Film and Politics in South-east Europe: Germany as ‘Leading Cultural Nation’, 1933–45

Abstract

‘The new objective of European cinema is the national Film’, wrote a Nazi cultural commentator in Vienna in 1942. ‘National’ films would enable the nations of Europe to present their lands and peoples to the outside world. Unfortunately many smaller countries — and this was particularly true of south-eastern Europe — lacked a native film production industry adequate to the task; and here the continent’s ‘leading cultural nations’ must step in, and fill the gaps with appropriate films. The region had relied far too long on tawdry western imports, which people were now rejecting in favour of more serious, German films that addressed issues important to Europeans: Jew Süss (Jud Süss, 1940), for example, which had been shown in Balkan capitals the previous year. German cinema was faced with two tasks in south-eastern Europe, the commentary continued: First, to fill the gaps in the market created by the lack of ‘national’ films; and secondly, and more importantly, to disseminate German culture ‘thereby continuing a tradition, and simultaneously awakening an understanding of the new developments now beginning in Europe’.¹