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The burgeoning film industry in the Weimar Republic was, among other things, a major site of German-Jewish experience, one that provided a sphere for Jewish "outsiders" to shape mainstream culture. The chapters collected in this volume deploy new historical, theoretical, and methodological approaches to understanding the significant involvement of German Jews in Weimar cinema. Reflecting upon different conceptions of Jewishness - as religion, ethnicity, social role, cultural code, or text - these studies offer a wide-ranging exploration of an often overlooked aspect of German film history.
List of contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
Introduction: The Jewishness of Weimar Cinema
Barbara Hales and Valerie Weinstein Part I: Jewish Visibility On and Off Screen Chapter 1. Humanizing Shylock: The "Jewish Type" in Weimar Film
Maya Barzilai Chapter 2. Energizing the Dramaturgy: How Jewishness Shaped Alexander Granach's Performances in Weimar Cinema
Margrit Frölich Chapter 3. The Jewish Vamp of Berlin: Actress Maria Orska, Typecasting, and Jewish Women
Kerry Wallach Chapter 4. Jewish Comedians beyond Lubitsch: Siegfried Arno in Film and Cabaret
Mila Ganeva Chapter 5. Alfred Rosenthal's Rhetoric of Collaboration, the Politics of Jewish Visibility, and Jewish Weimar Film Print Culture
Ervin Malakaj Part II: Coding and Decoding Jewish Difference Chapter 6. Two Worlds, Three Friends, and the Mysterious Seven-Branched Candelabrum: Jewish Filmmaking in Weimar Germany
Philipp Stiasny Chapter 7. Homosexual Emancipation, Queer Masculinity, and Jewish Difference in
Anders als die Andern (1919)
Valerie Weinstein Chapter 8. Der Film ohne Juden: G.W. Pabst's
Die freudlose Gasse (1925)
Lisa Silverman Chapter 9. "The World is Funny, Like a Dream:" Franziska Gaal's Verwechslungskomödien and Exile's Crisis of Identity
Anjeana K. Hans Part III: Jewishness as Antisemitic Construct Chapter 10. Cinematically Transmitted Disease: Weimar's Perpetuation of the Jewish Syphilis Conspiracy
Barbara Hales Chapter 11. The Einstein Film: Animation, Relativity, and the Charge of "Jewish Science"
Brook Henkel Chapter 12. "A Clarion Call to Strike Back": Antisemitism and Ludwig Berger's
Der Meister von Nürnberg (1927)
Christian Rogowski Chapter 13. Banning Jewishness: Stefan Zweig, Robert Siodmak, and the Nazis
Andréas-Benjamin Seyfert Chapter 14. Detoxification: Nazi Remakes of E. A. Dupont's Blockbusters
Ofer Ashkenazi Coda Chapter 15. "
Filmrettung: Save the Past for the Future!": Film Restoration and Jewishness in German and Austrian Silent Cinema
Cynthia Walk Afterword Barbara Hales and Valerie Weinstein
About the author
Barbara Hales is a Professor of History and Humanities at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Her publications focus on film history of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. She is the author of Black Magic Woman: Gender and the Occult in Weimar Germany (Peter Lang, 2021). Along with Mihaela Petrescu and Valerie Weinstein, she also co-edited a volume entitled Continuity and Crisis in German Cinema, 1928-1936 (Camden House, 2016). Dr. Hales is President of the Center for Medicine After the Holocaust.
Valerie Weinstein is Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Niehoff Professor in Film and Media Studies, and affiliate faculty in German Studies and Judaic Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She is the author of Antisemitism in Film Comedy in Nazi Germany (Indiana University Press, 2019) and numerous articles on Weimar and Nazi cinema. She is co-editor, with Barbara Hales and Mihaela Petrescu, of Continuity and Crisis in German Cinema 1928-1936 (Camden House, 2016).
Summary
The film industry in the Weimar Republic was a major site for German-Jewish experience that provided a sphere for Jewish "outsiders" to shape mainstream culture. The essays in this book offer new historical, theoretical, and methodological approaches to the significant involvement of Jewish people in Weimar cinema.
