Eike Wenzel. GedÖ¤chtnisraum Film: Die Arbeit an der deutschen Geschichte in Filmen seit den sechziger Jahren. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler Verlag, 2000. 456 pp. DM 68.00 (paper), ISBN 978-3-476-45226-9.

Reviewed by Wulf Kansteiner (Department of History, SUNY Binghamton)
Published on H-German (October, 2001)

The Avant-Garde in the Trenches of Vergangenheitsbewältigung: German History in the Experimental Films of the New German Cinema

The Avant-Garde in the Trenches of Vergangenheitsbewältigung: German History in the Experimental Films of the New German Cinema

Eike Wenzel. Gedchtnisraum Film: Die Arbeit an der deutschen Geschichte in Filmen seit den sechziger Jahren. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 2000. 456 pp. Illustrations and bibliography. DM 68.00 (paper), ISBN 3-476-45226-3.

"Gedächtnisraum Film" does not provide a general survey of the representation of German history in feature films since the 1960s, as the reader might assume from the title. Eike Wenzel's project is more ambitious and more specific. In fact, "Gedächtnisraum Film" contains two books under one cover. The first provides a close reading of nine avant-garde films, which avoid the conventions of cinematic realism and open new perspectives of historical reflection in film (chapters I, IV, and VI). The productions in question are, in this sequence, Jean-Marie Straub's and Danielle Huillet's "Machorka Muff," Straub's and Huillet's "Nicht versöhnt oder es hilft nur Gewalt, wo Gewalt herrscht," Alexander Kluge's "Abschied von gestern (Anita G.)," Straub's and Huillet's "Geschichtsunterricht," Harun Farocki's "Zwischen zwei Kriegen," the compilation film "Deutschland im Herbst," Kluge's "Die Patriotin," Hartmut Bitomsky's and Heiner Mühlenbrock's "Deutschlandbilder," and Jean-Luc Godard's "Allemagne 90 Neuf Zero." The list of films, which were originally released between 1962 and 1991, shows that Wenzel has taken on some of the most complex and difficult films to emerge from the New German Cinema and very appropriately related them to Godard's similarly overdetermined, post-unification ruminations about Germany's past and present.

The second book contained in "Gedächtnisraum Film," which could easily stand on its own, offers an ambitious, wide-ranging, yet consistent theory of cultural production that introduces the theoretical tools to appreciate the experimental space defined by above films (chapters II, III, and V). Wenzel's methodological arsenal integrates literary theory with structuralist and poststructuralist film theory, historiography, and collective memory studies. Thus, the author engages with the works of Käte Hamburger and Michail Bachtin; Gilles Deleuze, Jean-Louis Baudry, Christain Metz, and Hartmut Winckler; Hayden White, Aleida Assmann, and Jan Assmann, to mention just his most important theoretical reference points. In the process of forging his analytical tools, Wenzel provides a lucid critique of literary and filmic realism, exposing the limits of the paradigm and highlighting the price we have to pay for our uncritical identification with the conventions of the ideology of the real. Based on rigid subject-object relations, narrative consistency, and continuity editing most products of the culture industry present a seemingly transparent and authentic reflection of the world, which is inherently conservative in nature. The intuitively compelling and one-dimensional narrative universes that unfold on the movie and television screens provide pleasurable illusions of coherence and systematically prevent the audience from calling into question the powerful cultural codes that sustain them (119 and passim). In the case of conventional historical documentaries and historical feature films, the viewers are even further removed from any critical engagement with the form and content of that coverage. In addition to the reality effect common to all 'realistic' films, the very historicity of the subject matter conveys the impression that the past universe depicted on the screen is unalterable because it is both real and passé (pp. 207-208).

On the basis of his theoretical explorations Wenzel emphasizes the specific achievements of the experimental films of the New German Cinema. All the films in question undercut the paradigm of realism by self-reflexively staging their own production as cultural products. In addition, the filmmakers refuse to provide any consistent narrative or spatial frameworks that could sustain an illusion of reality. Instead, they remain purposefully contradictory and illusive, juxtaposing layers of time, geographical settings, and sets of figures that never add up to one privileged, consistent perspective and explanation of the world. As a result, they also question all conventional genre categories, especially the divide between fiction and non-fiction film, and burden the viewer with the responsibility of making sense of their conflicted and multi-dimensional reflections on Germany's past and present (see the summaries on pp. 209-212 and 363-366).

Wenzel is generally appreciative of all techniques that the film makers have employed in their flight from, and attack of, the paradigm of realism but he is particularly partial towards Kluge's elaborate film collages. From his formalist perspective, Bitomsky and Mühlenbrock still rely on the rules of the conventional documentary, however effectively they avoid the pitfalls of the genre (pp. 390-393); Straub and Huillet remain content with deconstructing the literary bases of their films, for instance Böll's "Billiard um halbzehn" and Brecht's novel fragment "Cäsar," without adding any additional material and perspectives (pp. 353-355); Farocki resorts to simplistic pseudo-Marxist interpretations (pp. 282-285, 336, 340-341); and, Godard, who is most severely criticized, produced an idiosyncratic, even egocentric roadmovie that fails to engage the viewer in a dialogue about its meaning and implications (pp. 421-422). Only Kluge seems to offer the right mixture of alienation and familiarity, diversity and focus, which establishes film as an ideal medium of self-reflexive, social memory construction (pp. 307, 342-343, 355-356 and passim).

Celebrating the formal innovations of the postwar avant-garde films, which are certainly their most significant achievements, Wenzel has surprisingly little to say about their contents and their specific visions of German history. He emphasizes that the films advance the cause of historical reflection by stressing the indeterminacy of both history and historical interpretation, but he generally fails to point out in what respects even these overdetermined and multi-perspective films restrict our approach to German history and eliminate its most troublesome components. Only in the conclusion, Wenzel contemplates the fact that these films "have never specifically addressed the topic of genocide" but he immediately abandons such criticism by insisting that "not every film about Germany should be judged by how it represents or fails to represent the Holocaust" (p. 439).

While this assessment is certainly appropriate vis-à-vis specific films, it remains troubling that none of the productions in question engages in such memory work and instead provide only latent, almost hidden references to the "Final Solution" (for instance p. 71). The shortcomings are especially disturbing in the case of Wenzel's cause celebre, the films of Alexander Kluge. As Wenzel points out, Kluge has made the suffering of the common man at the hand of history one of his foremost topics, especially with regard to World War II and even more specifically with regard to the battle of Stalingrad (p. 303). But in his films Kluge seems to be exclusively concerned with the suffering of German soldiers and civilians and makes no mention of the suffering of German occupied nations and European Jewry. This point has been forcefully argued by Omar Bartov, among others, and it is surprising that Wenzel never addresses this criticism (Bartov, "Murder in our Midst," New York 1996, pp. 139-152).

The two components of "Gedächtnisraum Film," its theoretical elaborations and close readings, are thematically related but they are not effectively integrated because they address different issues. The theoretical part represents an elaborate indictment of cinematic and literary realism, which the films under study have successfully avoided. Therefore, the categories and methods developed in the critique do not advance the analysis of the films. This is illustrated by the fact that three of the close readings precede the theoretical interventions without loosing any of their exceptional clarity. In fact, the lack of dialogue between theory and practice leads to a somewhat repetitive exposure of the ideology of the real that is short on examples, and a similarly repetitive celebration of the specific formal characteristics of the avant-garde that lacks conceptual depth, especially regarding the dialectic of form and content. It would have been very interesting if Wenzel had compared the experimental films with more conventional productions about German history, for instance the oeuvre of Edgar Reitz, Eberhard Fechner, Hans-Dieter Grabe, or Erwin Leiser (see the interesting remarks about Fechner in note 3, p. 2). Such a comparison might have complicated the one-dimensional critique of cinematic realism in interesting ways and helped expose the ideological shortcomings of the avant-garde.

Wenzel appropriately calls the films "Zuschauerfilme" because they put the viewer in charge of sorting out the various levels and allusions in the films and developing his/her own interpretation of history. The author effectively explains the structure of the films but he still often leaves the reader of the book in charge of determining the meaning, or the range of meanings, that the films offer. In this respect he uncritically duplicates the rhetorical gesture of the films which should not be beyond reproach. In the end, all the films suffer from one debilitating shortcoming. Despite their status as "Zuschauerfilme" they have failed spectacularly in creating an audience for themselves and thus failed to realize their declared objective of entering into a critical dialogue with the viewers about the meaning of German history and the responsibilities of collective memory. Their lack of actual political significance should raise our curiosity about films, which are intended and succeeded in stimulating discussions about the German history and German crimes but embrace, or only selectively subvert, the rules of cinematic realism. Mainstream audiences are clearly overburdened by the challenges of experimental films but they are also much more sophisticated than the intellectual criticism of cinematic realism implies.

If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at: https://networks.h-net.org/h-german.

Citation: Wulf Kansteiner. Review of Wenzel, Eike, GedÖ¤chtnisraum Film: Die Arbeit an der deutschen Geschichte in Filmen seit den sechziger Jahren. H-German, H-Net Reviews. October, 2001.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=5542

Copyright © 2001 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.org.