"Keep the Home Fires B...
"Keep the Home Fires Burning": Fairy Tale Heroes and Heroines in an East German Heimat
in German Politics and Society
Author: Sonja Fritzsche
GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC; EAST GERMANY; FAIRY TALE FILMS; HEIMATFILM; DAS KALTE HERZ; DER TEUFEL VON MÜHLENBERG; PAUL VERHOEVEN (1901-1975); HERBERT BALLMANN; GENDER
https://doi.org/10.3167/gps.2012.300403
The article argues that the films Das kalte Herz (The Cold Heart, 1950) and Der Teufel von Mühlenberg (The Devil of Mill Mountain, 1955) functioned in two ways-as fairy tales and also as new Heimat or "homeland" tale. Besides Wolfgang Staudte's The Story of Little Mook, these two films were the only two live action fairy tale films that appeared before East Germany's DEFA made its first Grimm feature adaptation in 1956, The Brave Little Tailor. Yet, unlike the Grimm-based films that take place in a generic "forest," these first two films take place explicitly in the Black Forest and the Harz Mountains, two locations synonymous with the beauty and timeless nature of past notions of German Heimat. The two films also engaged with the growing monetary and symbolic success of the West's postwar Heimatfilme or homeland films. The article focuses on how The Cold Heart and Mill Mountain contributed to the rearticulation of the emerging Heimat discourse in the early German Democratic Republic, with a particular focus on gender.
German Politics and Society
© Georgetown University 2012
Party Formation and Dilemmas of Opportunity Structure: Freie Wähler in the German Political System
Intersectionality and the Substantive Representation of Migrant Interests in Germany
A Discipline Refuses: Rating Academic Research Performance in Germany
Alfred Diamant
Article by Sonja Fritzsche