living conditions in Russia. By October 1921, when Max Barthel traveled to several German cities to seek donations for the IAH, his presentation included screenings of the first Soviet documentary films to reach Germany. As early as 1922 the IAH had begun to schedule major film events. On 26 March 1922 Hunger in Sowjetrußland (Hunger in Soviet Russia) premiered in Berlin, and Die Wolga hinunter (Downstream on the Volga) followed a short time later. In the summer of that year, the IAH organized the AIH to administer the distribution of Soviet films in Germany and in the other countries where the IAH was active. The AIH developed contractual agreements with the Proletkult collective and the state-controlled Goskino in Moscow. It also was involved directly in the film production of the Rus film collective.

Until 1923 the IAH concentrated exclusively on the distribution of informative documentary films about everyday life in the Soviet Union, which illustrated the early achievements of the Bolsheviks and paid tribute to Soviet leaders. The films were so successful that the AIH decided to expand its program to include featured films and to open its own theater. The first Russian entertainment films shown in Germany were Polikuschka, produced by the Rus collective in 1919, and Das Wunder des Soldaten Iwan (The Miracle of Ivan, the Soldier), the work of another collective of young Russian artists. Both films portrayed life in czarist Russia in the nineteenth century.

Polikuschka, based on a story by Leo Tolstoy, juxtaposed the hopeless living conditions of the servant Polikuschka and his family with the luxurious life of his master. The plot was simple: Polikuschka’s master sends him to the city for money; Polikuschka loses the money while returning from the city and hangs himself. According to Gertrud Alexander, who affirmed the film’s ability to evoke sympathy for Polikuschka, its value lay in Ivan Moskvin’s portrayal of the servant (“Polikuschka im Ufa-Palast,” Die Rote Fahne, 7 March 1923).

The Miracle of Ivan, the Soldier, a humorous film about a young farmer’s son who is forced into the army, exposed the hypocrisy of czarist society. While Ivan is away, his parents suffer from a bad harvest, and the landowner harasses Ivan’s girlfriend. In the army he sees the treasures of the court and realizes that just a fraction of that wealth would suffice to restore the happiness of his family and girlfriend. He steals a jewel from a religious idol, which his regiment has received as a gift, and claims that the Holy Virgin gave it to him. His officers and the priests refuse to believe Ivan, but the superstitious masses accept his story. In the end, the czarist authorities choose to release Ivan, instead of discrediting their own authority by questioning the popular belief in religious miracles.

Both films portrayed czarist Russia superficially. The world of Polikuschka and Ivan was good, and the world of the landowners and the court was bad. The first Soviet feature films screened in Germany encouraged audiences to sympathize with the exploited and to condemn the ruling classes of czarist Russia as wasteful and hypocritical. They did little to stimulate workers to develop their own critical skills.

The surprising success of the IAH’s film program, including the first documentaries and features from the Soviet Union, contributed to the changing attitude about film in Communist circles, as did both the victory of moderate factions in their struggle with the leftist radicals and, not least of all, the strength of the commercial film industry, itself. Communists gradually developed long-term political and cultural strategies that included a proletarian film program.