In a time in which a public without the presence of the media is no longer imaginable, the significance of virtual "memory spaces" in which recent history is brought to mind and reflected upon, is increasing commensurately.

In the process, television viewing quotas and numbers of cinema visitors provide information as what themes and attitudes reflect the views of society's mainstream, but not about the quality and scope of historic education, about the history of National Socialism in Germany, as an example.

More than 60 years after the end of the war, a very comprehensive repertoire of feature and documentary films exists dealing with National Socialism in the land of the perpetrators, that up until the beginning of the ‚90's was based on a process of art-film production that was split between the two Germanys. After reunification in 1989, the film makers' interest in the issue did not come to a halt – in spite of all predictions that the German public had now had enough of the "endless muck-raking" in the dark Nazi period and had far more urgent problems stemming from their most recent past. In view of the many and diverse productions in cinema and television, above all in the anniversary years of 1995 and 2005, the contours of an independent genre can be observed, one that departs from earlier works with its trend towards a popular aesthetics and that is also stylistically seminal for the cinematic treatment of topics involving recent history. Very important impulses came from abroad in this connection. The melodrama, Schindler's List (Schindlers Liste) (1993, Steven Spielberg), was not only the first truly great cinematic success of a film about the Holocaust in Germany. It is still being shown today in schools as an exemplary combination of pedagogy and film entertainment. Important precursors of the docu-drama format that is influencing current TV productions on National Socialism were British television formats that adapted feature film elements.

The New "Homeland" Films – History Through theEeyes of Average Germans

The cinema success Herbstmilch (i.e. Autumn Milk) (Joseph Vilsmaier, 1989) shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in October 1989, was based on the bestselling autobiography of the farmer Anna Wimschneider (1985). For the first time, the every day experiences of a simple German woman in wartime, a woman with whom the German public could identify as being representative of "their history", were expressed in film. Vilsmaier repeated this approach, making use of collective experiences and the perspective of the "average German" in rapid succession (Rama Dama, 1990 < i.e. Hurrah! Hurrah!, Stalingrad, 1993). With his combination of the subject matter of National Socialism with the tradition of German "homeland" and war films in a manner emphasizing societal consensus, Vilsmaier departed from television series formats that at that time had already enjoyed success due to their critical reflection of the connection between the themes of "homeland" and National Socialism. The family epics Heimat (i.e. Homeland) (Edgar Reitz, Hunsrück, 1984), Rote Erde II (i.e. Red Earth II) (Ruhr, 1989), and Löwengrube (i.e. Lion's Den) (Munich/Bayerische Rundfunk, 1989) investigated the ways in which National Socialism manifested itself in a single region, on the basis of every day life experiences between the end of the First World War and the beginning of the ‚Fifties. The success of all three series with the viewing public was reminiscent of the family epic Holocaust (USA, 1979). The broadcasting of the fate of the Jewish family Weiss into German living rooms was like a spark setting off a wildfire. Suddenly the persecution of the Jews and the Third Reich were public topics.

The Germans as Victims?

Most recently, however, the "German perspective" is no longer presented on the basis of the different situations of perpetrators, passive followers and the persecuted, but is reduced instead to the collective "German" experience of victimization. The TV dramas Dresden (Roland Suso Richter, 2003) and Die Flucht (i.e. Flight) (Kai Wessel, 2007) were produced in the wake of public debates about the air war, flight and forced displacement. The telling title of the historical documentation, Hitlers letzte Opfer (i.e. Hitler's Last Victims) (Sebastian Dehnhardt, 2007), broadcast as an accompaniment to the previously mentioned two-part film on the flight of the German populace from East Prussia, highlights the competition with the victims of National Socialist persecution that was built up in this connection. Jörg Grünler succeeds in presenting a far more differentiated interpretation in his filming of Peter Härtling's book for young people, Krücke (i.e. Crutch) from 1992. The nine-year old Thomas, who had to flee from East Prussia with his mother, experiences that human beings are not necessarily predators, in spite of the chaos of war and displacement.

The Destruction of the Homelands of the Nations that had been Attacked.

Rolf Schübel presents a completely different concept of "homeland" in his film, Das Heimweh des Walerjan Wrobel (i.e. Walerjan Wrobel's Homesickness) (1990/91). A polish youth is at the center of the film, which is based on an actual event. Walerjan was abducted to a farm near Hannover to work as a forced laborer. The film offers a realistic picture of wartime privation in the countryside in a way similar to Herbstmilch (i.e. Autumn Milk), but from the perspective of the young man whose disenfrachisement had been racially motivated and whose fate is sealed by the resentment of the farmer's wife. After Walerjan sets a barn on fire out of homesickness he is sent to Neuengamme concentration camp and is executed after a summary trial. The film, which unfortunately was seen only by a very few movie-goers as it came to the theatres shortly after October, 1989, is one of the very rare German films dealing with the situation of the nations that had been attacked by Germany. To date it is also the only one to deal with the issue of forced labor. Almost ten years later, Schübel shifts his location to Budapest in his feature film, Gloomy Sunday (1999) and illuminates the murderous persecution of Hungarian Jews under the German occupation. The filming of the novel with the same title by Nick Barkow (1988) is entitled after a contemporary song that became world-famous as the "suicide hymn" starting in the mid-30's.

Two additional feature films on the consequences of German occupation are Mutters Courage (i.e. My Mother's Courage) (Michael Verhoeven, 1995), after George Tabori's autobiographical novel about the rescue of his Jewish mother from Budapest and The Ninth Day/Der neunte Tag (Volker Schlöndorff, 2004) after the retrospective diary notes of the Luxemburger priest Jean Bernard. Bernard was interned in Dachau as a political prisoner. The film focuses on the nine days leave from the concentration camp that he was given in order to win over his country's bishop to collaborate with the German occupying forces. The Ninth Day/Der neunte Tag, like Das Heimweh des Walerjan Wrobel (i.e. Walerjan Wrobel's Homesickness), is one of the few German feature films after 1989 that dares to show the terror in the concentration camps. The most recent example is Die Fälscher (i.e. The Counterfeiters) (Stefan Ruzowitsky, 2007), dealing with the SS's counterfeiting workshop in the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen. The story line is based on the autobiographical work, Des Teufels Werkstatt, by the concentration camp survivor Adolf Burger, played by August Diehl in the film. Here, however, the reality of terror serves instead as backdrop to the precarious situation of the prisoners, who enjoyed comparatively comfortable living conditions due to their work in the counterfeiting workshop and who could thereby escape the Holocaust in the concentration camps.

Incredible Stories of the Holocaust

Die Fälscher (i.e. The Counterfeiters) is part of a series of films that deal with the Holocaust on the basis of "incredible," but true individual stories in the midst of the Third Reich, and that deliberately break with the idea that all Jews were immediately gassed in distant Auschwitz. Thus, the small-scale but deeply sensitive TV filming of Jurek Becker's autobiographical story, Die Mauer (i.e. The Wall), When the Germans are Sleeping/ Wenn alle Deutschen schlafen (Frank Beyer, BRD, 1995) deals with Jewish children who, after being relocated out of the ghetto into a neighbouring transit camp, sneak back at night to retrieve their many toys that had been left behind in the abandoned houses. Aimee and Jaguar/Aimee und Jaguar (Max Färberbeck, BRD 1999), after Erica Fischer's novel-like documentation, deals with a lesbian love-affair in Berlin in 1943 between a Jewish resistance fighter and a German housewife whose husband is away fighting at the front. The German director Jan Schütte takes a completely different approach to film memory in presenting forgotten Jewish stories in his films Bye-Bye America/Auf Wiedersehen, Amerika (1993) and Old Love (2001), in which he tells the stories of Jewish emigrants who are confronted in their old age with consequences stemming from the loss of their homeland. When one compares films about Jewish victims of persecution with presentations of victims of political persecution, it strikes one that only the latter are conventionalized as German heroes, as in the TV drama, Stauffenberg (Jo Baier, 2004), the feature film Bonhoeffer, Agent of Grace/Bonhoeffer, die letzte Stufe (Eric Till, 2000), and particularly in Sophie Scholl: The Final Days /Sophie Scholl. Die letzten Tage (Marc Rothemund, 2005). In contrast to its predecessor, The White Rose/Die Weiße Rose (Michael Verhoeven, 1981), Rothemund's film can mislead the viewer to wrongly assess the historical figure of Sophie Scholl, who in fact played no leading role in the White Rose resistance group.

Perpetrators as Psychopaths and as "People Like Us"

At present public discourse on National Socialism in Germany is increasingly focusing on the perpetrators. The travelling exhibition, Vernichtungskrieg, Verbrechen der Wehrmacht by the Hamburg Institute for Social History (1995-1999), was the spark that set off a wildfire of cultural politics by almost eruptively breaking open German society's repression and silencing of this issue. In contrast, the feature films that have arisen that deal with the perpetrators and above all with the "Fuehrer" lack the perspective of historical and political education. According to film critic Georg Seeßlen's assessment, these films portray Hitler either as a "psychopath" or as a "human being like us," an aspect that up until now determined a film's failure or success with the public, as well. The feature film Conversation with the Beast/Gespräch mit der Bestie (Armin Müller-Stahl, 1996), that portrays a 103-year old Hitler vegetating in a cellar in conversation with an American historian, attempts a psychological interpretation that was rejected by the movie-going public. The comedy, My Fuehrer /Mein Führer (Dani Levy 2007) suffered the same fate. The director succeeded merely in portraying a fool. His attempt at alienation in the manner of classics such as The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin, 1940) and To Be or Not To Be/Sein oder Nichtsein (Ernst Lubitch, 1942 )was a failure. In contrast, the feature film The Downfall/Der Untergang (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2005) and the TV drama Speer und Er (i.e. Speer and The Man Himself) (Heinrich Breloer, 2005) were popular successes, not least because of incomparably greater advertising expenditure. These set out to portray "Hitler the man." The Downfall/Der Untergang is the third film based on HughTrevor-Roper's research in his book, The Last Days of Hitler. It differs from its predecessors not only in its interpretation of the Fuehrer but also in its conventionalization of the persons close to him as victims. Thus, responsibility for the crimes of National Socialism on the part of historical personalities such as Hermann Fegelein, Albert Speer or Dr. Ernst Günther Schenck is deemphasized. The personal note in Speer und Er (i.e Speer and the Man Himself) is strengthened by the inclusion of Albert Speer's children as witnesses to history, but also as objects of identification for the viewer.

An Oscar for Recent History

The most important international award, the Oscar for the best foreign film, was won by the feature film Nowhere in Africa/Nirgendwo in Afrika (Caroline Link, 2001) in 2003. The film is based on Stefanie Zweig's autobiographical novel with the same title. Caroline Link succeeds in telling the story of the emigration of a Jewish family to Kenya in such a way that displacement, foreignness and the confrontation with another culture become experiencable as parts of the human condition as such. That the portrayal of current societal reference points fits in with popular trends was demonstrated by the most recent German Oscar-winner, The Lives of Others/Das Leben der Anderen (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006). The film thematizes betrayal, loyalty and decency in the German Democratic Republic. During an assignment, a Stasi wiretap expert grows to feel solidarity with his victims. The fact that the film was criticized as being unrealistic both by representatives of Stasi victims and by historians of the period because of the transformation of the main character "from perpetrator to victim to hero" indicates that feature films dealing with recent history primarily project the perspective of the present onto the past, and are less aimed at transmitting historical knowledge. Unfortunately, only a few filmmakers are taking up the challenge of making movie-goers and television viewers aware of this state of affairs.