From history's rubble: On the future of the past in the work of Alexander Kluge

The central figure in Alexander Kluge's 1979 film The Patriot (Die Patriotin) is Gabi Teichert, a high school history teacher from the German state of Hesse, whose complaints about the shortcomings of her discipline guide us through the diverse collection of photographs, drawings, stories, poems, maps, and staged and documentary footage out of which the film is constructed. Gabi Teichert, we are informed by the director, is a ‘patriot’ because she takes an interest in the rubble of history—in the memories, stories and diverse materials which have been forgotten and/or discarded by the official narratives which appear in the textbooks assigned to her students.

In this article I argue that, in stark contrast to these narratives, the form of historiography practised in—and cultivated by—The Patriot (and Kluge's film, literary, and television work more generally) is more akin to the extracurricular activities of Gabi Teichert, which revolve around digging up materials which complicate the highly reductive official narratives which chart the relationship between the past and the present. I argue that, for Kluge, it is only by destabilising these narratives that the conception of historical necessity upon which such narratives are based can be destroyed. If, Kluge argues, such a practice can free us from conceiving of the past as a continuous narrative which leads straight to the present, then it is not only the past—but also the possibilities for the future embedded in the past—which can be renegotiated and re-explored.

Keywords:

• Alexander Kluge
• History
• Experimental film
• Imagination

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to both the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales for providing grants which enabled her to undertake research on the work of Alexander Kluge in Germany. She would also like to thank Alexander Kluge for providing permission to print stills from his work, and Beata Wiggen for supplying copies of tapes from the DCTP archive.

Notes

All translations from German language publications are (unless otherwise noted) my own.

[1] As pointed out in Kaes (1989, p. 239), this attempt was made despite the fact that ‘a poll in 1977 had shown enormous deficits in students’ historical knowledge’.

[2] Kluge's emphasis on the casualties of Stalingrad in The Patriot may, as Kaes argues, ‘have been intended to remind viewers about German suffering at a time when recent German history was equated with the Holocaust (or, more precisely, with Holocaust, the American television series)’ (Kaes 1989, pp. 132 – 134). As both Kaes and an anonymous referee have pointed out, when viewed more specifically in the light of recent attempts ‘to re-write German history in order to relativize the crimes of the past’, Kluge's emphasis on soldiers who lost their lives at Stalingrad could be viewed as one-sided (Kaes 1989, p. 132).

[3] The German word ‘Geschichte’ designates both ‘story’ and ‘history’, which allows Kluge to allude to both in his discussion of the importance of ‘[hi]storytelling’.

[4] For a detailed analysis of the history of the New German Cinema, see Elsaesser (1989).

[5] For a comprehensive account of Kluge's work for television, see Uecker (2000). For a broad overview in English, see Lutze (1998, pp. 179 – 200).

[6] The collection of stories included in the English edition does, however, vary from the collection of stories published in Lebensläufe.

[7] For more detailed analyses of Kluge's relationship to Godard, see Behrens et al. (1976, pp. 569 – 570) and Scherer (2000).

[8] ‘Understanding a film completely’, Kluge claims, ‘is conceptual imperialism. … We must make films that thoroughly oppose such imperialism of consciousness’ (Kluge 1981 – 1982, p. 211).

[9] One can hear in this formulation an echo of Kluge's friend and mentor Theodor W. Adorno who—in his 1952 analysis of the musical compositions of Arnold Schoenberg—states that ‘Schoenberg's music demands from the very beginning active and concentrated participation. … It requires the listener spontaneously to compose its inner movement and demands of him not mere contemplation but praxis’ (Adorno 1990, pp. 149 – 150).

[10] ‘There can be no doubt’, Kluge states, ‘that the narrative of an individual fate, unfolded in ninety minutes, can convey historical material only at the price of dramaturgical incest’ (Kluge 1981 – 1982, p. 206).

[11] The piece was originally published in (Kluge 1977). An abridged version of the interview has been published in English (Kluge 1982).

[12] ‘The form left by the impact of an exploding bomb’, Kluge has written of the experience, ‘is easily remembered. … I was there, at a distance of ten metres away, when on April 8 1945 such a thing impacted’ (Kluge 2000b, p. 11).

[13] This passage is quoted in Schulte (2002, p. 80). My translation of this extract (as well as the notes about Linklater's expressions) is based on this passage. The use of italics indicates words spoken in English.

[14] ‘I do not’, Kluge claims, ‘take up the silent film in my films for stylistic reasons but because it is a question of “radically” keeping open the elementary roots of the film’ (Kluge 1984b, p. 24). For a comprehensive analysis of the impact that early cinema has had on the development of Kluge's film and television work, see Hansen (1988).

[15] The book has been substantially reworked by Kluge since its original German publication in 1964. The most recent version of the book (which also includes photographs, drawings, and diagrams) can be found in Kluge (2000d). This version, has, however, not yet been translated into English.

[16] For a more detailed analysis of Kluge's relationship to the films of Eisenstein, see Liebman (1988b, pp. 18 – 21).