What is it about?
The book reads the German genre cinema of the 1920s as an arena for the contemplation of modern Jewish experiences. The Jewish filmmakers of the Weimar Republic--most of them recently immigrated to Germany--utilized cinema in order to discuss assimilation and bourgeois acculturation from the perspective of the outsider, the new-coming Jew. More than a reflection of German aspirations and memories, the 1920s German "national" cinema negotiated Jewish hopes and anxieties.
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Why is it important?
Scholars have traditionally looked at post-WWI German films as reactions to, and contemplation of, nationally shared desires, traumas, social transitions, etc. This book notes that many of the often-studied German "national" films of the era had been made by Jewish immigrants to Berlin. It argues that the popular films of these filmmakers focused rather on their own experiences: the bourgeois acculturation of outsiders. It therefore offers a new understanding of the pre-Hitler German culture.
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This page is a summary of: Weimar Film and Modern Jewish Identity, January 2012, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1057/9781137010841.
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