In Berlin, those born before 1989 have a distinct memory of what they were doing the day the wall came down on November 9 that year. On a warm July afternoon in a Berlin cafe this year, I eavesdropped on an old German couple. They were arguing about how the man, a West Berliner, had risked his life back then to visit her in the East, before the wall collapsed, but doesn’t any more.
For many, a united Germany was a far-fetched utopia, the memory of which lingers on, not only in tourist spots like Charlie Checkpoint or the East Side Gallery, but also in the city’s infrastructure, architecture, street art and cinema. Along with the Nazi rule and the Holocaust, the Berlin Wall forms the backbone of Erinnerungskultur, or the German culture of remembrance.
Over the years, the country’s filmmakers have actively contributed to this collective memory. Early this year, Andreas Dresen’s Gundermann (2018) won at the Deutscher Filmpreis (German Film Awards), the most coveted cinema accolade in the country. The biopic of Gerhard Gundermann — then struggling and now famous musician, raised in East Germany — chronicles his life as a coal miner and a Stasi spy before the fall of the wall. Based on documentaries and archival material, the film’s mise-en-scène recreates a collapsing infrastructure under East Germany’s communist dictatorship. Dresen, who grew up in East Germany, tells the story with urgency and authenticity, bringing to the fore an atmosphere of suspicion and deceit.
A still from Heiner Carow’s ‘Die Legende von Paul und Paula’ (1973).
Corrupt system
While Holocaust films have tried to explore the magnitude of the atrocities and advocated for introspection, films such as Gundermann look at the injustices of the state. “They provide a bottom-up perspective and ask how the system could corrupt an individual,” explains Susanne Marschall, Professor of Film Studies and Director of The Center for Media Competence, University of Tübingen.
In the last two decades, German filmmakers have tried to fill the gaps between inadequate documentation and imperfect memories by digging into their own family archives and personal stories. “It is a new wave of German cinema, especially for documentaries, where filmmakers are trying to find out how involved their families were back then,” says Marschall.
Filmmaker Sebastian Heinzel examines the effect of World War II on his family in Der Krieg in Mir ( The War in Me ) by retracing the involvement of his grandfather in war crimes. Based on his own family history, the filmmaker examines how far-reaching the effects of war and genocide are on the second and third generations, and the trauma that is transmitted through the ages.
A still from Billy Wilder’s comedy ‘One, Two, Three’ (1961).
In 2005, Christopher Buchholz walked down a similar path with his father, renowned actor Horst Buchholz, often referred to as “the German James Dean”. In the documentary, Horst Buchholz... Mein Papa , Christopher documents his father’s life from 2001 until his death in March 2003. Through hours of conversations, we witness the effect of the war on Horst’s childhood, his search for his biological father, the liberty of the 50s, and his stardom, depression and bisexuality. “It was one of the earliest in this kind of contemporary remembrance culture films,” says Marschall.
Back in 1961, Horst famously starred in Billy Wilder’s comedy, One, Two, Three , which follows a Coca Cola executive in West Berlin during the Cold War, who is instructed to look after his employer’s daughter. But the girl escapes across the border, marries an ardently anti-capitalist East German, and reveals she’s pregnant with his baby. The Berlin Wall was being erected during the film’s shooting, forcing the makers to create a set in Munich. “The film failed because nobody could laugh at this situation then,” says Marschall. But the film was released again in 1985 and became a cult classic, going down in history as one of the pivotal Erinnerungskultur films.
Political undertones
Cinema and politics have a long-standing, tumultuous relationship in Germany. While the Nazis used cinema as propaganda, East Germany exercised heavy censorship, and the state-owned studio, DEFA, made fairytales to educate the masses against fascism and advocate for socialism. One of the earliest films to challenge this status quo was Die Legende von Paul und Paula ( The Legend of Paul and Paula, 1973). The tragicomedy follows the whirlwind romance between a blue-collar supermarket worker, Paula, and her white-collar neighbour, an aspiring bureaucrat, Paul. With its political undertones, the film struggled to release back then. But today, it is counted among the East German films that remind viewers of the social inequities of the regime from an insider’s perspective.
A still from Christian Petzold’s ‘Transit’ (2018).
With the rise of far-right politics in Germany, remembrance culture in cinema has found greater relevance today. “Parties like the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) are trying to forget the past and asking us not to feel guilty any more,” says Marschall. Filmmaker Christian Petzold’s Transit (2018) is in response to the far-right’s efforts against remembrance culture. The film follows a concentration camp survivor who tries to flee Nazi-occupied France and enter North America by assuming the identity of a dead writer, but the director takes the narrative out of its period setting and places it in an incongruous, contemporary world, while not reinterpreting the story.
The outcome is much in tandem with his long-standing fascination with ghostly figures. It is, therefore, inevitable to ask: Who would Petzold count among the ghosts of the present? “All these racist guys and all these fascists,” he said, during a quick conversation at the 2018 Berlinale. “For me, they are zombies. Like the walking dead, they are coming out of the graves.” The culture of remembrance strives to ensure that we never forget what humanity is capable of.
kennith.rosario@thehindu.co.in
