Gastprofessors Vortrag diesen Freitag! Prof. Richter, Des Teufels General, Heroic Sacrifice
Alexander Ganz
Friday, April 2, 2010 - 2:00 p.m.
HARVILL 204
Sabine Hake, Professor of German Literature and Culture, University of
Texas, Austin
The first German films about the Third Reich were made in the 1950s,
with filmmakers in east and west seeking to explain the rise of the
Nazis and the continued attractions of fascism. These differences
reflect not only conflicting interpretations of German history on both
sides of the Iron Curtain but also competing attempts at utilizing
this history in the ideological confrontations of the Cold War. This
talk reconstructs the complicated relationship between fascism,
antifascism, and totalitarianism through a number of important films
from the period, including "The Devil's General" (1956) and the two-
part "Ernst Thälmann" (1955-56).
This event is co-sponsored by the Department of History and the School
of Media Arts Visiting Artists Program
Kompletter Text:
Dealing with the Past: The German Studies Department hosts three
events this month which examine the cultural legacy of the Third Reich
and its relation to American history.
Parallel with the COH Humanities Week this past week, the Department
of German Studies has organized a three-part series of events focusing
on a period of German history that continues to haunt both German and
American national identities – the Third Reich (1933-1945). The first
event of the series was a talk given by Emeritus Professor Roland
Richter, who was enlisted in the German army as a teenager during the
Second World War and worked as an investigator for the American
Military Police after the war’s end. His highly emotional talk drew
over 60 interested students, faculty and community members last
Tuesday.
In the second of the three events, the 1956 film The Devil’s General
(Des Teufels General), was showcased on March 25 in conjunction with
the Humanities Week Events organized by the College of Humanities and
the semester-long German Film Series. This West German film based on a
play by Carl Zuckmayer depicts the struggles of a World War II general
who is working under the Nazi Party while simultaneously opposing
them.
The third and final event in this series will be a colloquium on April
2 by Professor Sabine Hake from the University of Texas Austin, an
expert on German cinema. In her talk she reconstructs the complicated
relationship between fascism, antifascism and totalitarianism by
looking at German films from the 1950s – including the aforementioned
The Devil’s General - in which the Nazi past is thematized. This event
is co-sponsored by the Department of History and the School of Media
Arts Visiting Artists Program. The talk will start at 2pm in HARVILL
204 and concludes this three series event of the complicated German
history.