212 Martin Loiperdinger Müller, Corinna (2008) Kinoöffentlichkeit in Hamburg um 1913 In- Müller/Segeberg (Hg.) (2008), S. 105-125. ' Müller, Corinna / Segeberg, Harro (Hg.) (2008) Kinoöffentlichkeit (1895-1920) - Entstehung, Etablierung, Differenzierung / Cinema's Public Sphere - Emergence, Settlement, Differentiation (1895-1929). Marburg: Schüren. Nielsen, Asta (1928) Mein Weg im Film. 2. Mein erster Film. In: B. Z. am Mittag, 24.9.1928. Wieder abgedruckt in: Asta Nielsen, Ihr leben in Fotodokumenten, Selbstzeugnissen und zeitgenössischen Betrachtungen. Hg. von Renate Seydel & Allan Hagedorff. Berlin (DDR): Henschel 1984, S. 38. Schäfer, Dieter (1982) Anmerkungen zu einer Düsseldorfer Filmgeschichte - von den Anfängen bis 1945. In: Düsseldorf kinematographisch. Beiträge zu einer Filmgeschichte. Hg. vom Filminstitut der Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf. Düsseldorf-Triltsch 1982, S. 11-40. Töteberg, Michael (2008) Neben dem Operetten-Theater und vis-ä-vis Schauspielhaus. Eine Kino-Topographie von Hamburg 1896-1912. In: Müiler/Segebere (Hg.) (2008), S. 87-104. 5 8 ä Siíí STEPHEN LOWRY Movie Reception and Popular Culture in the Third Reich Contextualization of Cinematic Meanings in Everyday Life At the 1993 Pesaro conference on "II cinema nel Terzo Reich," Irmbert Schenk presented some "critical notes on the suggestion of the identity of propaganda and effects in film studies" (Schenk 1994 & 2008). He criticized the lack of investigations of the real reception of Nazi period films and a tendency to jump from propagandistic intentions to assumed effects, without considering historical factors or psychological mechanisms that could explain how the audience dealt with the films emotionally or in terms of their life world. Unfortunately - for film studies, but not for Schenk's article - it has lost little of its relevance, even if some progress toward more complete views of cinema in Nazi Germany has been made. What has been referred to as the "second wave" (Carter 2004, 5)1 of studies on Third Reich cinema broke away from propaganda to look at the whole range of popular movies, thus revising the object and terms of discussion. The films have come to be seen as contradictory and open, just like any other movies, thus raising questions of the applicability of cultural studies (cf. Elsaesser 1997). Such approaches have widened the perspective by also including institutional aspects, thus affording a picture of multiple, though not always conflicting, commercial and political forces that shaped production and distribution. International relations are increasingly being brought into view, taking Nazi cinema out of an artificial isolation. Studies of individual films, stars, and genres have also given us a closer look at the textual and aesthetic mechanisms involved. However, the question of propaganda remains central. The British and American discussion has been more open to reconceiving Nazi cinema in terms of "multi-discursive tendencies," "dominant and non-dominant discourses," and even an inherent "instability" in National Socialist culture, 1 This term refers to work begun by Karsten Witte (1976,1981-82 & 1995) and continued by a number of scholars over the past decades: Rentschler 1996; Schulte-Sasse 1996; Kreimeier 1992 & 1994; Low^i^faa9flSft 2002; Carter 2004; Hake 2001; Ascheid 1998 & 2003. {fi nitrororprofessional download the free trial online at filtopdf.cam/pmfBS&ir^ 214 Stephen Lowry as Antje Ascheid mentions (2003,7F). However, such discussion still views Nazi cinema as a functional part of politics, as the title of Eric Rentschler's work, The Ministry of Illusion, suggests. In German research, the concept of propaganda remains dominant, as recent publications demonstrate.2 Of course, there are reasons to retain a political view of Nazi cinema, and it would be a massive distortion to declare it free of politics.3 The reality of industrialized mass murder makes it impossible to ignore the political context of even the most insipid entertainment films. From our retrospective view, Nazism is defined by terror and culminated in the Shoah, and this cannot be ignored as the crucial perspective. However, it also makes it difficult to understand the experiential reality of Germans living in the Third Reich, which wasxletermined by "split consciousness" (Schäfer 1982). There seems to have been much more 'normality' in everyday life than we might be willing or able to imagine - a ghastly normality that encompassed concerns about love, sex, food and basic goods, the deportation of Jews, popular music, bombing, charred corpses in the streets, the Gestapo, cosmetics and clothing, work, and trying to raise children. Another reason to question the propaganda model are its implicit assumptions. Strong media effects have never been verifiable. Media effects are always diverse, occur over a long time, and are weaker than other factors, including social milieu, direct communication, education, family, etc. They are limited in scope - the conversion of beliefs is unlikely, but their reinforcement much easier. Most convincing are multi-factor models, which conceive a spectrum of possible, but generally small and cumulative effects. Put simply, studying movies, even propaganda movies, will never satisfactorily explain 'how that could happen.' It may, however, help reconstruct one small part of the fabric of culture and daily life within which people's behavior enabled the political system of Nazi Germany to function. Moreover, claiming that propaganda was responsible for the regime reduces the public to passive victims manipulated by Goebbels and Hitler. The effect is to exculpate the audience, assuming that they were and even had to be manipulated. The resulting exoneration of guilt may explain why such models are popular in Germany, but it does not explain how the regime gained and retained loyalty. Questions of ideology present themselves very differently if one conceives of the population as helpless victims or as willingly embracing a system that promised gratifications, including real or imagined social mobility, national identity, and the re- 2 See, for example, Bussemer 2000; Kleinhans 2003; Segeberg 2004. 3 As was often claimed by people active in Third Reich film; see, for example, Rabenalf 1978. Movie Reception and Popular Culture in the Third Reich 215 wards of consumer society, at least for certain social strata. Many were already permeated by Nazi mentality, others became hangers-on out of fear or opportunism, while some remained distanced or oppositional, but went on trying to live and work as normally as possible while generally conforming to internalized social values of orderliness, discipline, and the work ethic (cf. Bergerson 2004). Taboos are also involved: As the epitome of evil, Nazism cannot be seen as having offered people real gratifications. Anyone suggesting this is open to attack for claiming that it was something good. And while such claims do circulate - myths about the supposed lack of crime, the status of motherhood, the autobahn and unemployment, and so on, refusing to look at the mass attraction of the system for significant parts of the population blocks understanding. Historical studies of cinema, film distribution, and audiences have made progress, but major gaps remain. Figures are available on box office returns or the running times of individual films, and these can indicate audience response. Some documents show audience response directly, particularly the SD reports. Gerhard Stahr has taken a close look at such sources, presenting an overview of how reception developed, but also de- > ■. marcating the limits of the sources (2001, 41-55): they fail to conform to '.: standards of empirical research and were directly involved in the internal power politics of the regime, systematically skewing the picture they gave of audience response. Neither is oral history a real alternative. Memories of movie experiences are unreliable, and unconscious emotional responses cannot be accessed. One can at most reconstruct memories, not experience itself (Stacey 1994). In this case, they have often been distorted by secondary revision of their contents. An anecdote may illustrate this: in the late 1980s, I took advantage of the afternoon "senior citizens" screenings in a Bremen theater to view old movies. While watching Wunschkonzert (D 1940, Eduard von Borsody), the lady next to me was shaking her head and murmuring, "That's not Wunschkonzert, this is the wrong movie," whenever shots of bombings, air combat, tanks, artillery, and so on appeared.4 As long as the film stuck to the love story with Use Werner, musical numbers, or even the shots of Hitler at the Berlin Olympics, she was satisfied about being in the right film. Although most interpretations explain the film's success precisely through its references to topical reality (Silberman 1995, 79-80), these are what had been repressed by selective memory. 4 Such shots do not take up much of the movie, but they are quite noticeable in comparison to most other feature fijKy^fttjyU^ftyed in a never-never-land far removed from contemporary Nazi society. in nitrororprofessional dum load the free trial online at niropdf.com/pTofesiiocifil 216 Stephen Lowry This restricts application of cultural studies to Nazi cinema: the use of interviews or empirical studies is limited, leaving us with the herme-neutics of divergent possible "readings." Such studies mark one of the major advances in the "second wave": breaking open the supposedly monolithic quality of Nazi cinema. But the problem of how to avoid arbitrary or historically false interpretations remains.5 Even in cases where the intention of the text and the built-in signals about how to read it seem clear - as in the case of newsreels -, actual reception is not. Some reactions to newsreels were documented, but - other than at the beginning of the Third Reich and again in the early war years - the audience generally remained passive. Scattered resistance in the form of laughter, boos, and comments was noted - Hermann Goring was often the target - but it is unclear how typical this was (Stahr 2001,135). Despite more sophisticated film analysis, it remains difficult to judge which elements the audience responded to and how. Narrative structures like closure show the work of ideology in the text and pre-structure the pragmatics of how audiences should understand them. But did they follow such paths? How did various moviegoers interpret movies, and which criteria and values were involved? What if it was not the "message" that interested them at all, but the look, the fashions, the way the star moves and talks?. These questions mark limits of works that retain a model of effects, despite the integration of moments of "active audience" theory. Film policy clearly assigned cinema a political role. However, texts can only work when they interact with the various structures of the mentality and emotionality of audiences. Just like advertising, propaganda and entertainment must appeal to needs and wants; they can only activate meanings already present in the knowledge and subjectivity of people. So how can we make better substantiated guesses about what went on in audiences in the Third Reich? My suggestion is that a strong contex-tualization within the culture of everyday life maybe a way to reconstruct not the real reception, but at least some of the discursive networks within which this production of meaning took place. These may be political; more often, however, they involve proto-political patterns of behavior, feelings and affects, subjectivity, and taste. The emphasis on contextualization may even mean a shift of focus away from film onto a primarily cultural approach, relegating the films to being a privileged source, but only one source among others to reconstruct some of the meanings of everyday life. 5 Extreme cases would be intent on discovering an oppositional subtext in every film or on turning Veit Harlan into an auteur by only considering aesthetic aspects of the films, see Grab 1984ff. "1 1 Movie Reception and Popular Culture in the Third Reich 217 --MOT > ,;;':atliifl I m 1-6 Hauptsache glücklich (Happiness matters the most, Theo Lingen, D 1941). A small example: the movie Hauptsache glücklich (Happiness matters the most, Theo Lingen, D 1941), starring Heinz Rühmann and Hertha Feiler, opened in April 1941 and played quite successfully. In terms of plot and protagonist, this is a typical Rühmann comedy. Here he plays the accountant Axel Roth, who is content to be just a little cog in the big machine of his company, as he puts it. He seeks happiness exclusively in private life, which also seems perfect when he marries and sets up domestic bliss within the four walls of his apartment. However, his wife, Uschi, pushed on by her mother, wants him to be more ambitious. When Axel shows no initiative of h^wVshe^oes to taTK to his boss He does nitro professional download the free trial online al nhropdf.mmj^Hofesakmei 218 Stephen Lowry not take the time to talk to her, but she quickly adds their names to a list of invitations when the secretary is busy. So to Axel's surprise, they are invited to a fancy party at the director's home. Uschi's trick fails, however, since Axel gets drunk and explains his philosophy of doing as little äs possible - this was not the impression she hoped he would make. Fate steps in, though, when Uschi loses the broach she had borrowed from a customer at the beauty parlor where she works. Now Axel has to become ambitious to come up with the money to replace the jewelry. Not much is left of the domestic idyll after the couple has to sell off their prize possessions and sublet a room, and ends up quarrelling constantly, finally even getting divorced. Axel, however, reveals a whole new side of his personality, working furiously at his job of checking expense accounts. In the end, he exposes waste and corruption among-the managers, thus leading his astonished boss to offer him a big bonus and the promotion to the position of a director. Axel can then replace the broach, only to find out that it was not the original, but only a cheap duplicate. Still, all the problems are solved and the couple can get back together happily again. As always, the Rühmann character finds happiness in conformity by the end of the film. In this case, he is even rewarded with upward mobility, when he is forced despite himself to discover his own potential for ambition, hard work, and diligence. Plot closure suggests social harmony and provides models for behavior and values, so it is not hard to find an ideological subtext. Bernd Kleinhans reads the movie as presenting the German populace with a parable, teaching them that they should learn to do their duty to the community, like Axel does for the company, and they will then be rewarded by true happiness. Furthermore, it suggests that corruption or abuse of power were not systematic elements of Nazism, but would be cleared up - 'if the Führer only knew' - and each member of society did his duty. Thus the movie seems to allow indirect criticism of the low-level Nazi functionaries, but only to stabilize the system as a whole (see Kleinhans 2003,140-142). ^ Plot patterns, jokes, and other verbal or visual stereotypes integrate I patterns of spectator knowledge and emotions into the pragmatics of a I film, showing which audience reactions were expected, but of course not {whether they were achieved (although box office success can be an indicator). Humor relies on shared systems of values and the understanding of f situations and roles, so a successful comedy can be an indication of a wide-"... ^P^d sentiment in society. However, textual constructions of the implicit viewer involve not only plots, but also all the other attractions built into the films, including stars, decor, costumes, and music. Which of the various attractions actually interested the viewers? Did they particularly care about narrative structure and resolution, or. did Movie Reception and Popular Culture in the Third Reich 219 they just see them as normal, conforming to expectations about the star and genre, but not really meaning much? In other words, to what degree did moviegoers expect the films to reflect reality, and to what extent did they want movies to be 'just movies?' This is not necessarily a contradiction, and stereotypical genre movies can still be symptomatic of a social or "political unconscious," to use Frederic Jameson's term (1981), but it does open up further questions about reception. Rühmann's films in this period were star vehicles, built around an established image, which provides further access to complexes of meanings and possible forms of audience interaction.6 The forms of subjectivity, behavior, and the micro-politics of body and Haltung (in the double sense of posture and attitudes) that Rühmann embodied were characteristic of the culture of 1930s, 1940s, and even 1950s Germany. Nonverbal communication - posture, movements, use of space, paralinguistic signs - can embody lifestyles and represent collective identity, thus forming patterns of sentiment invoked by movies below the level of plot and theme. Within the obvious representation of petit-bourgeois character, Rühmann also incorporated expressions of modernity as a subjective feeling and that was revealed at this basic level of bodily expression.7 At an even more basic level: what do movies show, what do we see? How does the film work as a visualization of a modern version of middle-class taste and desires: furniture, interiors, the privacy of an apartment, work/leisure time, fashion, and values, often embodied in spaces as well as behavior and expressions? Merely on the basis of the images, it might be difficult to tell if Hauptsache glücklich is a movie from the 30s, 40s or 50s, or even the late 20s. The style of architecture and design fits well within a form of toned-down modernism that existed across these periods (Hake 2001,46-67). It is certainly ho coincidence that decor is used quite ostentatiously to introduce the protagonist and his desires: he is shown avidly browsing an advertising prospect for furniture while entering his workplace, a modern office. Both he and his surroundings fit closely to the lifestyle of the white-collar workers that Siegfried Kracauer had portrayed as new and characteristic of the 1920s (Kracauer 1980 [1929]). His apartment as a private refuge and his search for happiness in domesticity becomes the crux of the story. He is unable to exclude social pressures (work, status, social climbing), but when he meets them, the middle-class work ethic provides him with a way to realize private happiness at a more secure level in the end, with- 6 See, for example, Hake 2001,87-106; Körner 2001,17-58; Lowry 2002. 7 See Hake's discussion of Ruhrrgflfi^tfttftHing a particular kind of "male hysteria" and regressive behavior (2001, 95-106) »POF[ download thefrea trial online at nitropdf.com/profeBaondl n nitro professional 220 Stephen Lowry out fundamentally changing his petit-bourgeois goals. The happy ending shows the couple back in the private space of their bedroom. The continuity of middle-class tastes seems to be a prevailing element in German cinema. For the Nazi period that is not surprising, as historical studies point to the predominance of relatively young, urban, middle-class audiences. But it also seems that the petit-bourgeois habitus as a structure of taste and lifestyle was able to extend beyond class borders in this period. Upward mobility as a central desire was much more widespread, but also provided some with an incentive to participate in the system. The "Nazis broke down old social barriers to establish their own forms of social relations, structures, and interactions. These included both obviously "politicized forms (Hitler salute, youth and women's organizations, etc.) "and apparently apolitical ones, which modernized the expressions of social relations as people integrated them into their practices of daily life. At the same time, these mechanisms were often instrumental in political ways, such as forcing integration into the "Volksgemeinschaft" or ostracizing Jews (Bergerson 2004). Furthermore, the promise of consumption and even luxury open to the people played an important role, although these things were for the most part only attainable for the elite (see Almeida 2007; Schäfer 1982). Such desires remained very much alive even when the war made it hard to fulfill more basic needs and may have intensified them as signs of a kind of normalcy that people yearned for all the more the worse the war became. But did spectators in 1941 really need propaganda to tell them to conform, or even more, to search for happiness in work, apartments, furniture, marriage, and a fox terrier in bed? Or did they just want the hope that these things could be achieved someday (when the war was over - in 1941 probably still thought of in terms of a victory)? In other words, do we need to look for effects other than the confirmation of what was already there -desire for a lifestyle represented by consumption, private life, conformity, the family, and a certain kind of smug, thoroughly integrated, and apparently apolitical identity? By mid-1941, these were on the way to becoming jong-term wishes that would not be realized until the economic miracle of the fifties.* But they may help explain the willingness to support Nazi society throughout the thirties and the beginning of the war, and even hold but after Stalingrad, when such wishes were obviously Utopian. A random issue of the popular movie magazine Filmzvelt from 17 September 1941 (No. 37/38) may give a view of what desires advertising These impulses lived on into the 1950s, when the modern, middle-class, consumer lifestyle promised here gradually became realizable for more and more people in West Germany (cf. Schenk 2000). Movie Reception and Popular Culture in the Third Reich 221 til Sieb mal, Kleines, ich binja schon lancer rm Beruf alt Du. Um BfoTg zu haben, muß man arbeiten, das lit lieber. Aber wir sollen außerdem gut aufsehen. Das verlangt man ganz! ■« a „\, i its. selbstverständlich von uns. und wir wollen'« ja audi, weil wir nun einmal Evastochter 7-8 You have to work to be ' , . „ t , . rind. MerkeDir,hinundwiecer;ndenArbcitspausen Hindc imd Cesichtmit &iJrtitoI3 successful. But we also have ' , .... ' ..- . . . ,„ _ Hautcreme genflegt, das erbslr. die Haut wunderbar jung. Man ffihlr sich frischer und to look good : Beauty cream, , . _ , , ,. . Jjt_ . ■ , . , ' wirkt auch so! Du glaubst nicht, wie vridtttg das ist. hair-dryer. targeted in moviegoers.9 Along with advertisements for individual movies, we find a half-page advertisement for the state lottery and notices calling for donations to the Kriegs-Winterhilfswerk (Winter Relief Fund Drive) 9 Surveying other popular periodicals of the time, such as Die Koralle, Der Silberspiegel, and Berliner lllustrirte Zeitung, confirms that such advertisements were typical at the time. While there was some variation among the magazines - during the war, Der Silberspiegel, for instance, tended to present the more folkloristic fashion direction and "natural" beauty ideals and a definition of women's roles closer to the Nazi policy, but still included glamour fashions and products - the general tendency was toward swank high fashion, consume- gcodand styles that in wartime were probably only available to the Nazi elite (cf. Gunther 2Ö04J. nitro professional download the free trial onJlrte at nilroptJf.csjni A^Dfesrakarvi^ IT 222 Stephen Lowry and asking readers to send the magazine to soldiers after they had read it. More space is devoted to large ads for Dralle Birkenwasser (hair care), Kaloderma cosmetics, Leichner Vitamin-Krem (cosmetics), Thomas porcelain, Cinzano, Hansaplast bandages, Bayer medicine, Blendax toothpaste, and many smaller ads for medications, cosmetics, pipes, shoe polish, Kodak film, sanitary napkins, hair removal, a detective agency, mineral water, jobs with the Ufa, and even diet pills or a hairdryer ("available again in all specialty shops after the end of the war"). Advertising does not always ; reflect reality - the SD reported public dissatisfaction that some theater : advertising was for products, particularly foodstuffs, which had not been available for a long time (cf. Stahr 2001,200). It was not only the war economy that made some products difficult to obtain; even in the pre-war period, the politics of autarky and armament production resulted in a scarcity of foodstuffs, especially butter and fat, as well as in many other consumer goods. Class differences and divergent incomes in German society had always made consumerism more of a wish than a reality for many. Contrary to some myths, Nazism neither resolved the depression nor brought affluence - wages and dispensable income did not increase greatly during the thirties. However, it did spread Ein eigenes Hous jetzt planmäßig vorbereiten! Sichern auch Sie sich für die kommende Friedentzeit rechtzeitig ein* gümlige Gesamtfinanzierrung {Bau oder Kauf}- Wir bieten Ihnen: 3% Zinsen, dazu Steuerbegünstigung. 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CK¥XUNt>t AUS »EM ^yfu " Created with ,;:.) -i.ti.ci Gl.« &k. ist t«^ *dit«K SxiK, ein Cht ,.rCii|>fcrlKTt: er|>CoTd" trinkt», wv-rtrt die Stiinniiiilfc sdion dem llfjhcrjiuitil flrdn. Udiie FTCudc wird ja nur dem zuteil, Act ntil Ucdadu iuxJ Vemand zn Hinken wdft. Nidu imt eine«', mit alK'n fünf Sinnen sollten Sit! „KiipferberK CoW genk' iv Spiel Acr tarnenden Pcfk-n im Kddi, Sit Höi^ri c kAUsdicn det knisternden Sdwumes, Sic ! tldi Mi dfin zarten, lid>li^en l>uft des edler. Gtlrtnk*, fühlet, d«: fcijhk', Ubcndc kunii v»A s«Jim*d«Tt ^cnicttcrisdi bei jedem Sd^cfcder.w1wr.relfrnOcluHd««*a^lw»tlen Wer tn -völdicf Wciw Sekl »i- ».rinken wriid«,-ist Meid« von ^upfc.be^ C«1if, d««" 01 C«««.ifllwf90Jarrf^imriicra«finciW'erfnM^ KUPFERBERG GOLD ^# nitroPDF'professional download ttiefrea trial onIfna at nftropAoomii Movie Reception and Popular Culture in the Third Reich 225 the Third Reich. Although even basic needs became hard to satisfy during the war, consumer desires seem to have been relatively resistant to reality checks - Hans Dieter Schäfer notes that sales of savings plans for the purchase of a house continued almost up to the end of the war (1982,151) - or to have served as a compensation for the bleak reality. While some advertisements stress how to save soap or use food efficiently, most avoid referring to wartime reality or do so very indirectly, as a Nivea advertisement addressed to the husband on the front, while the wife and daughter appear most concerned about their suntans. Popular magazines were filled with advertisements oriented toward typical concerns in consumer society: personal appearance, health, beauty, and various luxury products. Fashion plays a central role in Hauptsache glücklich, since it is the borrowed broach (to go with the elegant evening gown that Uschi wears at the boss's party) that provides the major conflict in the plot. Visually, style and beauty play a major role, too. Not only is Hertha Feiler presented as an ideally beautiful young woman (and as a glamorous star, too - particularly when she and Rühmann began a romance and then married), but Uschi is also professionally involved with styling, working in her mother's beauty parlor. Female beauty was an aspect of daily life that the Nazis hesitated to regulate, and even late in the war a ban on permanent waves and plans to close beauty parlors were rescinded out of fear of sinking civilian morale (Guenther 2004, 249-250; 244). The desire for fashion and beauty was prevalent, as women's magazines like Koralle and Der Silberspiegel show, although the means of achieving it may often have been reduced to the wartime slogan "make new out of old" or of getting a new hat (one of the few pieces of clothing exempt from rationing). Young, good-looking, independent women, portrayed conspicuously often with an optimistic look up and to the right (a pose also typically adopted by Zarah Leander in her films) may have been more important as an icon of hope than in selling products. Research on a wide range of popular media and comparison with information about real material production and conditions of life will be necessary to investigate such contexts more closely. Patterns of consumption (or at least the desires for consumer goods), inferior design, and fashion - as external symptoms of lifestyles and sentiment - may help reconstruct the dispositions of the moviegoers, giving clues to the ways they may have responded. There are limits, though. The contexts we can construct will only provide further clues to be interpreted. The results remain speculative or at least interpretative, but - by showing larger areas of correlation - they may allow inferences about the meanings for audienee^and the role : of cinema not only as a propaganda machine, but as a complex cultural ■ mechanism closely related to people's wishes, fogüngä and fantasies. n nitro professional download lh« Fres trial online at nttopdf.comitwafes&inel 226 Stephen Lowry References Almeida, Fabrice de (2007) Hakenkreuz und Kaviar. Das mondäne Leben im Nationalsozialismus. Düsseldorf: Patmos. Ascheid, Antje (1998) Nazi Stardom and the 'Modern Girl.' The Case of Lilian Harvey. In: New German Critique 74, pp. 57-89. Ascheid, Antje (2003) Hitler's Heroines. Stardom and Womanhood in Nazi Cinema. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Bergerson, Andrew Stuart (2004) Ordinary Germans in Extraordinary Times. The Nazi Revolution in Hildesheim. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Bussemer, Thymian (2000) Propaganda und Populärkultur. 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