Epilogue

Abstract

In his survey on “how the Jews invented Hollywood,” Neal Gabler famously notes several possible explanations for the conspicuous presence of Jewish immigrants in the American film industry. He convincingly relates their success in the film business to their social and cultural background (Jewish producers had, for instance, a background in retail trade and an intimate, empathetic knowledge of “the dreams and aspirations” of the target audience). However, Gabler emphasizes, “in order to understand what may have been the chief appeal of the movies to these Jews, one must understand their hunger for assimilation and the way in which the movies could uniquely satisfy that hunger.”¹ In many respects, this injunction may likewise be applied to Jewish involvement in the pre-1933 German film industry. Just as in Hollywood, assimilation was a key component in the works of Weimar Jewish filmmakers; and, like the “American Dream,” the defining collective “dream” of post—World War I Germany was often formulated and displayed through the narratives and visual imagery contrived by (first and second generation) immigrant Jews. But whereas Hollywood’s moguls “wanted to be regarded as American, not Jews,” the Jews who worked in the studios on the outskirts of Berlin explicitly promoted the “Bourgeois Dream.” They contemplated and advocated assimilation within the (arguably imagined) class of progressive, educated urbanites, rather than within the German national community.

Would you really expect the filmmakers of Berlin, who are so excited about themselves, to be able to understand other German tribes?

—Anonymous, Deutsche Filmzeitung