In the spring and summer of 1931, German writer, traveler, photographer, and filmmaker Heinrich Hauser (1901–55) made a trip by car through the American Midwest, with Chicago as his main destination. This voyage resulted in a book, Feldwege nach Chicago or Dirt Tracks to Chicago, and a silent “city” film, Weltstadt in Flegeljahren. Whereas the book covers his entire journey, Hauser’s film concentrates on Chicago, with its skyline, skyscrapers, motorized traffic, local industries, labor, mechanized production, and places for leisure. The film begins on the Mississippi River before entering the city, gradually changing the natural landscape into an urbanized environment and traditional forms of manual labor into mechanized industry. Hauser creates a cross-section of Chicago, using an additive montage style, and by observing, recording, and showing the numerous facets and details he encounters. This portrait includes not only geographic-architectural aspects specific to Chicago, but also concerns different social and ethnic groups—in fact, the film presents a vivid cross-section of Chicago’s city dwellers, powerfully contrasting its rich and poor.
Though Hauser considered Chicago to be “the most beautiful city in the world,” his city symphony is notable for its critique of the modern American city, and of the United States in general. Particularly in the film’s fourth section, Hauser shows the negative sides of the metropolis and the effects of mechanized production and rationalized labor: unemployment, poverty, alcoholism, and crime. His Chicago city symphony alternates between fascination and fear, curiosity and critique, enthusiasm and reservation.
Weltstadt in Flegeljahren received positive reviews at its release, and it was praised for its documentary quality and social responsibility. Hauser was celebrated as an outsider of the film industry, who had managed to surpass the professionals with this silent film.
Weltstadt in Flegeljahren was considered lost until the 1980s, when it was donated as part of a large collection to the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv in Koblenz. Hauser’s Chicago film has also survived in an original Dutch nitrate print, conserved at the Nederlands Filmmuseum (now the EYE Filmmuseum) since the 1940s; this was restored in the 1990s. Despite these restorations, Weltstadt in Flegeljahren remains largely unknown today.
Eva Hielscher
further reading
Ehmann, Antje, “Heinrich Hauser: Der Mann und die Medien,” in Klaus Kreimeier, Antje Ehmann, and Jeanpaul Goergen (eds.), Geschichte des dokumentarischen Films in Deutschland: Band 2: Weimarer Republik: 1918–1933 (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2005), 463–73.
Goergen, Jeanpaul, Weltstadt in Fegeljahren: Ein Bericht über Chicago (Deutschland 1931), Aufgenommen von Heinrich Hauser: Eine Dokumentation (Berlin: Edition Goergen, 1995).
Svenshon, Helge, “Chicago: ‘Weltstadt in Flegeljahren’: Heinrich Hausers Filmbericht über Chicago,” Eselsohren 2, 1+2 (2014): 71–86.
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