Film Professionals in Nazi-Occupied Europe

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Frontmatter

2. Chapter 1. Making Decisions: Occupied Film Industries from the Perspective of ‘Middle-Men’

   Pavel Skopal, Roel Vande Winkel

   Abstract

   The vast territories the Wehrmacht invaded and occupied during the Second World War allowed the German film industry to dominate substantial parts of the European market. Many academic studies of those European film industries that were controlled or significantly reshaped by Nazi Germany (1939–1945) tend to provide rather general, descriptive overviews that reconstruct cultural policy and cinema infrastructure. Such bird’s-eye view on film and cultural policy has its limitations, as it leaves little room for analytical insights into the dynamics of specific changes that happened during the Second World War.

   This text argues that historians can counterbalance that perspective by analysing the strategies and practices used by individuals, who mediated between the agenda of the ‘Third Reich’ cinema apparatus and the film industry of their own region or country. After the retreat of the German troops and liberation, investigations and subsequent trials left behind a trail of documents. Such sources are of crucial importance for research that focuses on members of the civil society in German-occupied territories, who accepted the opportunity to play a significant role in a film sector that was now German-controlled (local ‘captains of industry’, cinema managers, people working for film studios, or officials authorized to navigate film policy).

3. Chapter 2. ‘Hero and Villain’: Leif Sinding as a Mediator of Cinema Politics in Occupied Norway

   Thomas V. H. Hagen

   Abstract

   The main goals of this chapter are to analyse film director and film official Leif Sinding as a mediator of war-time cinema politics in occupied Norway and to examine the circumstances surrounding his re-entry into Norwegian cultural life in the 1950s after his political downfall. As head of the National Film Directorate during the German occupation, Sinding had to mediate between pressures, demands, and expectations from both German and Norwegian authorities, from the Norwegian Nazi movement, from the cinema industry, as well as from the suppressed civil society and from moviegoers. Because there was no coherent German policy to be carried out by well-organised bodies, continuous negotiations were required. The result was a peculiar kind of reorganisation of cinema, not so much based on principled Nazi ideological doctrine, but rather specific Norwegian conditions.

4. Chapter 3. Goebbels’ Propagandists at Work: From Training the Film Elite at Home to Film Policy in Occupied Norway

   Thomas V. H. Hagen, Tobias Hochscherf

   Abstract

   When Norway was occupied by the Wehrmacht, German authorities established a propaganda branch to determine strategies for its information policy. This chapter examines the roles of two of its leading German propagandists: Wilhelm Müller-Scheld and Georg-Wilhelm Müller. How did they use culture and particularly film to promote a Nazi-Fascist hegemony? Given that many strategic decisions were not made centrally in Berlin, as the authors argue, a closer look at the impact and organisation of local propaganda helps to gain a more nuanced understanding of wartime cultural policy. The chapter demonstrates that the wartime success of Third Reich cinema in Norway was the result of a number of different factors, including restrictive legislation, film marketing, and distribution, as well as the seismic role of Norwegian collaborators.

5. Chapter 4. Jan Vanderheyden and Edith Kiel: ‘Leading’ the Belgian Film Sector While Taking Orders from the German Propaganda Service

   Roel Vande Winkel

   Abstract

   This chapter analyses the career development of Jan Vanderheyden (1890–1961) and Edith Kiel (1904–1993) during the German occupation of Belgium (1940–1944). Vanderheyden established himself as one of the most productive Belgian film producers and directors in the 1930s. Within the Belgian film community, it was no secret that Vanderheyden owed a large part of his success to his German partner, Edith Kiel. When Belgium was occupied and the Belgian film industry had to contend with the German Propaganda Division, his peers (film distributors and producers) chose Vanderheyden as their representative. Vanderheyden enthusiastically accepted this position. With equal enthusiasm, he became the ‘Leader’ of the ‘Corporate Organisations’ that the German authorities established. He would keep that position until September 1944, when the Allied armies liberated Belgium. By that point, Vanderheyden had already fled to Germany. He returned to Belgium in 1948 and was found guilty of economic collaboration and incarcerated until 1951.

   Vanderheyden often served as a ‘middleman’, who enthusiastically implemented German film policy, even when it meant the closure of many distribution companies. In return, the German authorities allowed him and his partner to direct feature films, at a time when this was no longer allowed for any other Belgians.

6. Chapter 5. How to Mediate the Bohemian-Moravian Film Culture? Role of Sudeten German Historical Agents in the Protection of Local Culture During Occupation

   Tereza Czesany Dvořáková, Volker Mohn

   Abstract

   This study deals with Wilhelm Söhnel and Anton Zankl, two Sudeten German officials who shaped the German film policy in the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and who came into contact with Czech actors, directors, and other filmmakers in a variety of different situations. Both of them were career Nazis and both pursued the interests of German cultural policy consistently and at times ruthlessly. At the same time, both Zankl and Söhnel were very ambivalent personalities. Both were personally and familially closely connected to Bohemian-Moravian regional culture, which they defended within their means. They were well connected in Czech as well as in German circles and cultivated intense and even friendly relationships with certain Czech cultural actors. Both became real mediators and negotiators between Reich and Czech interests.

7. Chapter 6. Offers Difficult to Refuse: Miloš Havel and Clientele Transactional Networks in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

   Pavel Skopal

   Abstract

   At the time of German occupation in 1939, film producer and businessman Miloš Havel was arguably the most influential personality in the Czechoslovak national film industry. During the Protectorate, he was deprived of the main source of his agency, the Barrandov Studios, and lost most of his Czech political patrons when the Protectorate government was reorganized in January 1942. Though deprived of the support he previously enjoyed in the heteronomous world of politics, he was able to maintain his transactional network within the film world and to compensate for the lost connections to political patrons. This chapter provides insight into the measures, whereby this local actor sought to maintain his network and capital, to preserve his pre-war resources, and to keep established structures working under highly volatile circumstances. The concepts of patronage, brokers, and transactional networks provide the theoretical framework for the analysis of Havel’s career during the period under consideration.

8. Chapter 7. In the Sound of Time: The Fate of Ukrainian Inventor Ivan Nikitin

   Tatiana Manykina

   Abstract

   During the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, inventor Ivan Nikitin worked in a high position at Ukraine-Film in Kyiv, which was a subsidiary of ZFO, and was engaged in the distribution of German films in the territory of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Thanks to his high qualifications, Nikitin also led the sound recording laboratory at the Kyiv Film Studio, where propaganda films were dubbed. The controversial story of Ivan Nikitin shows that not only his qualifications but also his personal qualities played an important role at the Kyiv Film Studio during the Nazi occupation. His story also provides insight into the special policy of the Nazis in the field of film propaganda in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union.

9. Chapter 8. Jan Teunissen, the Self-Proclaimed ‘Film Czar’ of the German-Occupied Netherlands (1940–1945)

   Egbert Barten

   Abstract

   Gerardus Johannes Teunissen was born in The Hague on 15 April 1898 and died in the same city on 24 December 1975. Between these two dates lie high summits of fame, artistic recognition, prestigious offices, and deep valleys of political malpractice, artistic frustration, and oblivion. During World War II, in the German-occupied Netherlands, Teunissen would become the ‘Leader’ of the Film Guild. This made him the nominal head of the entire Dutch film sector. But how much power did he really have? This chapter reviews Teunissen’s wartime career and frames it in the larger context of his activities in the Dutch film industry, before and after the war. The chapter also pays attention to the post-war trial against Teunissen, who was detained from 1945 until 1948.

10. Chapter 9. Jan Fethke: The Artist’s Lot in the Shadow of the Swastika

    Krzysztof Trojanowski

    Abstract

    In 1941, the Polish-language Nowy Kurier Warszawski (New Warsaw Courier), which was controlled by the Germans, published an interview with director Jan Fethke (1903–1980), a Reichsdeutscher. Building on Fethke’s status among Polish filmmakers, the occupation authorities tried to establish him as a leader in the revival of the film industry, which was intended to affirm the progress of “normalization” of life within the General Government. On the orders of the occupying forces, Fethke entered into cooperation with the German film center FIP (Film- und Propagandamittel Vertriebsgesellschaft) that had been established in Warsaw to complete two films. After the liberation of Poland, Fethke was arrested on suspicion of collaboration with the Germans—in the end, the allegations were not upheld.

11. Chapter 10. Managing Cinemas in German-Annexed Territories: The Case of Heinrich Meisenzahl in Moselle

    Anthony Rescigno

    Abstract

    With its examination of the cinema market in Moselle after annexation by Nazi Germany, this study highlights the primordial role of the cinema operator in developing a leisure activity adapted to the demands of a heterogeneous public. In 1943, the Nazi authorities chose to assign the administration of a network of eleven cinemas, including all the cinemas in Metz, to a certain Heinrich Meisenzahl. This German merchant from Frankfurt had lived in Metz before the war began. This detail could have raised doubts among local Nazi politicians, but in the end, it was an asset that enabled him to claim possession of a precise knowledge of the local market and the tastes of Moselle’s spectators. Under his leadership, the city’s cinemas recorded record audiences and Metz became the city in the Third Reich where people went to the cinema most often. Despite the political takeover of the region’s largest cinemas, the film programming continued to attract local spectators, who were not very inclined to welcome the ideology of the occupier.

12. Backmatter