14

THE SPD AND FILM: THE INTENSIFYING CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL REACTION IN COMMERCIAL FILM AND THE PARTY’s PROGRAM OF CINEMATIC PROPAGANDA

Between 1929 and 1933 film coverage in the SPD press and the SPD’s program for production, distribution, and screening changed only minimally.¹ The central party newspaper, Vorwärts, paid limited attention to film, a policy it had initiated in 1928. In 1929 the Monatliche Mitteilungen, the journal of the Film und Lichtbilddienst, began appearing monthly, then every two months, and finally on a quarterly basis in May 1930. Its reports in no way matched those of Vorwärts prior to 1928. Instead of following the development of the film industry and reviewing films, the Monatliche Mitteilungen reported almost exclusively on the activity of the party’s program. Some issues also included excerpts from reviews printed in Sozialistische Bildung, an educational journal which also began appearing in 1929. But the general trend here and in the entire Social Democratic press was to shift attention from commercial film and intensify efforts to build the FuL.

Vorwärts film coverage sustained many focal points that had been established earlier in the Weimar era. An example was its interest in technological innovation. Articles such as “Der erste ‘Farben-Tonfilm’” (“The First ‘Color-Sound Film,’” 9 March 1930) and “Die Lunge wird gefilmt” (“The Lung Is Filmed,” 15 May 1930) demonstrated that the interest remained uncritical.² The newspaper uncritically affirmed innovation as a contribution to the general progress of humanity.

Vorwärts critics also continued their campaign to expose the influence of conservative and reactionary interest groups on commercial production. Articles, including “Milliardenverlust der Terra” (“Terra’s Loss of Billions,” 8 January 1930), informed readers about the further concentration of power among the most wealthy antirepublican interest groups in the industry. Others, such as “Filmzensur und Ufa-Monopol” (“Film Censorship and Ufa Monopoly,” 31 December 1930), reported on the national censorship board’s activity, arguing that its decisions increasingly favored the militaristic and nationalistic films of Germany’s largest producers while restricting the efforts of smaller companies, including the FuL. The newspaper paid particular attention to the censorship of All Quiet on the Western Front in December 1930 and Into the Third Reich, produced by the Film und Werbeabteilung of the SPD and submitted to the censors in January 1931. In both cases Vorwärts articles criticized the censors’ decisions but withheld judgment about public demonstrations. The SPD remained loyal to parliamentary democracy.

As had been the case earlier, Social Democratic journalists based their support for films such as All Quiet on the Western Front primarily on plot analysis. Erich Gottgetreu’s comments in “Neue Filme” (“New Films,” 6 March 1932) typify SPD commentary: “Socialism and truth and art are a holy trinity, for which there is no exception.… The Maidens in Uniform … in the forced uniformity of boarding-school life…, the proof for the senselessness … of war in No-Man s Land…, the bitter satire of an inhumane bureaucracy in the Captain of Köpenick— all of that is propaganda for socialism, because it is propaganda for humanism.” Each of the cited films employed techniques of narrative cohesion and incorporated sound in a way that encouraged spectators to affirm their ideological orientations, but Gottgetreu was satisfied. For him and other Vorwärts critics, mainstream films that criticized militaristic discipline, war, and inhumane bureaucracies were unconditionally praiseworthy.³

As the statement about socialism, truth, and art indicates, during the last years of the Weimar Republic Vorwärts film critics increasingly abandoned allegiance to concepts of autonomous art. The central party newspaper openly praised films with a clear connection to existing social issues as long as they posited what the editors perceived as a socialist perspective and characterized as the truth. By ascribing to socialist ideology the quality of truth and suggesting that the SPD was responsible for generating that ideology, Vorwärts critics claimed the authority to dictate to readers the criteria for evaluating films about everyday life in Weimar society. They now applauded films that in their estimation conveyed absolute truths about social development, while reserving the authority to evaluate what was true or false/good or bad for themselves and their party.⁴

The same logic also characterized the Vorwärts attitude toward the use of film for election campaigns. Articles such as “die Technik im Wahlkampf” (“Technology in Election Campaigns,” 28 September 1932) expressed clearly the party’s strategy: “The election campaigns of the future will be led foremost by engineers and technicians. Perhaps new occupations, which we do not yet anticipate, will emerge in this field.”⁵ In 1932 Social Democrats seemed more concerned about winning elections than they were about encouraging German voters to participate actively in organizing their experiences into an ideological strategy for social change. They relied on parliamentary democracy, deemphasizing the necessity for critical democratic interaction at the grass-roots level and reinforcing public susceptibility to authoritarian leadership. Similarly, Vorwärts critics asserted their authority and acclaimed or condemned socially critical films, assessing the ideological orientation of plotlines and their relation to the Social Democratic perspective. They rarely took the next step and criticized mainstream cinema’s compensatory attraction. However, there were a few notable exceptions.

While the number of reports about developments in the film industry and reviews of individual films decreased, the number of short stories and serialized novels remained constant. Occasionally they assumed even more space than prior to 1929. The short stories and novels appeared to provide entertainment for readers who sought an alternative to the serious political and economic reports that filled the headlines. A closer look reveals that they also addressed pressing social issues and often suggested parablelike morals to their readers.

Occasionally the short stories depicted the interaction of the German public with commercial cinema and exposed the fictional world of films as a dream world. Stories such as “Arbeitslose gehen ins Kino…” (“The Unemployed Go to the Movies…,” 12 March 1930) and “Abschied nach einem Film” (“Farewell after a Film,” 27 September 1932) portrayed the dissatisfaction of moviegoers who realized that most mainstream films offered only temporary and artificial relief from daily frustrations. They demonstrated the SPD’s acceptance of commercial narrative techniques, but the SPD employed the techniques to maximize political success by criticizing their commercial and ideological orientation.

K. R. Neubert’s “Farewell after a Film” illustrates well how such stories employed narrative techniques to persuade readers to accept their ideological viewpoints without critical participation. The story depicts an episode in the lives of Walter and Lola, an engaged couple. Walter is politically conscious and lower in the social hierarchy than Lola, the self-centered, politically naive daughter of a wealthy businessman. The story begins with a rendezvous at the Gloria-Palast in Berlin. Walter and Lola disagree about the film they should see; Lola prefers a Manöverlustspiel (military farce) in the Gloria-Palast, and Walter argues for a pacifistic French war film in a smaller theater across the street. Finally Lola suggests that they separate and meet again after the screenings. The narrator then assumes Walter’s perspective as he realizes that Lola belongs to another world and that he must become politically active to stop the militarism at work in Weimar society. When Walter leaves the theater, he avoids Lola, returns to his home, and writes his fiancée, explaining why they must break their engagement.

“Farewell after a Film,” like many commercial films, juxtaposed unambiguous images of its central characters. By portraying Walter as politically conscious, compassionate, and pacifistic while depicting Lola as a naive and egocentric bourgeois daughter, Neubert invited his readers to sympathize with Walter and condemn Lola. He motivated the evaluation further by associating the narrator’s perspective with that of the protagonist, who supplies his arguments in favor of dissolving the engagement, while Lola remains silent.

Neubert asked his readers to accept Walter’s evaluation as the unconditionally valid moral of the story: film has political significance even when it purports to entertain. Audiences, the story suggests, should recognize film’s ideological significance, reject commercial entertainment, and embrace films that promote pacifism and other humanist values.

Only at the end of 1932 did Vorwärts editors initiate an alternative approach. After concentrating for over a decade on establishing and strengthening their own authority to evaluate the quality of Weimar culture, they invited readers to participate in an open discussion about Irmgard Keun’s Gilgi, eine von uns (Gilgi, One of Us). The novel had appeared in the newspaper in serialized form in the summer and fall of 1932. On 9 October in “Ein Volksroman wird Film” (“A People’s Novel Becomes Film”) the editors announced the coming film adaptation and their intention to solicit readers’ participation in evaluating the story. Approximately a week later the first group of responses appeared under the title “Eine von uns?” (“One of Us?” 18 October 1932). The article included the following comments: “In this way the novel of a young female author… becomes educational: it calls for criticism, it motivates us to think through a problem that concerns us all—and thus has a creative function. But this creative critique should not remain that of the individual. It should engage the public … it should be carried to the author and thus create a connection between artist and audience, as is— despite all the barons and the cultural reaction—appropriate for a democratic epoch.”

The Vorwärts initiative was far less radical than Anna Siemsen had advocated, but it was a step toward the reintegration of art into everyday life. Female readers responded enthusiastically by evaluating Keun’s novel and suggesting modifications. At least one contributor even expressed the wish that Vorwärts editors use their experiment as a model for future grass-roots discussions of literature (“Kunst/Kitsch/Leben?”—“Art/ Triviality/Life?” 28 October 1932). The editors neither accepted the suggestion nor repeated the experiment. The Vorwärts reaction to the film version of Gilgi, One of Us demonstrated just how limited the initiative was. The film had its premiere in Berlin’s Capitol Theater on 20 October, and as usual, an authoritative review appeared the next day in Vorwärts (see “Gilgi auf der Leinewand”—“Gilgi on the Screen,” 21 October 1932).

There are a number of plausible explanations for the onetime experiment with a more democratic approach to the evaluation of art in the Social Democratic press. It is possible that as the economic crisis intensified and the popularity of both the NSDAP and the KPD increased, party leaders became more sensitive to internal criticisms about their authoritarian rule and unwillingness to assume a more radical course.⁶ Many of the SPD’s left-wing critics, including Anna Siemsen, also had proposed changes in the party’s approach to education and culture. It is equally possible that Vorwärts editors were emulating campaigns similar to those employed by the IAH newspapers. Die Welt am Abend and Berlin am Morgen had gained rapid and widespread attention during the years of relative stability (see Chapter 10). Both occasionally invited readers to submit evaluations of literature and other cultural products. Finally, the efforts of Heinz Lüdecke and Korea Senda to stimulate grassroots proletarian film criticism in the VFV Arbeiterbühne und Film (see Chapter 16) may have served as a model. Whatever the motivation, the enthusiastic response and the absence of any further invitations demonstrated both the desire of the Vorwärts readers to participate and the unwillingness of the editors to abandon positions of authority.

THE FuL AND ITS MONATLICHE MITTEILUNGEN

While the limited coverage of mainstream cinema persisted in Vorwärts, the SPD intensified efforts to build the FuL into a more effective organization for attracting the attention of German voters and persuading them to support Social Democratic candidates and policies. Just how significant the party’s program for film production and distribution had grown by 1929 became evident in September of that year when the Sozialistischer Kulturbund devoted its national convention in Frankfurt to a discussion of film and radio.⁷ The two-day event included an exhibition of FuL equipment, a film series highlighting the technical and artistic development of the medium, and a session in which SPD cultural leaders presented papers. Topics included the SPD’s use of film, the significance of sound, music’s role in film, and film censorship. Participants responded to the papers and suggested guidelines for the party’s future film work.

The exhibition of equipment and the film series strengthened the impression that the SPD emphasized technical achievements and artistic quality. In his opening address “Film und Funk in ihrer Bedeutung für die Arbeiterschaft” (“The Significance of Film and Radio for the Workers,” Film und Funk, 9–14), the president of the Kulturbund, Heinrich Schulz, reinforced the emphasis. He affirmed technological achievements in general and asserted that the organized working class was capable of employing technology for the public welfare, though technology maximized the profit of a select minority in the existing social context.

Schulz perceived film as a technological achievement but also as a form of artistic expression especially capable of generating the illusion of reality and more accessible than painting or theater. According to Schulz, it intensified dramatic effects and exerted them on a much larger segment of the German population. As such, he argued, film provided the most effective medium for SPD leaders to communicate to the masses, from above, their insights about social development: “The struggling and striving working class… does not wish to win with the armor of barbarians. … It wishes to win with the growing insight of the masses, with their insight into the causes of their problems and the means for their liberation. In this respect radio and film may help us, in this respect we wish to nurture them” (14). Here again, an SPD leader expressed the party’s orientation toward reformism and legitimized parliamentary democracy as well as central party leadership. With the education of the masses in mind, Schulz advised the SPD to continue to expand its film program to promote candidates and policies, to attract members, to advertise its newspapers, and to increase the effectiveness of the party’s educational program.

The second presentation, Siegfried Nestriepke’s “Die technischen und kulturellen Möglichkeiten des Films” (“The Technical and Cultural Possibilities of Film,” Film und Funk, 15–29), outlined in greater detail the use of film in Weimar society and the possibilities for a proletarian alternative. Nestriepke, the co-director of the Berlin Volksbühne, began his address, as had Heinrich Schulz, by affirming the use of film for scientific research, pedagogy, and political propaganda. He also characterized cinematic documentation and entertainment as worthwhile endeavors. Film’s value for each of these activities, Nestriepke argued, resided in its capacity to expand the boundaries of human perception, to reproduce authentic images of reality, to illustrate concepts, and to evoke human emotions.

He supported Schulz’s position by focusing on the medium’s dramatic potential and evaluating it positively. However, in contrast to Schulz, who traced film’s dramatic potential to its ability to suggest the illusion of reality, Nestriepke refused to acknowledge that filmic representation could equal the realistic quality of theater. For him film generated drama with its uniquely optical language: “A film text demands the engagement of only one sense—that of the eye—while the ear and the intellect, which transforms words into concepts, remain relaxed.… One should not underestimate the advantage that film consequently possesses” (17). Nestriepke’s concept of cinematic reception is significant for two reasons. It indicated, as did the subsequent presentations on the role of sound and music,⁸ that the SPD’s film experts had only a very superficial understanding of sound’s narrative potential. It also demonstrated that Nestriepke, like most other Social Democrats, had no reservations about the ideological impact of standard forms of cinematic reception.

Nestriepke outlined more specifically than other Social Democratic film critics and cultural activists the system of photographic and montage techniques used by commercial filmmakers to guide reception. He equated the mastery of the system with artistic achievement. He praised directors and cameramen who strove consciously to construct cohesive narrative structures, using shot composition and montage to induce audience responses. After citing a number of examples in which commercial filmmakers had integrated, in his estimation artistically, the various elements of the existing cinematic code to juxtapose fictional characters, create suspense, associate the spectators’ perspective with that of the protagonist, and elicit their sympathy, Nestriepke criticized the aesthetic as well as political quality of most commercial films: “The great majority of… films have little or nothing to do with art.… Instead of offering logical plots with inner tension, they present a more or less senseless accumulation of events and adventures that intend nothing more than the satisfaction of superficial visual curiosity.… These films are not only aesthetically but also ethically worthless, if not even dangerous. … It is these films in which brute force is glorified, militarism is praised, stupid subservience to authority is valorized, and the command to be dependent is preached” (19).

According to Nestriepke, there normally was a connection between a film’s aesthetic and ideological quality. Most ideologically unacceptable commercial films, he asserted, were also aesthetically inadequate. However, ideologically unacceptable films with a high aesthetic quality were praiseworthy: “The truly artistic enriches our knowledge of human beings and life so much that the specific ideological perspective of the artist by comparison no longer plays a significant role” (21). Here Nestriepke revealed his latent allegiance to a concept of autonomous art that considered aesthetic impact relatively independent of its ideological significance. While criticizing commercial film’s militaristic and authoritarian tendencies, he suggested that its autonomous aesthetic qualities were more important.

Nestriepke also outlined possibilities for improving the aesthetic as well as the ideological quality of mainstream film. Each of his proposals envisioned increased democracy in cinema, but also perpetuated its fundamentally authoritarian structures. First, critics and other film experts should educate the masses about the medium’s aesthetic and ideological qualities so that they could exercise a more informed influence on production. Secondly, although Nestriepke contemplated and even advocated nationalizing the industry in the future, he stressed that production would remain the responsibility of a talented elite. Filmgoers would influence production indirectly through consumer organizations. Communities could operate communal theaters and regulate the screening of films. In addition, organizations such as the FuL could influence production by selecting “worthwhile” films and promoting them through distribution programs. Finally, voters could appeal to their representatives to control film’s aesthetic and ideological quality.⁹

The presentations by Heinrich Schulz and Siegfried Nestriepke included the most advanced statements of the SPD’s film policy.¹⁰ During the final years of the Weimar Republic, the SPD followed their suggestions and expanded its film programs. The FuL, as Heinrich Schulz had proposed, intensified efforts to attract the attention of German voters and win support for SPD candidates and policies. It also strove to educate party members and sympathizers about Social Democratic ideology. Following Nestriepke’s argumentation, the FuL also increased its indirect influence on commercial production by selecting films for distribution. It worked to maximize effectiveness by producing films that guided reception with cinematic codes of narrative cohesion.

The journal of the FuL, the Monatliche Mitteilungen, which began appearing in 1929, provides the most detailed account of the SPD’s film activity at the end of the Weimar era.¹¹ As mentioned above, it appeared monthly, then every two months, and finally quarterly in issues of ten to fifteen pages. Issues often began with articles such as “Vom Wert des Films für die Parteibewegung” (“On the Value of Film for the Party Movement,” April 1930). They offered descriptions of and guidelines for the SPD film program. The contributors provided very specific instructions for organizing local film events. They advised local party leaders to publicize events with posters and advance ticket sales, decorate the theater or hall with SPD banners and other party symbols, open with a short, gripping speech, include a brief blatantly political film, follow with an intermission, and then screen a full-length entertainment film. By featuring entertainment, the authors explained, organizers could attract the less interested and then attempt to win their support.

Just as the FuL leadership minimized the initiative of local officials, so should the local officials minimize the critical participation of audiences. In “On the Value of Film for the Party Movement,” J. Päckert directed his readers to maximize their influence on those who attended SPD film events; lure them with entertainment, stimulate their interest in the party with banners, then educate them with powerful oration and effective propaganda films. Neither Päckert nor any other contributor suggested that local officials invite discussion or encourage participant initiatives.

In addition to establishing guidelines for film events, the Monatliche Mitteilungen advertised FuL films. It also provided information, including short synopses about the other films it distributed. The FuL distributed a wide variety of films, ranging from what it considered to be socially critical commercial films, such as The Illegitimate, to Soviet films like Mother. It included Social Democratic films as well as Prometheus films.¹² The only excluded films were those that glorified the Prussian monarchy, mystified Germany’s role in World War I, openly perpetuated the myth of upward social mobility, or seemed pornographic.

Finally, the Monatliche Mitteilungen reported on the SPD’s use of film at the district level throughout Germany. After beginning very modestly in 1926 with just 15 films, the FuL increased its distribution to 2,645 in 1930 and consumed approximately one-third of the Reich Education Committee budget (Schumann, 84). Between 1930 and 1932 the most important function of the FuL was to provide films for election campaigns. The SPD incorporated film into three to four thousand campaign events yearly during the period and reached as many as 750,000 voters who otherwise received no substantial information from the SPD. At least some district officials asserted that film had helped them to increase the number of SPD voters (Monatliche Mitteilungen, October/December 1930).

The SPD was pleased with the success of its film program. Nevertheless, just two years later the National Socialists assumed power and the Weimar Republic dissolved. In retrospect, the SPD’s strategy for building a united front in support of the republic and its reliance on film as a component of its strategy seem far less successful. A closer look at some of the campaign films suggets at least a partial explanation for the SPD’s inability to generate the support necessary to counteract the National Socialist surge.

Social Democratic district officials reported in 1930 that they screened Was wir schufen (What We Created, 1928) and Dem Deutschen Volke (For the German People, 1928–1929) more often than other campaign films. The first film depicted the SPD’s achievements with municipal programs, youth programs, and programs for the elderly between 1919 and 1927. In each case images and short texts introduced problems, then portrayed Social Democratic officials contemplating solutions, and ultimately presented average individuals and families taking advantage of Social Democratic programs: a worker traveling on the new subway system, young people receiving advice about employment, elderly citizens in nursing homes, etc. The film concluded with the imperative: “Vote for Social Democrats!”

The second film, For the German People, was one of many animated campaign films produced by the Film und Lichtbilddienst between 1929 and 1932.¹³ This film criticized the programs of the other major parties. It begins with an image of the Reichstag building where the bourgeois coalition distributes money to landlords, high military officers, wealthy industrialists, and the agrarian elite. When a worker arrives and requests his share, he receives nothing. Then a short text explains that an emergency decree has led to the dissolution of parliament. Now an overweight, well-dressed man appears. He is a caricature of the bourgeois businessman. He eats abundantly, slumbers, and dreams about the evil worker. While dreaming, he repeatedly asks, “Who will save capitalism?” Images of party leaders appear after each repetition. Alfred Hugenberg promises to fight savagely for a dictatorship. Adolf Hitler proclaims, “Down with the Marxists!”—and explodes. A member of the bourgeois coalition is ready to invoke Article 48 to protect middle-class and upper-middle-class interests. Ernst Thälmann splits the workers movement. When the dreaming bourgeois asks the question a final time, the reply is “No one.” The film concludes with a short outline of the SPD’s plan to stop the present government’s exploitive tax program and gives instructions to the audience: “So do this: Vote SPD 1 on 14 September.”

The campaign films encouraged voters to consider the party’s achievements and to contrast them with the achievements of the other major political parties. Between 1930 and 1932 such a strategy might have weakened rather than strengthened the SPD’s position. By claiming that the SPD was directly responsible for municipal and social welfare programs prior to 1928, What We Created also invited audiences to hold the SPD directly accountable for the ensuing economic crisis. In addition, while films such as For the German People effectively identified the most powerful constituents of each political party, arguing that the SPD represented the working class, they offered no real incentive for voters from other social classes to unite with the SPD. On the contrary, they perhaps alienated potential voters by portraying them as enemies of the workers.

Perhaps even more important was the support of SPD campaign films for authoritarian leadership. The animated campaign films simplified the analysis of political relations.¹⁴ They suggested that Social Democrats were competent and conscientious leaders, that the leaders of the other political parties were either dictators or the puppets of an industrial, agricultural, and military elite, and that German voters had only to vote for the correct leaders. With their simplified analysis and claim to documentary authenticity and narrative authority, the films encouraged audiences to accept uncritically simple explanations to complex social problems from authoritarian leaders. Of course, the success of the National Socialists depended on much more than the quality of Social Democratic campaign films. However, films such as What We Created and For the German People did nothing to counteract the voting public’s susceptibility to simplistic analysis and authoritarian leadership. The campaign films also must be seen as symptomatic of the SPD’s general response to the economic and political crisis. Its unbending allegiance to parliamentary democracy, at a time when the political right was exploiting the system to destroy it, and its unwillingness to cooperate with the KPD in a broad united front against the National Opposition only exacerbated the SPD’s problems and accelerated the rise of National Socialism.

Social Democratic organizations also produced two feature films during the final years of the Weimar Republic: Brüder (Brothers, 1929) and Lohnbuchhalter Kremke (Bookkeeper Kremke, 1930). Both were silent films. Although the number of theaters that would screen silent films was steadily decreasing, the distributors of the films did attempt to market them commercially. Brothers, which was filmed in Hamburg, had its premiere in the Schauburg theaters in Hamburg on a Sunday morning just before May Day (28 April 1929),¹⁵ and Bookkeeper Kremke had a normal evening premiere at the Phöbus Palast in Berlin on 15 September 1930. Brothers attracted sixty thousand people in three days in Hamburg, but was unable to draw as well in other German cities; Bookkeeper Kremke was even less successful. The Film-Kurier review (16 September 1930) offered a plausible explanation: “After months we again see a silent film. We are less puzzled by the absence of dialogue than by that of noises. When an accordion plays or a typewriter types, or when people sing, then we wait hopelessly for the sound.”

The SPD did produce a campaign film with sound, Die Sozialdemokratie im Reichstagswahlkampf (Social Democracy in the Parliamentary Election, 1930), in which audiences could hear the speeches of Social Democratic party leaders. But it is very likely that the party was unwilling and perhaps even unable to invest the money necessary to produce a feature sound film. The SPD decided to concentrate on silent films, and while its features were unsuccessful commercially, the FuL distributed them widely for party events.

BROTHERS

The FuL distributed Brothers, but it was the Deutscher Verkehrsbund (German Transportation Federation) in Hamburg that commissioned the Werner Hochbaum Filmproduktion GmbH to produce it.¹⁶ The film depicts the dockworkers’ strike in Hamburg in 1896. Opening sequences introduce the dockworkers’ milieu and juxtapose harbor images and symbols of the state: city hall, policemen, a bust of the kaiser. The story develops around one longshoreman’s attempt to organize co-workers against unfair treatment by their employers. Eventually they form a strike committee and stop traffic in the harbor. While the strike proceeds, the male protagonist receives a visit from his brother—a policeman. The striking dockworker indicates that he is unwilling to tolerate his brother’s presence. The brother leaves and the strike continues. Finally, at Christmas, the police arrest the rebel longshoreman at home and take him to jail.

In front of the jail his co-workers demonstrate, attracting the attention of the police and allowing his sympathetic brother to release him. Following his release, the protagonist returns to a meeting with friends in his home. There the police arrest him again. His friends threaten to intervene, but he dissuades them, arguing that they must organize to bring about change legally. Back in jail, the protagonist learns that the strike has failed. The film concludes with an intertitle, explaining that the strike provided a model and catalyst for working-class struggle over the next three decades: “In thousands and thousands of souls that until then had slumbered, in the souls of thousands and thousands of women and the maturing youth, the igniting spark of enthusiasm fell in these weeks.”

The film’s final statement demonstrates Hochbaum’s effort to establish cinematic authenticity and narrative authority. From an omniscient point of view, the concluding text posits a direct connection between the fictional longshoremen’s strike and the reality of Weimar society. It simultaneously implies that the fictional account is authentic, that the protagonist’s strategy was correct, and that spectators, therefore, should accept his strategy. With the film the leaders of the German Transportation Federation hoped to convince their rank and file to support the union’s program of legal struggle and to reject the more militant tactics of the KPD’s Rote Gewerkschaftsopposition.¹⁷

Hochbaum initiates the film’s narrative authority at the outset through an omniscient narrator who identifies the fictional portrayal with real historical events. Following the title, an intertitle proclaims: “The history of humanity is the history of its class struggles!” The intertitle suggests that the ensuing juxtaposition of harbor scenes and symbols of the state’s power is the beginning of what will be an accurate account of life in Hamburg at the turn of the century. Hochbaum reinforced the illusion of reality by relying heavily on natural settings. He also employed nonprofessional actors.¹⁸

While suggesting authenticity, Hochbaum made little use of photographic and montage techniques to build suspense or associate the spectators’ perspective with that of the protagonist. Instead, he concentrated on techniques designed to associate characters with one another and ascribe symbolic meaning to them. For example, in the opening sequence the camera focuses on a policeman and then slowly tilts to a bust of the kaiser. When the dockworkers enter their employer’s office to request better wages, a portrait of the kaiser can be seen on one wall. When the police struggle with the rebellious protagonist in his home, a sequence juxtaposes shots of the Christmas tree with a close-up of the dockworker’s hand as he falls back against a wall and a nail penetrates it.

Although Hochbaum limited the spectators’ perspective to that of an observer, his narration encouraged them to associate the interests of the exploitive employer with those of the state, to criticize the police as the protector of the state’s and consequently the employer’s interests, and to sympathize with the longshoremen. Their leader appears as a Christ figure—someone who must suffer for the good of the masses. Unlike the SPD campaign films, with their heroic Social Democratic leaders and villainous opponents, Hochbaum’s film invited the audience to sympathize with the policeman as well. Brothers implied that class differences could be reconciled peacefully. As the dockworkers proclaim while demonstrating before the police station: “The world is our fatherland and all humans are brothers.”¹⁹

BOOKKEEPER KREMKE

The second Social Democratic film, Bookkeeper Kremke, was the only feature produced by the FuL between 1929 and 1933. It also was the only film associated with the German left during the Weimar era to be directed by a woman. The head of the FuL, Marie Harder, initiated the project in 1930 and, although she had no experience with production, persuaded Hubert Schonger, a producer of Kultur and Heimat films, to finance it (Schumann, 81).

The film focuses on a petty-bourgeois bookkeeper, Kremke, who loses his job when his employer decides to automate the bookkeeping process. The news devastates Kremke. He had placed all his trust in the existing social system and believed that the unemployed were parasites who should be held accountable for their fates. Kremke immediately looks for work, takes a job as a traveling salesman, has no success, must mortgage his belongings, eventually collects unemployment benefits, and in the end grows totally despondent and commits suicide.

Another story unfolds parallel to Kremke’s—that of his daughter, Lene. At the beginning of the film Lene holds a job in a department store and is engaged to a university student. When the student learns of Kremke’s predicament, he abandons his fiancée. Unlike Kremke, who becomes even more dejected as yet another connection with the middle class dissolves, Lene soon meets another man, a window washer named Erwin. Her new friend remains optimistic, although he also had lost his job as a chauffeur at the department store. Erwin ultimately finds a new chauffeur’s position and asks Lene to marry him. She accepts, but Kremke refuses to abandon his allegiance to the middle class and join his daughter with Erwin in the proletarian milieu. Instead, he takes his life.

The parallel developments of Kremke and Erwin, with Lene moving from her father’s petty-bourgeois world to that of the proletarian Erwin, establish the film’s narrative structure. Bookkeeper Kremke addressed millions of insecure middle- and lower-middle-class Germans who had always dreamed of upward social mobility and feared the possibility of falling into the proletariat. It also challenged both the street film portrayal of the working-class milieu as a “quagmire” filled with criminals and prostitutes and the many commercial films’ perpetuation of the myth of upward social mobility.

In contrast to Werner Hochbaum, Marie Harder engaged professional actors, including Hermann Valentin (Kremke), Anna Sten (Lene), and Kowal Samborski (Erwin). She also shot most of the film in the Hubert Schonger studios in Berlin. Nevertheless, she, too, attempted to generate the illusion of reality and portrayed Kremke’s story as typical. Even before the title appears, numbers and dates roll by, indicating the ever-increasing rate of unemployment between 1927 and 1930. As the rate grows, the size of the numbers grow and the sequence accelerates until very large letters proclaim that the numbers refer to “UNEMPLOYED IN GERMANY!”

The next sequence begins and gradually accelerates as smaller, but progressively enlarging, words describe the condition of the unemployed, the international dimensions, and the narrator’s emotions: “The hungry, helpless, despairing—in Germany, England, in America, ALL OVER THE WORLD!” Now the credits appear, and an intertitle establishes the connection between the everyday world of German workers and the fictional world of Bookkeeper Kremke: “This film reports a fateful story, just like the tragic, if not even more tragic stories that unfold daily—it is the story of—Bookkeeper Kremke.” Again omniscient narration introduces the audience to the fiction and asserts the authority to indicate that Kremke’s story is authentic and typical. At the same time, the sequential rhythm and the graphic progression of the texts convey the narrator’s emotional intensity and encourage a similar audience response.

Photography and montage function similarly to guide reception. The first scene depicts Kremke and his colleagues hard at work. A new machine arrives, and a short, fast-paced sequence suggests its speed. One of the bookkeepers asserts that the machine will replace five of them, but Kremke disagrees. The presentation immediately stimulates skepticism about Kremke’s perspective. Information about rising unemployment and the sequence depicting the machine’s speed suggest that Kremke clings to the past and harbors false expectations about the future. By sharing information with the audience that Kremke either does not have or will not accept, the narrative invites spectators to transcend and criticize Kremke’s perspective.

The process continues with a parallel montage sequence that juxtaposes shots of Kremke, waiting at home where he expects a visit from his daughter and her future husband, and shots of the couple at a dance. Kremke is seen playing with a neighbor’s child, glancing at a clock, watching a military parade on the street, and marching to the music in his apartment with his petty officer’s hat. After he impatiently opens a bottle of liquor, the sequence shifts to the dance. Lene prepares to leave, and her fiancé refuses to come home with her. With this information the audience realizes that Kremke’s expectations are unrealistic. His perception of himself as a part of the student’s middle-class world is just as illusory as his perception of himself as a part of the military parade.

Subsequent scenes reinforce the image of Kremke as a conceited petty bourgeois who considers himself upwardly mobile, disdains those below him, and refuses to accept reality. When Lene returns alone, Kremke conceals his disappointment and storms off to his Stammtisch. There he and his friends toast the figure of a knight and criticize unemployment insurance. Kremke asks, “Should we perhaps work so that the lazy ones can go for a stroll?” In the next scene Kremke and his colleagues lose their jobs, and Kremke’s downfall begins.

Throughout the film, narrative signals encourage rejection of Kremke’s attitude and acceptance of Erwin’s position, as well as Lene’s decision to abandon her father’s world. Kremke maintains his belief in the existing social order and gradually deteriorates as he realizes that he has become a member of the social class he disdains. When he applies for unemployment benefits, he must sit among other workers who explain their situations. Parallel sequences illustrate their stories and indicate that they, too, are victims of automation. Kremke repeatedly denies it, but he is forced to realize that he belongs to the working class. In the meantime, Lene has met Erwin and has no reservations about being with him. In numerous parallel montage sequences Lene is shown enjoying her life with Erwin, while Kremke grows more and more despondent. After Kremke has refused to join Lene and Erwin to celebrate their engagement, a medium shot focuses on Kremke wandering aimlessly through the streets and finally jumping into a river. The running water fades out slowly and gives way to images of workers marching to the Reichstag and the final imperative exclamation emerging from the water and the workers: “GIVE WORK!”

Bookkeeper Kremke: Kremke and his friends deride the unemployed. (Staatliches Filmarchiv der DDR)

Like Werner Hochbaum’s film, Bookkeeper Kremke advocated unity between the working class and the petty bourgeoisie. However, only the final images of the marching workers and their imperative “GIVE WORK!” suggested united political action. For most of the film, it is more Erwin’s ability to remain optimistic and find work that motivates Lene to join him than conviction that they must unite to demand employment for all. Perhaps the makers of Bookkeeper Kremke were cautious about communicating their message too clearly for fear that the censors would reject the film. By the fall of 1930 the Great Coalition had faltered and Brüning was governing by emergency decree; in December the censors did prohibit All Quiet on the Western Front. It is equally plausible that, while criticizing the impact of automation on employment, Harden intended to promote optimism about the economic system and suggest that workers should maintain their trust in the parliamentary democracy. Although Bookkeeper Kremke implied the necessity for more intense political activity, it perpetuated the image of parliamentary representatives as valid authorities to whom the demonstrators must make their appeal. During the final years of the Weimar Republic, Social Democratic leaders continued to assert their political authority to govern and strove to limit the initiative of the German masses.