Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Cinema

Barbara Hales is a Professor of History and Humanities at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Her publications focus on film history of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. She is the author of Black Magic Woman: Gender and the Occult in Weimar Germany (Peter Lang, 2021). Along with Mihaela Petrescu and Valerie Weinstein, she also co-edited a volume entitled Continuity and Crisis in German Cinema, 1928-1936 (Camden House, 2016). Dr. Hales is President of the Center for Medicine After the Holocaust.

“The ‘Film Europa: German Cinema in an International Context’ series is increasingly indispensable for those interested in film history or media studies. This collection appears in that series, and Hales and Weinstein provide a masterful introduction that places the historical bookmark where it belongs: everything starts with Siegfried Kracauer's From Caligari to Hitler: Psychological History of the German Film (1947) and Lotte Eisner's The Haunted Screen (1952)… Highly Recommended.”  • Choice“An important contribution to an understanding of filmmaking in Germany during the Weimar Republic. This volume offers a multi-faceted, in-depth investigation into the Jewish presence in Weimar cinema both on screen, in various genres, and off screen through biographical sketches and film reviews.” • Barbara Kosta, University of Arizona“Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Film makes a significant and welcome contribution to the study of Weimar film, to German film studies in general, and to German Jewish studies. It presents detailed research and analysis of important Weimar films, artists, and critics; most of them have not been examined in much detail by other scholars, and when they have been, they have rarely been analyzed in relation to Jewishness, a concept that this volume explores in a very nuanced manner.” • Rick McCormick, University of Minnesota

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsList of ContributorsIntroduction: The Jewishness of Weimar CinemaBarbara Hales and Valerie WeinsteinPart I: Jewish Visibility On and Off ScreenChapter 1. Humanizing Shylock: The “Jewish Type” in Weimar FilmMaya BarzilaiChapter 2. Energizing the Dramaturgy: How Jewishness Shaped Alexander Granach’s Performances in Weimar CinemaMargrit FrölichChapter 3. The Jewish Vamp of Berlin: Actress Maria Orska, Typecasting, and Jewish WomenKerry WallachChapter 4. Jewish Comedians beyond Lubitsch: Siegfried Arno in Film and CabaretMila GanevaChapter 5. Alfred Rosenthal’s Rhetoric of Collaboration, the Politics of Jewish Visibility, and Jewish Weimar Film Print CultureErvin MalakajPart II: Coding and Decoding Jewish DifferenceChapter 6. Two Worlds, Three Friends, and the Mysterious Seven-Branched Candelabrum: Jewish Filmmaking in Weimar GermanyPhilipp StiasnyChapter 7. Homosexual Emancipation, Queer Masculinity, and Jewish Difference in Anders als die Andern (1919)Valerie WeinsteinChapter 8. Der Film ohne Juden: G.W. Pabst’s Die freudlose Gasse (1925)Lisa SilvermanChapter 9. “The World is Funny, Like a Dream:” Franziska Gaal’s Verwechslungskomödien and Exile’s Crisis of IdentityAnjeana K. HansPart III: Jewishness as Antisemitic ConstructChapter 10. Cinematically Transmitted Disease: Weimar’s Perpetuation of the Jewish Syphilis ConspiracyBarbara HalesChapter 11. The Einstein Film: Animation, Relativity, and the Charge of “Jewish Science”Brook HenkelChapter 12. “A Clarion Call to Strike Back”: Antisemitism and Ludwig Berger's Der Meister von Nürnberg (1927)Christian RogowskiChapter 13. Banning Jewishness: Stefan Zweig, Robert Siodmak, and the NazisAndréas-Benjamin SeyfertChapter 14. Detoxification: Nazi Remakes of E. A. Dupont’s BlockbustersOfer AshkenaziCodaChapter 15. “Filmrettung: Save the Past for the Future!”: Film Restoration and Jewishness in German and Austrian Silent CinemaCynthia WalkAfterwordBarbara Hales and Valerie Weinstein