![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This article comparatively assesses the representation of workers’ leisure in Berlin in three significant examples of experimental German cinema from the late Weimar Republic: Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück (Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness, dir. Piel Jutzi, 1929), Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday, dir. Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, 1930), and Kuhle Wampe oder Wem gehört die Welt? (Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World?, dir. Slatan Dudow, 1932). There are distinct thematic and formal parallels between this set of nearly contemporaneous, generically hybrid films, and the article assesses the inter-related functions of time and space in the films’ depiction of leisure experiences in Berlin. Focal points include the depiction of urban space, especially the tenement block and the ‘semi-public’ space of the courtyard; the Freibad or lakeside bathing resort; the worker sports movement; and the comparative relevance of the work of the Berlin artist Heinrich Zille. The article approaches the films in the historical context of the workers’ movement and working-class culture, and is further informed by insights into urban space developed within the sociological discipline of leisure studies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The original UK title of Kuhle Wampe was Whither Germany?.
2. Many surveys of Weimar cinema, from Kracauer’s classic study to more recent monographs by Elsaesser and Kaes, pay relatively little attention to these films. An exception is represented by the 2008 volume on the ‘classic films’ of Weimar cinema edited by Noah Isenberg, which includes chapters on both People on Sunday (Koepnick Citation2008) and Kuhle Wampe (Silberman).
3. It produced fourteen such films in total, the last being Kuhle Wampe, during the making of which the company declared itself bankrupt. See (Mühl-Benninghaus Citation2012, 49; Silberman 213).
4. I present quotations from German in (my own) English translation throughout. In the case of film titles I use the established English translations where they exist.
5. Michaelis (Citation1980, 106–7) sees Mother Krause as a reaction against the sentimentality of earlier ‘Zille films’ (e.g. Die Verrufenen (The Slums of Berlin), dir. Gerhard Lamprecht, 1925; Die da unten (Those at the bottom), dir. Victor Janson, 1926).
6. The question of whether the film’s political message is consistent with Heinrich Zille’s beliefs was a subject of some controversy, with Zille’s family publicly disowning the film (see Freund and Hanisch eds. Citation1976, 165).
7. There were exceptions, notably Die letzte Droschke von Berlin (The Last Horse Carriage of Berlin, dir. Carl Boese, 1926), which establishes its Berlin setting with extensive location footage and was conceived as a realist companion piece to The Last Laugh.
8. This commitment to a form of social realism was undoubtedly also informed by its two executive producers/advisers, the socialist artists Otto Nagel and Käthe Kollwitz, the latter known for her emotive portrayals of suffering, especially of mother figures and children.
9. A volume presenting a detailed transcript of Mother Krause alongside critical and contextual materials was published in in the GDR in 1976 (Freund and Hansich eds Citation1976). In the FRG, Margo Michaelis’ scene-by-scene analysis of the film as an ‘exemplary’ work of realism, first published in 1978 (Michaelis Citation1980), remains the most substantial engagement with the film.
10. Although Robert Siodmak and Ulmer were credited with direction and Wilder and Curt Siodmak with the writing, the precise distribution of roles and duties among those involved remains unclear. Ulmer and the theatre producer and author Moritz (aka Moriz) Seeler were listed as producers, with the former claiming chief responsibility for organising and financing a one-off ‘studio’, Filmstudio 1929, for the production and distribution of the film (Seidman Citation1977, 5, 39). For further insights into the highly unusual collaborative methods used by the team and cast see also Gerald Koll’s short documentary film Weekend am Wannsee (2000), which features interviews with both Brigitte Borchert and Curt Siodmak, included as an extra in BFI Blu-Ray release of People on Sunday.
11. The credits read like a ‘who’s who’ of leftist culture in the Weimar Republic: the Bulgarian-born director Slatan Dudow, co-writers Bertolt Brecht and Ernst Ottwalt, composer Hanns Eisler, a cast including Hertha Thiele and Ernst Busch, and songs performed by Helene Weigel and Ernst Busch.
12. T. F. Rippey, for example, reads Kuhle Wampe as an ambivalent response to Weimar body culture. Christoph Schaub has examined the film’s modernism in relation to ‘the aesthetics of working-class performance practices’ (Schaub Citation2018, 328), which are particularly evident in the sequence set at the sport festival.
13. ‘Eight hours’ labour, eight hours’ recreation, eight hours’ rest.’ First coined by Robert Owen, 1817.
14. There is a distinct echo here of a similar situation in F. W. Murnau’s film Phantom (1922), based on Gerhart Hauptmann’s novel and Expressionistic rather than realist in tone, in which a son commits a robbery in desperate attempt to find money to repay a debt.
15. The sampler reads: ‘Beklage nicht den Morgen, der Müh und Arbeit gibt, es ist so schön zu sorgen für Menschen, die man liebt.’/‘Don’t complain about the morning which brings you toil and work, as it’s so nice to care for those you love.’
16. A further, more explicit reference to the legislation was removed to appease the censor. See Gersch and Hecht Citation1969, 78.
17. Both Mother Krause, in the scene in which Paul wastes money on drink, and Kuhle Wampe, in the scene in which the family celebrate their daughter Anni’s engagement at an alcohol-fuelled party, contain unmistakeable polemics against alcohol.
18. There are striking parallels between Brecht and Eisler’s song and Ewan MacColl’s contemporaneous ‘The Manchester Rambler’ (1932), the song inspired by the Kinder Scout mass trespass in April 1932 and the campaign for public access to open spaces led by the British Worker Sports Federation: ‘I may be a wage slave on Monday/But I am a free man on Sunday’.
19. One of the censored scenes from this part of the film was a shot of young people bathing naked. The motif was perhaps intended to suggest that the bourgeois Freibad had also been re-encoded with the same liberated vitality we see elsewhere at the festival. See Gersch and Hecht Citation1969, 78.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jon Hughes
Dr Jon Hughes is a Reader in German and Cultural Studies at Royal Holloway, Univeristy of London. He has research interests in modern German and Austrian literature and film, with a focus on the interwar period (1918–1939), and in the history of sport and leisure in the German-speaking countries. He is the author of two monographs, Facing Modernity: Fragmentation, Culture and Identity in Joseph Roth's Writing in the 1920s (Maney, 2006) and Max Schmeling and the Making of a National Hero in Twentieth-Century Germany (Palgrave Studies in Sport and Politics, 2017).