New faculty book examines post-Wall German cinema

Professor of German Mary-Elizabeth O'Brien is the author of a new book titled Post-wall German Cinema and National History: Utopianism and Dissent (Camden House). 

Since the collapse of the German Democratic Republic and unification, a radical shift has taken place in Germans' view of their country's immediate past, with 1989 replacing 1945 as the primary caesura. The cold-war division, the failed socialist state, the '68 student movement, and the Red Army Faction -- historical flashpoints involving political oppression, civil disobedience, and the longing for utopian solutions to social injustice -- have come to be seen as decisive moments in a collective history that unites East and West even as it divides them. Telling stories about a shared past, establishing foundation myths, and finding commonalities of experience are pivotal steps in the construction of national identity. Such nation-building is always incomplete, but the cinema provides an important public forum in which notions of German history and national identity can be consumed, negotiated, and contested.

This book looks at history films made since 1989, exploring how utopianism and political dissent have shaped post-unification German national identity. It studies the genre as a set of texts that pit valiant individuals against an unjust, corrupt government, examining commercially successful films ( Good Bye, Lenin!, Das Leben der Anderen, Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex, and Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei), films that won artistic acclaim but only modest box-office success ( Berlin is in Germany, Muxm uschenstill, Raus aus der Haut, and Die Architekten), and those that failed to gain critical or public approval ( F hrer Ex, Das Versprechen, Baader, and Die Stille nach dem Schu ) to gauge which conventions and storylines are resilient. At issue is the overriding question: to what extent do these films contribute to a narrative that legitimizes the German nation-state?

O'Brien is also the Courtney and Steven Ross Chair in Interdisciplinary Studies at Skidmore. She is the author of Nazi Cinema: The Politics of Entertainment in the Third Reich (2003 hard cover, 2006 paperback) published by Camden House.