Of all the aspect of life in East Germany, the one that we Americans (and many West Germans) are the most ill-informed about is the subject of religion. Images of preachers being hunted down like dogs and tortured for believing in God were popular concepts in U.S. films and television, especially during the fifties. Anti-religion …
All My Girls
As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, the communist countries were way ahead of the West when it came to women’s rights. At the time of the Wende, over half the judges in East Germany were women, as were at least a third of the doctors. However, there were certain areas where women were decidedly underrepresented. …
And Your Love Too
By the summer of 1961, the political situation in East Germany had reached a tipping point. The Bundesrepublik’s decision to start using the West German Deutsche Mark in West Berlin, in spite of agreements to the contrary, had created an unsustainable imbalance between the two halves of the divided city. Many East Berliners found it …
Till Eulenspiegel
Every country has its folk heroes. Many of these, such as Robin Hood, William Tell, and Fong Sai-yuk, were most likely real people, but any facts about them are so buried by history that all we have left is the folklore. Others, such as Paul Bunyan and Beowulf, started life as folktales and have never …
Look at This City!
On Sunday morning, August 13, 1961, the citizens of Berlin woke up to a remarkable event. While they were sleeping, East German soldiers had constructed a barbed wire fence around the entire city of West Berlin. Workers were already beginning to tear up the roads between the east and the west, and armed soldiers stood …
Destinies of Women
Feminism, as a common topic of conversation, didn’t take off in the United States until the late sixties, so it may come as a surprise to some that DEFA tackled the subject in 1952, with Destinies of Women (Frauenschicksale). Communists were early adopters of the principle that everyone should have the same rights, be they …
Jadup and Boel
By 1980, the East German authorities had nearly perfected the approval process for feature films. After the debacle of the 11th Plenum in 1965, when a dozen films were rejected either for being too frivolous or not socialist enough, DEFA settled into a safe routine, usually avoiding contemporary subjects, and instead concentrating on historical biographies, …
Underground Film in the GDR
When we talk of East German films, we are mostly talking about the films of DEFA, the GDR’s state-owned motion picture production company, and, to a lesser extent, the made-for-TV films from DFF. All other feature films shown in East German cinemas came from other countries, with Russia at the top of the list. If …
The Adventures of Werner Holt
Germans have such a complicated relationship with their history. They understand well the atrocities of WWII and the kind of thinking that led to it, but, at the same time, they were the bad guys in that fight and they know it. Beyond the inescapable evil of the top officials and “just doing my job” …
The Ernst Thälmann Films
Although he died five years before the country was created, Ernst Thälmann was East Germany’s greatest hero. He was to the GDR what George Washington is to America: an icon and a founding father, preternaturally moral and incapable of mistakes. Both men fought for freedom from oppression. In Washington’s case, that oppression came in the …
East German Cinema Blog 