Berlin, Divided Heaven: From the Ice Age to the Thaw
Touring Film Series

The Berlin Film

by Barton Byg

German cinema and German history converge in a unique way in the city of Berlin. Berlin was one of the international sites of the birth of cinema itself, with the experiments of the Skladanowsky brothers in 1895. This legacy is preserved both in the organization "100 Years of Cinema in Berlin," founded in 1995, and in the fanciful and evocative reconstruction of the playful Skladanowsky films, A Trick of the Light, produced in 1995 by Wim Wenders and associates at the Munich film school.

Berlin itself became a protagonist of film as it helped launch international modernism in visual culture in the 1920s. Most enduring is Walter Ruttmans' Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (1927) where the daily rhythm and energy of the city supply structure and drama. Along with its avant-garde influence, Berlin figured prominently in socially based narrative films, which also reflected the unadorned visuals of the documentary. Progressive politics, interest in the concerns of young people, and a love of the contradictory beauty of the city's streets are apparent in such classics as Kuhle Wampe (Slatan Dudow and Bertolt Brecht, 1931) and Emil and the Detectives (Gerhard Lamprecht, Erich Kästner, and Billy Wilder, 1931), and mark the aesthetics of the “Berlin Film” to this day.

All these legacies, combined with genre influences from the melodrama and other traditions, are reflected in the film series “Berlin, Divided Heaven: From the Ice Age to the Thaw.” While presenting the films in the context of artistic and historical themes, this catalog also introduces them as a group reflective of the particular East German view of Berlin. As the modernism of the Weimar Republic was very much a post-war phenomenon, the films featured in this series reveal the opportunities and limitations presented by the second post-war era of the 20th century, in Berlin from 1946 to the present.  Although Berlin was the capital of the German Democratic Republic, East German filmmakers tended to avoid the nationalist, representational image of the city (although that is at times present in the more propagandist features, such as Story of a Young Couple). Instead they attempted to link up with the artistically and politically progressive antecedents from the pre-Nazi era. The DEFA "Berlin Films" presented here are thus among the most interesting and successful of the East German film output.

If two post-war eras provide the context for much of Berlin's cinematic achievement in the 20th century, film allows us to contemplate the emerging post-Cold-War identity of the so-called "Berlin Republic" ten years after the reunification of Germany. Here, films remind us of the dramatic and mystifying events that led so quickly to the reunification of Germany and provide examples of the complex cultural and historical negotiations necessary to provide the political reality with a human dimension.  

The term "Berlin Film" has of course been used in the West German context, but the “Berlin Films” of DEFA are distinct in both their importance to the GDR's cinema culture and their connection to their forbearers from the Weimar Republic. West Berlin Films either deal with the city as a site of urban drama, international intrigue, or what is called in this film tour the “Poetic Reunification Imaginary.” The most familiar example of this is Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire, with its evocation of Berlin as a poetic unity seen both literally and metaphorically from above (the film even contains a shot of a street in East Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg district, supplied surreptitiously by the DEFA documentary cameraman Thomas Plenert). Poetic references to the division of Germany and particularly Berlin are common enough in West German cinema, and in a way, they helped prepare the way for unification. Brasch's Domino, Sander's Redupers and Reidemeister's Shooting Location Berlin all flirt with the other side as a presence-in-absence that nags at the West, suggesting its incompleteness (significantly, NOT its isolation).  

But the Berlin films of DEFA are much more concretely grounded in tradition, both aesthetically and biographically. After all, the originators of the Berlin films mentioned above, Lamprecht and Dudow, both worked at DEFA. Dudow was leader of the production group in which early practitioners of the DEFA subgenre got their start. And, not to forget, one of the international films that also belongs in this context is Rossellini's Germany Year Zero, which, although its direct, critical influence seems to have been minimal, was made with DEFA participation, and with participation of German artists from the Weimar era, such as Max Kolpet.  

It was always problematic for East or West Germans to point to German antecedents for their work, so Kohlhaase and Klein mentioned the Italian neo-Realists as their inspiration. This was problematic enough, but it meant that critics did not concentrate on the more proximate relation between the early Berlin films and Lamprecht's work, for instance. From today's standpoint, however, a straight line runs from the 1931 film Emil and the Detectives (by way of Somewhere in Berlin and the Italian neo-realists) to such films as Alarm at the Circus by Kohlhaase and Klein or Sheriff Teddy and They Called Him Amigo by Heiner Carow. That Somewhere in Berlin and Berlin Schönhauser Corner are now available on video, bridges an important gap in German film culture.

The Berlin Films of DEFA  

The main examples of DEFA’s Berlin Films were those by the director Gerhard Klein and scriptwriter Wolfgang Kohlhaase: Alarm at the Circus (1954), A Berlin Romance (1956), and Berlin - Schönhauser Corner (1957). All three of these films were noteworthy in both style and content, and may have been partly the result of growing independence for production groups within the DEFA Studio.  

Aesthetically and biographically, Italian Neo-Realism is indeed the godfather of the Berlin Films. Neo-Realism was a primary reason for Klein and Kohlhaase to make films in the first place, and they were committed to the principles of gritty, immediate production conditions as well as stories that were far from lofty, preachy lessons in correct politics.  

Alarm at the Circus established the parameters of the style of the Berlin Film: The story is derived from a crime plot found in the newspapers. A circus owner has decided his fortunes will be more likely to flower in the western sectors, so he moves and proceeds to plot to get his horses out after him.  Some children accidentally find out about the plot, partly because they are recruited to become involved in it, and eventually alert the police in time to prevent the horses from being abducted. Despite the happy end, which preserves the order of the "democratic sector," the fascination with the underworld of black marketeers and late-night hangouts is striking and memorable. Authenticity is added by the fact that the filmmakers based their script on actual police and court records as well as interviews with some of the youths involved, who had been "socially endangered through unemployment and who had been introduced to false heroes by the bourgeois media." [Film- und Fernsehkunst der DDR, p. 180]  

In addition to the attention to the petty vices and virtues of everyday people (children at that) and  the quirky idea of stealing circus animals, the film shares with neo-realism a visual style based on technical simplicity and roughness. Recalling Rossellini's Open City, Alarm at the Circus was filmed on Ultrarapid film stock, which due to its lack of subtlety was otherwise only used for newsreels.  This however allowed the filmmakers to shoot with much less light than normal, with a resulting immediacy caused by exaggerated contrast and grainy resolution. Werner Bergman carried over into his work with Konrad Wolf this reluctance to photograph compositions which were "too pretty."  

The least critical of the three Berlin films by Klein and Kohlhaase is A Berlin Romance (1956). The film's presentation of the competition between East and West [Berlin] for the allegiance of young people does contain some quite realistic depictions of the issues involved and the problems of everyday life, but in the end the young woman from the democratic sector in the East is all too easily able to convince her boyfriend from the West that the future is brighter in socialism. One can say, however, that the absence of a grand rhetorical style in this little love story makes the political message almost palatable, in striking contrast to Story of a Young Couple, for instance.  

The East/West conflict and the frustrations of young people in the East are given a much harder edge in Kohlhaase and Klein's Berlin – Schönhauser Corner (1957). Here we are confronted with episodes of juvenile delinquency by just such ordinary young people to whom the future of socialism belongs. A young Ekkehard Schall, Brecht's son-in-law, plays a Marlon Brando-like young man who is always barely staying out of jail, partly because he has a brother in the police force. Through an unintentional involvement in a forgery scheme, this character and his friend, played by Hilmar Thate, go to the West where they are interned in a camp for returnees. One purpose of this is to be sure they are not communist spies and to get out of them whatever useful information they might have. In an attempt to get released from this processing facility through illness, the Thate character drinks a mixture of coffee and ground-up cigar which eventually kills him. This trauma sends the Schall character back to the socialist sector where he belongs, but there is little grand optimism about how well he will fit in. The clearest polemic for the superiority of socialism at the end of the film is the infinite patience of the police officer whom Schall repeatedly has to face. At the end he repeats the favorite phrase of socialist cultural policy: "Wo wir nicht sind, sind unsere Feinde" (Where we are not, there are our enemies). And then, beginning the boy's report, "Fangen wir an, Junge" (Let’s begin, boy).  

The Neo-Realist influence in these films is evident in their concentration on young, everyday characters who are not the exemplary figures prescribed by Socialist Realism. Beyond this, Klein stands out among DEFA directors for the immediacy and documentary freshness of his style. The streets of Berlin, framed in intriguing long shots, come to life as the scene for the adventures of his characters. Many scenes are set on rooftops, in cellars or the entrances of old buildings. As Wolfgang Kohlhaase put it, long after Klein's death, "He could show you how a courtyard smells."  

A summary of the common attributes of the Berlin Films, which appeared in the GDR in 1979, reads almost like a description of the priorities of Neo-Realism itself:

"These works have in common that they were filmed largely outside the studios and that the authentic locations of their plots were the traditional Berlin workers' neighborhoods. Not only did the authentic milieu reveal the influence of their living environment on the characters, but the actors' method of playing their roles also conformed to this milieu. This was all the more successful since the authors had paid careful attention to the social gesture of language and had written the dialogues in colloquial speech. Added to this is the fact that a number of lay actors appeared, in some cases even in leading roles (e.g. as Uschi in A Berlin Romance played by Annekathrin Bürger). The possibilities of the camera and of the real environment were fully explored to achieve shots that corresponded to sensual everyday experiences of the viewers. The lighting of the scenes was handled correspondingly. Some events were presented in a manner comparable to documentary reporting; descriptive elements complemented those of film narrative." [Film- und Fersehkunst der DDR, pp. 178-179]  

This series of films influenced by the Neo-Realists was politically attacked in 1958, but was brought to a forceful conclusion in 1965.  As a result of the 11th Plenum, Kohlhaase and Klein's last "Berlin Film" was banned along with most of a year's DEFA production.  

There are other examples of this Neo-Realist direction in DEFA films, especially those of Heiner Carow. To the ‘Berlin Films’ are sometimes counted Carow’s Sheriff Teddy (1957) and Coming Out (1989), as well as Herrmann Zschoche’s Seven Freckles (Sieben Sommersprossen, 1978), Kurt Maetzig’s Don’t Forget My Traudel (Vergeßt mir meine Traudel nicht, 1957), and Konrad Wolf’s SOLO SUNNY (1980).

Architecture and Society  

Aside from the life of young people on the streets of Berlin, another common feature of “Berlin films” since Ruttmann is the architecture of the city itself. Even the ruins of post-war Berlin provide a visual context for important films, either as a matter-of-fact reality confronting young people (as in Somewhere in Berlin or Rossellini’s Germany Year Zero) or as a metaphor for the destruction wrought on the conscience of leading characters (as in The Murderers Are Among Us).  

It is logical, then, that the reconstruction of Berlin — both in the post WWII period and in the post Cold War period — provides a basis for dramatic conflict and documentary investigation. And linking the two as a visual screen, or as a scar that refuses to accept suturing, the Berlin Wall itself plays a major architectural role in several films. Three films provide starkly different approaches to the Wall: Sander’s West Berlin film The All-Round Reduced Personality - Redupers presents the Wall and East Berlin as a screen against which to project her critical view of life in West Berlin. The film’s title even ironically reverses the proclaimed goal of the socialist State: the all-round developed socialist personality. When the Wall Came Tumbling Down presents a more journalistic approach to the events that brought the opening of the wall, but reveals how elusive any historical narrative of these events must be, as politicians lost the control they thought they had over events. After the Wall, the melodramatic The Promise by Margarethe von Trotta and The Wall by Jürgen Böttcher present two opposite and complementary ways in which film can record a society’s memory: Böttcher’s film is a visual meditation on the physical presence and gradual eradication of the Wall, with poetic evocations of the Wall’s visual traces in the culture of historical images. Von Trotta’s film draws the Wall and the division of Germany as a larger-than-life tableau of the fantasies and aspirations of the 1960s generation, which since the election of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder now wields governmental power in Germany for the first time.  

It is intriguing to trace the development of such architectural motifs among the films presented here: The politicization of the cinema becomes quite clear if one contrasts Kurt Maetzig’s Story of a Young Couple with the early postwar films mentioned above. Here the rebuilding of the Stalinallee provides a visual counterpart to the young couple’s taking up the cause of the Cold War in the name of Stalin. Since a modern, socialist housing policy was one of the main tenets of the SED regime, its failings often provide a critical element in DEFA films. Wolf’s SOLO SUNNY and Carow’s The Legend of Paul and Paula, for instance, both contrast the soullessness of the new, modular housing blocks of which the Party was so proud, with the more humane and even counter-cultural modes of living found in older neighborhoods and traditional working-class apartment buildings.  

Against this background in film history, it is no surprise that critical films about Berlin of recent history concentrate on its architecture. One of the last East German films was The Architects, which presented the frustration of a younger generation with the rigidity of the State’s planning policy as against the real needs and desires of its citizens — a frustration leading directly to the collapse of such a system and its accession to the more successful and flexible Western model.

From a perspective of unified Germany, Helga Reidemeister’s Lights from Afar thus explores the bitterness and aimlessness of one East Berlin artist figure against the background of the Potsdamer Platz, another location adjacent to the former Berlin Wall and the decade’s largest construction project in the whole of Europe.  

Berlin films thus present a visual, social and political landscape for many of the cultural aspirations and shortcomings of the former German Democratic Republic. They also represent two aspects of reality uniquely accessible in the cinema: the fantasy life of a culture (represented also in crime films, comedies and love stories) as well as the everyday texture of life in the city as people experience and remember it. Of all the desires carried into a unified Germany by former East Germans, this last aspect is among the most intense. As an East German told a North American researcher shortly after German reunification, responding to the question what she wanted most that Westerners understand about people in the East: “That we lived lives here.”  

As audience members, artists, or people on the street, lives lived are an essential part of the films of Berlin.

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