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Modernity in Word and Image: Narrative Literature and Film in Weimar Germany

Heidt, Todd W.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1265989144

Abstract Details

2010, PhD, University of Cincinnati, Arts and Sciences : Germanic Languages and Literature.
This study analyzes the diverse cultural output of the Weimar Republic in terms of media, narrative and modernity. I investigate a series of filmic adaptations, capturing two nearly simultaneous iterations of a narrative in different media. I argue that consistent lines of development can be discerned despite incongruities in medium, style and narrative content. These texts and films reinscribe the role of the narrator in a two-fold manner. First, these narratives break open the hermetically sealed diegetic world by allowing an interpenetration of levels of narrating and narrative content. Second, these narratives utilize and explore the potential of multiple media in telling one story; a process repeated in the work’s adaptation into film. The role of the narrator becomes a performative and self-reflexive processes of selection, editing and representation (or reiterative re-presentation), drawing readerly and/or spectatorial attention to the process of narrating as much as it does to the narrative content. I analyze the adaptations of Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, Die Dreigroschenoper and Berlin Alexanderplatz. Ranging from 1921 to 1931, all of these texts were adapted into films within three months to three years. In chapter one, I show that the alternating power over texts in Norbert Jacques’ Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler novel is reflected in the shifting narrative focalizations and the final, performative recapitulation of the crimes as entertainment in Sandor Weltmann’s stage show. Fritz Lang’s film starts with performative criminality as reflected in the use of post-production editing techniques which highlight the power of the criminal. It is Mabuse’s failing visual power and the transference of cinematic visions to the prosecutor which will prove to be Mabuse’s downfall. In chapter two, I argue that Bertolt Brecht spatializes his medialization of Die Dreigroschenoper to effect a more direct and obvious interplay of his fiction on stage and the real world, doubling and recasting real social conditions as drama. G.W. Pabst’s film also participates in this sort of interplay, comparison and doubling. However, Pabst’s cinematic space is diametrically opposed to Brecht’s theatrical space, and Pabst’s film becomes a piece in dialogue with itself, underscoring its own mediality, the medialization of its characters (especially Mackie Messer) and the interchangeability of characters and inanimate objects. In chapter three, I discuss Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz. Die Geschichte vom Franz Biberkopf. While his predilection for montage is often cited in scholarly work, I argue that it is the very material basis of cut-and-pasted texts which is of central importance to Döblin’s masterpiece. Thus, Döblin’s modern realism exposes itself as construct, collaborating with unwitting narrative co-creators in this style of appropriation and recapitulation. Piel Jutzi’s film version is also highly cognizant of media, utilizing sound and image in rather creative manners. And yet, Franz Biberkopf becomes the point at which these media harmonize to tell the tale of one individual, eliding the complex medial and social context of the urban environment Döblin paints in his novel.
Harold Herzog, PhD (Committee Chair)
Katharina Gerstenberger, PhD (Committee Member)
Richard Schade, PhD (Committee Member)
227 p.
German literature
Weimar Germany; Film Studies; Adaptation Studies; narrative

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Heidt, T. W. (2010). Modernity in Word and Image: Narrative Literature and Film in Weimar Germany [Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1265989144

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Heidt, Todd. Modernity in Word and Image: Narrative Literature and Film in Weimar Germany. 2010. University of Cincinnati, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1265989144.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Heidt, Todd. "Modernity in Word and Image: Narrative Literature and Film in Weimar Germany." Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1265989144

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ucin1265989144
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© 2010, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.