Abstract
Trümmerfilm owes its existence to destruction and death. Oddly enough, death and destruction are by no means at its center. While most rubble films, as their backdrop, feature the ruins of destroyed cities, civilian death, and hopelessness, and zoom in for brief moments on disease and hunger as the necessary consequences of erasing urban civilian habitation on an unprecedented scale, the films mostly depict a new humanism coming from the shared experience of living in the rubble. In other words, we are hard-pressed to find even the beginnings of an extensive reflection on what caused the rubble, namely, the area bombing of German urban centers and their noncombatant inhabitants. The films give little account of how Germans processed, or perhaps even debated their experiences, of how a “coming to terms with” what caused this radical transformation of Germany’s cities to ruins took place—no evidence of conversation in local pubs, for example, or discussion in the privacy of their “Behelfsheime” (makeshift homes) or “Kellerwohnungen” (generally a euphemism for a cave-like space in the ruins), on a market place, or anywhere else.1 Rubble films contribute little to the public memory of these harrowing events. Yet not all was quiet on the Western front of the soon emerging Cold War. While silence was the standard response to the bombing war, it was not the only one.
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Notes
On postwar language as an instrument and filter of these experiences (and perhaps mentalities), see Horst Dieter Schlosser, Es wird zwei Deutschlands geben. Zeitgeschichte und Sprache in Nachkriegsdeutschland 1945–1949 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2005).
See Stephen A. Garrett, Ethics and Airpower in World War II. The British Bombing of German Cities (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993).
Peter Stettner, Vom Trümmerfilm zur Traumfabrik. Die «Junge Film Union» 1947–1952 (Hildesheim, Zürich and New York: Olms, 1992).
See also Gabriele Clemens, Britische Kulturpolitik in Deutschland 1945–1949: Literatur, Film, Musik und Theater (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1997).
“The Germans,” writes Volker Koop on the limits of tolerance in that peculiar phase of democratization, “were supposed to think and say whatever they wanted as long as it did not interfere with the interests of the victors.” Volker Koop, Das Recht der Sieger. Absurde alliierte Befehle im Nachkriegsdeutschland (Berlin: BeBra 2004), p.32.
On “Demokratur,” see Ralph Willett, The Americanization of Germany (New York: Routledge, 1989), esp. pp.1–15.
Stig Dagerman, German Autumn, transl. and introduction Robin Fulton (London and New York: Quartet Books, 1988 [1947]), p.2. On his contempt for Allied journalism, esp. pp.5–17.
A mood that continued, despite both U.S. support during the Berlin Blockade and the economic recovery for many in West Germany, during the 1950s. See Michael Geyer, “America in Germany. Power and the Pursuit of Americanization,” in The German-American Encounter. Conflict and Cooperation between two Cultures 1800–2000, ed. Frank Trommler and Elliott Shore (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2001), pp.121–144.
Karl Jaspers, Die Schuldfrage (Zürich: Artemis, 1946), pp.79, 89.
Hermann Claasen, Gesang im Feuerofen. Köln: Überreste einer alten Stadt. Introduction by Franz A. Hoyer (Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1947), pp.ix–xiv.
See Victor Gollancz, In Darkest Germany (Hinsdale, IL: Regnery, 1947).
Dagmar Barnouw, Germany 1945. Views of War and Violence (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996), p.xi.
See Helmut G. Asper, “Zurück aus Hollywood. Fritz Kortner und sein Film ‘Der Ruf,’” Film-Dienst 23 (2000): 52–55.
On Kortner, who returned to Germany in December 1947, and Der Ruf see Klaus Völker, “‘Aufklärung ist wichtiger als Verurteilung.’ Zu Fritz Kortner’s Film ‘Der Ruf,’” Filmexil 3 (November 1993): 5–12; here p.10.
Fritz Kortner, Aller Tage Abend (München: Kindler, 1959), p.561.
As Shandley does. His conclusion is too bleak. “He [Mauthner] subjects his homeland to an aptitude test […] Instead of finding rich belief in the fundamentals of Enlightenment thinking, he finds a land filled with the same prejudices, pettiness, and deceit […] He had hoped that he could return idealism to a defeated community. Instead, the community defeats his idealism. He is called home only to realize that home is an illusory space.” Shandley, Rubble Films, p.114. Similarly, Shandley, “Fritz Kortner’s Last Illusion,” in Unlikely History. The Changing German-Jewish Symbiosis, 1945–2000, ed. Leslie Morries and Jack Zipes (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp.251–261.
Fritz Kortner, Letzten Endes (München: Kindler, 1971), p.28.
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© 2008 Wilfried Wilms and William Rasch
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Wilms, W. (2008). Rubble without a Cause: The Air War in Postwar Film. In: Wilms, W., Rasch, W. (eds) German Postwar Films. Studies in European Culture and History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230616974_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230616974_3
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