In and Out of War: Space, Pleasure and Cinema in Hamburg 1938-1949.

[摘要] This dissertation reinterprets the relationship between film and the Nazi state in a locallygrounded study of Nazi cinema. Trying to understand the simultaneity of genocide andnormality, of racism and ;;family values,’ of wartime brutality and the everyday pursuit ofpleasure in Nazi Germany, I argue that cinema was an important venue for the negotiation ofpopular consent. Focusing on Germany’s second largest city, Hamburg, and its complex nationaland international contexts, I show that the discussions of individual films, the intellectual debatesover cinema as a National Socialist art form, and the actual practice of going to the moviesinvited functionaries, activists, and consumers in Hamburg to maintain locally specific visions ofNazism. These visions were not always in congruence with the ideological imperatives of theReich. Although local voices never posed a challenge to the racial ideology underpinning themurderous expansionism of the regime, they do illustrate that terror and repressionnotwithstanding, even the tightly coordinated and top-down administered realm of the cinema invited and provoked constant negotiation on the ground. Local actors, rather than merelyconsenting to a pre-articulated version of Nazism, deliberately attempted to shape its character. By providing consistency to the Nazi experience and extending its promises for security and plenty into a post-Fascist future, cinema, I argue, provided one of the few bridges between what Ulrich Herbert defined as Nazism’s ;;good” and ;;bad” times. Tracing the role of film in Hamburg through the celebratory mood following economic recovery, the victories of war, the subsequent disintegration of the Volksgemeinschaft and postwar occupation, I suggest that film nurtured hopes for local prosperity and aspirations of world recognition in and out of war.

[发布机构] University of Michigan

[效力级别] Film and Nazism in Hamburg

[关键词] Local Study of Nazi Film and Leisure;Film and Nazism in Hamburg;Everyday Life;Leisure;Film and Consent in Nazi Hamburg;History (General);Humanities;History