How Films Like That Of The Marriage Of Maria Braun

East Germany, its demise relayed through the mass media of recent history, has in popular consciousness been posited as negative, a corrupt bulwark of the last dying days of Communism in Eastern Europe, barren and silent. The other Germany to its West, its citizens free, was striding confidently ahead into the millennium. Recent cinema has sought to examine re-unification, the Wolfgang Becker film Goodbye Lenin! (2003) a recent example of such an investigation into the past through cinema. In this essay I will look at the film and the narrative techniques it uses, probing whether it portrays the East German nation as positive or

After World War II Germany was left devastated and in ruins. There had been massive destruction of the country’s infrastructure (Bessel 2011), it lacked political structure and economic activity had plummeted. There was a scarcity of food, fuel and housing and Germany was in no condition to clothe or feed its population (O’Dochartaigh 2003).

In addition to the damaging consequences of the First World War with the requirements of the Treaty of Versailles, certain features of Germany caused the state to be susceptible to the influence of this dangerous ideology. Along with the damage to the national ego as a result of the First World War, Germany had co-existing and conflicting highly modern strands of development forced to integrate with powerful remnants of archaic values and social structures, and had a deeply fractured parliamentary political system, and the weaknesses of this system reflected the social and political differences within the population. This shame and failure after World War I was superimposed onto a modern country which once had an advanced economy, a sophisticated state

Limitations exist amongst her interpretation of East Germany narrowing the audience that Funder attempts to permeate with obscure knowledge stored in the minds of endless victims. The subjective thoughts presented put a taint on the knowledge received, one can only consider her truth with a level of exactness if they too were raised in similar conditions as Funder. Therefore it provides the ability to compare the lifestyle you consider worthy of human activity with the occurrences in East Germany, whilst allowing perspective to be manipulated by experience in the environment Funder observes. The inclusion of judgements and conclusions provides us to interpret the situation further, due to her acknowledgement that we should not necessarily believe her – “You know they want to stop thinking about the past. They want to pretend it all didn’t happen”. Funder’s lack of experience prior to her journey makes her understanding of the past narrow. She is intent on the idea that revealing and using your past to create a future is necessary. The GDR controls the associated people to this day, without an appropriate explanation of the happenings it has left them with the inability to piece together the numerous aspects embedded in their thoughts. The missing parts dominate these

Germany was able to rebuild thanks to American financial aid. People in Germany, as in other European beaten countries after the war, began to pin their hopes for happiness on the acquisition of cars, television sets and furniture. About the time of Bausch’s adolescence, comparing status symbols began to be a more powerful form of personal communication than simple human contact.

Erica Carter teaches Cultural Studies at the University of Warwick. Recently, she published How German is She? Postwar West German Reconstruction and the consuming Woman (1996), in which she explores how the development of a "social market economy" after 1949 gave a new centrality to consumers as key players in the economic life of the (German) nation and in that process gave women a new public significance. Carter argues that concepts of nationhood survived in the rhetorics of public policy and in popular culture of the period.

Rainer Wener Fassbinder uses Marias’s life to map the post-war and contemporary Germany in film The Marriage of Maria Braun, and link her marriage and death with Germany’s political and economic. The film begins with Maria and Hermann getting married in the fire at the city hall, they sign the paper in chaos when the bombs exploded near them. Her marriage and life are meant to be different, and her expectation to love pushes her into the history of tragedy, which is referred throughout this film. Through the changes of Maria’s personal circumstances, showing the poverty in the wartime, the broken mirror on the wall, her mother’s excitement of she brings the cigarette home. Moreover, She dresses simple during the war era to nice dresses and

The passing of time certainly increased this sense of national identity in a way state building could not. Even cultural and racial minorities felt assimilated to a surprising degree. Jewish success in the bourgeoisie and High society made them feel “thoroughly German” and the political successes of the Centre party and SDP made Catholics and workers feel as though they were a well-represented part of the country’s political and social make up, and not subjugated by their protestant or cultural overlords.

In the 1940’s, Germany was a tough place to live for most people. I learned much about the Hitler's youth and what it was like to live in small town at that time through The

In this story, the narrator’s biggest problem is finding employment. Germans are unable to go into a profession that they find interest in, rather they are forced to make due in hard labor like “clearing rubble and carrying rocks” or other underpaid jobs (125). He describes how “there was a time when they used to say it was unnecessary [to have a profession], all we needed was soldiers. But now they say you have to have a profession” (125). With total war, all the German people work for the war effort, whether that was as a soldier or working in factories making weapons and other resources. It is very difficult for them not only to have a positive attitude towards their new ways of life in occupied Germany, but it is most difficult to believe that you may never go back to the Germany that existed prior to Nazi Germany. German identity may never exist again and it is obvious that many Germans regret what emerged between 1939 and

Jonathan Wiesen, in West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past, 1945-1955 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), argues that after the Nazi regime fell in West Germany, industrialists were confronted with a need to reconstruct their public image in order to isolate themselves from their Nazi past both on domestic and foreign terms; doing this would allow them to aid with the rebuilding of West German society. Wiesen poses that industrialist use selective memory, a misconstrued version of victimization from the Allied policies and an American model of capitalism and public relations in order to reestablish a West German state that was desperately trying to detach itself from its Nazi legacy.

Hoch’s photomontage was one of many collages that criticized the cultural staleness, depravity, and decaying values of the German state. Through her depiction of German politicians and technology in a state of chaos and confusion, she was effectively able to convince the German people to reevaluate their faith in the government and current cultural values. She used the fast-advancing technology of the time (especially mass media) in also advancing her own goals of sardonically criticizing the failings of the German state as well as pushing for gender equality.

As we look deeper into the historical contexts that came about in Germany during the 1920’s, Germany was confined due to the isolation the country was experiencing during World War I. During this solitude, the German government banned foreign films. German Expressionism was formed in result of the conclusion of World War I which compelled Germany to establish its own style of cinema. German Expressionist films produced in the Weimar Republic

Therefore, this film is not only a testimony about the German past but also the German present. It displays the irrational annihilation of six young Germans at the end of WWII, summoning up a very agonizing recollection of Nazi Germany’s futile effort to turn back the Allied invasion by hurling teenage boys into the

Unemployment was widespread and a whole generation of young Germans was left hopeless and without direction. For many Germans during these terrible times, mere survival was a challenge. This wretched condition is apparent in Heinrich Hauser’s description of Germany’s unemployed who lined the highways, homeless and destitute, with no place to go. As he describes it, “unskilled young people, for the most part… had been unable to find a place for themselves in any city or town in Germany, and… had never had a job and never expected to have one.” Germany had been forced to her knees.