German Comedy after the Third Reich: Political Aesthetics and Entertainment in Transitional Films

• Applicant: Dr. Rasmus Greiner
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 460277009

The research project aims to examine German feature films that were in production in 1944/45 but were completed or premiered only after the end of the World War II. These so-called transitional films are – our thesis holds – of disproportionate importance for film-theoretical and (film)historical contexts. On the example of a manageable corpus of sixty-one films, both cultural and socio-historical continuities and ruptures between the Nazi era and post-war Germany can be concisely worked out. The project focuses particularly on comedies, which, with more than 30 productions, represent the most common genre of transitional films and thus significantly impacted entertainment cinema 'after the Third Reich.'On the example of transitional comedies, the project aims to research how the intertwining of entertainment, politics, and aesthetics evolved during 1940s and 1950s, the time of political and social upheaval. The innovative core lies, on the one hand, in the integrative revision of transitional films that were previously mostly conceptualized as a homogeneous phenomenon, and on the other hand, in the analysis of these films in relation to New Film History, genre studies, and political aesthetics: To what extent have aesthetic strategies of Nazi entertainment films and their ideological potentials been inscribed into the audiovisual figurations of transitional films? Can traces of the war-related shortages, upheaval, or any subsequent editing be found in the aesthetics of transitional films?As a missing link – according to our thesis – transitional comedies, in the broad spectrum from NS-affirmative up to subversive aesthetic potentials, connect the late phase of National Socialism and the audience perception in the post-war period. To trace possible discrepancies between intended viewers during the Nazi era and the subsequent perception of transitional films in the post-war period, the project applies phenomenological approach of film experience.On this basis, the political aesthetics of transitional comedies is analyzed as a manifestation of its cinematic form of experience. Our thesis maintains that the political aesthetics of transitional comedies results above all in (unconscious) experiences of difference within the tension between the 'Third Reich', defeat, and a new beginning. In transitional comedies, figurations that were ideologically effective in ‘Third Reich’ confront transformative forces that aimed to democratize perception. This complex combination of continuities and ruptures, reminiscences and differences makes transitional comedies a particularly suitable research object, that allows for studying the functionality and contradictions of the implicit forms of political aesthetics.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants