Balanced truth: Steven Spielberg's Schindler's list among history, memory, and popular culture

History and Theory

Volumn 48, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 77-102

  Classen, Christoph ^a  

^a Abteilung II 'Geschichte des Wirtschaftens' Zentrum Für Zeithistorische Forschung in Potsdam   (Germany)

Author keywords

Authenticity; Evidence; Fiction; Film; History; Holocaust; Hybrid; Memory; Popular culture

Indexed keywords

EID: 65849521389     PISSN: 00182656     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2009.00499.x     Document Type: Article

References (99)

1. Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiederaann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1972), vol. V.l, 596 [translated from German]
2. Steven Spielberg, in an interview with Urs Jenny, "Holocaust mit Happy-End?, " Der Spiegel (May 24, 1993), 208-219 [translated from German]
3. Similar wording is used on the Web in advertising for study trips for school classes and youth groups, Cf. http://www.ic-gruppenreisen.de/polen- klassenfahrten/ju-krakau-spezial.html, retrieved on March 29, 2008
4. Cf. Ruth Ellen Gruber, Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002)
5. Cf. Martina Thiele, Publizistische Kontroversen über den Holocaust im Film (Münster: LIT, 2002), 432
6. http://www.the-nurabers.com/movies/records/worldwide.php, retrieved on March 29, 2008
7. Thiele, Publizistische Kontroversen, 433
8. Bruno de Wever, "Prologue: Historical Film as a Palimpsest, " in Perspectives on European Film and History: Film & TV Studies Series, ed. Leen Engelen and Roel Vande Winkel (Gent: Academia Press, 2007), 8
9. Cf. http://www.loc.gov/film/nfr2004.html; even the Vatican lists it as one of the forty-five most important films of all time; cf. http://www. decentfilms.com/sections/articles/vaticanfilmlist. html, both retrieved on March 29, 2008
10. Yosefa Loshitzky, "Introduction, " in Spielberg's Holocaust: Critical Perspectives on "Schindler's List, "" ed. Yosefa Loshitzky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 1-17
11. Cf. the essays in Loshitzky, Spielberg's Holocaust; for the discussion in Germany, see Christoph Weiß, "Der gute Deutsche": Dokumente zur Diskussion um Steven Spielbergs' "Schindlers Liste" in Deutschland (St. Ingbert: Röhrig Universitä tsverlag, 1995)
12. Cf. reviews by Wildt and Benz, both rather positive: Wolfgang Benz, "Bilder statt Fußnoten: Wie authentisch muß der Bericht über ein geschichtliches Ereignis sein? Anmerkungen eines Historikers zu Schindlers Liste, " Die Zeit (March 4, 1994)
13. Michael Wildt, "The Invented and the Real: Historiographical Notes on Schindler's List, " History Workshop Journal 41 (1996), 240-249
14. Thomas M. Keneally, Schindler's Ark (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1982)
15. This also holds true despite the author's attempt to leave Keneally and Spielberg behind. David M. Crowe, Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activities, and the True Story Behind the List (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004)
16. Ruth Klüger, "Wer ein Leben rettet, rettet die ganze Welt, " Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt (February 13, 1994) [translated from German]
17. Ralph Giordano, "Szenen, wie es sie nie zuvor auf der Leinwand gab, " Cologneer Stadt-Anzeiger (March 5, 1994). [translated from German]; a similar attitude can be found in Andreas Kilb, "Warten bis Spielberg kommt, " Die Zeit (January 21, 1994)
18. "Premierengäste kämpfen mit den Tränen, " Die Welt (March 3, 1994) [translated from German]
19. Billy Wilder, "Man sah überall nur Taschentücher, " Süddeutsche Zeitung, Magazin (February 18, 1994) [translated from German]
20. On (German) restraint with regard to the Hollywood storyteller, cf. Ralf Schenk, "Porträt eines Retters im Stakkato des Grauens, " Neues Deutschland (March 1, 1993)
21. Kilb, "Warten bis Spielberg kommt" [translated from German]
22. Jörn Rüsen, "Was ist Geschichtskultur? Überlegungen zu einer neuen Art, über Geschichte nachzudenken, " in Historische Orientierung: Über die Arbeit des Geschichtsbewußtseins, sich in der Zeit zurechtzufinden (Cologne: Böhlau, 1994), 211-234
23. Cf. Derek Paget, True Stories? Documentary Drama on Radio, Screen and Stage (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1990)
24. Barbara Tuchman, Practicing History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981 ), 25
25. Cf. for Germany: Christoph Classen, Faschismus und Antifaschismus: Die nationalsozialistische Vergangenheit im ostdeutschen Hörfunk 1945-1953 (Cologne: Böhlau, 2004), 111-129
26. Cf. Judith Keilbach, "Photographs, Symbolic Images, and the Holocaust: On the (Im)possibility of Depicting Historical Truth, " History and Theory, Theme Issue 47 (2008), 54-76 (this issue)
27. Cf., on film, Sylvie Lindeperg, Nuit et Brouillard: Un film dans l'histoire (Paris: Jacob, 2007)
28. Cf. Wulf Kansteiner, "Success, Truth, and Modernism in Holocaust Historiography: Reading Saul Friedländer Thirty-Five Years after the Publication of Metahistory, " History and Theory, Theme Issue 47 (2008), 25-53 (this issue)
29. Umberto Eco, "Apocalyptic and Integrated Intellectuals: Mass Communication and Theories of Mass Culture, " in Umberto Eco, Apocalypse Postponed, ed. Robert Lumley (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 17-35
30. Cf. the summary in Miriam Bratu Hansen, "Schindler's List Is Not Shoah: Second Commandment, Popular Modernism, and Public Memory, " in Spielberg's Holocaust: Critical Perspectives on "Schindler's List, ", " ed. Yosefa Loshitzky (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997), 80-85
31. Jörn Rüsen, Historisches Lernen: Grundlagen und Paradigmen (Cologne: Böhlau, 1994), 11
32. th ed. (Munich: Beck, 2005)
33. The question remains why the war lost its then dominant position. It might stand to reason to refer to the moral ambiguity of wars (especially after the experience of the Vietnam War); Spielberg dealt with this issue in his movie Saving Private Ryan (1998)
34. Cf. Dan Diner, Beyond the Conceivable: Studies on Germany, Nazism, and the Holocaust (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006)
35. Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, The Holocaust and Memory in a Global Age (Philadephia: Temple University Press, 2005)
36. The fact that Nazism and more specifically the Holocaust have thus become a preferred topic of TV programs and fiction films can also be linked to the large audiences they still manage to attract, even from voyeurs; cf. Wulf Kansteiner, "The Radicalization of German Memory in the Age of its Commercial Reproduction: Hitler and the Third Reich in the TV Documentaries of Guido Knopp, " in Atlantic Communications: The Media in American and German History from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century, ed. Norbert Finzsch and Ursula Lehmkuhl (Providence: Berg, 2004), 335-372
37. A similar thing happened with the term "Shoah, " whose public usage by non-Jewish groups was promoted through Claude Lanzmann's film; cf. Moshe Zimmermann, "Die transnationale Holocaust-Erinnerung, " in Transnationale Geschichte:Themen, Tendenzen und Theorien, ed. Gunilla Budde, Sebastian Conrad, and Oliver Janz (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2006), 203-204
38. on terras, cf. also James E. Young, Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative Consequences of Interpretation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 85-86
39. th Century, ed. Sylvia Paletschek (Oxford: Berghahn, forthcoming)
40. Wulf Kansteiner, "Nazis, Viewers and Statistics: Television Audience Research and Collective Memory in West Germany, " in Journal of Contemporary History 39, no. 4 (2004), 575-598
41. Mark A. Wolfgram, "West German and Unified German Cinema's Difficult Encounter with the Holocaust, " in Film & History 32 (2002), 24-37
42. Annette Insdorf, Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989)
43. Cf. Tobias Ebbrecht, "History, Public Memory and Media Event: Codes and Conventions of Historical Event-television in Germany, " Media History 13, no. 2/3 (2007), 221-234
44. Cf. Bösch, "Moving History. "
45. Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis, 52-56
46. Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, " in Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 471-508; the range of relevant perceptions reaches from culturally conservative critics on mass culture to critical theory
47. Cf. for a critical perspective on the attractiveness of Nazism in popular culture, Saul Friedländer, Reflections of Nazism; An Essay on Kitsch and Death (New York: Harper & Row, 1984)
48. Jan Berg, "Techniken der medialen Authentifizierung Jahrhunderte vor der Erfindung des 'Dokumentarischen, '" in Die Einübung des dokumentarischen Blicks: Fiction- und Non-Fiction-Film zwischen Wahrheitsanspruch und expressiver Sachlichkeit 1895-1945, ed. Ursula Keitz and Kay Hoffmann (Marburg: Schüren 2001), 57 [translated from German]
49. Norbert Bolz, "Der Kult des Authentischen im Zeitalter der Fälschung, " in Fälschungen: Zu Autorschaft und Beweis in Wissenschaften und Künsten, ed. Anne-Kathrin Reulecke (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2006), 416 [translated from German]
50. Helmut Lethen, "Versionen des Authetischen: sechs Gemeinplätze, " in Literatur und Kulturwissenschaften: Positionen, Theorien, Modelle, ed. Helmut Böhme and Klaus R. Scherpe (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1996), 228 [translated from German]
51. Cf. Tanjev Schultz, "Alles inszeniert und nichts authentisch? Visuelle Kommunikation in den vielschichtigen Kontexten der Inszenierung und Authentizität, " in Authentizität und die Inszenierung von Bilderwelten, ed. Thomas Knieper and Marion G. Müller (Cologne: Herbert von Halem Verlag, 2003), 10-24
52. Cf. "Die ganze Wahrheit schwarz auf weiß: Regisseur Steven Spielberg über seinen Film Schindlers Liste, " Discussion between Steven Spielberg and Hellmuth Karasek, in Der Spiegel (February 21, 1994), 186
53. Gertrad Koch, "Nachstellungen - Film und historischer Moment" in Die Gegenwart der Vergangenheit: Dokumentarfilm, Fernsehen und Geschichte, ed. Eva Hohenberger and Judith Keilbach (Berlin: Vorwerk 8, 2003), 226
54. Hanno Loewy, "Ein Märchen vom Zocker: Zur Rezeption von Steven Spielbergs Film Schindler's List, " in Entscheidungen: Vorschläge und Materialien zur pädagogischen Arbeit mit dem Film Schindlers Liste, ed. Gottfried Kößler (Frankfurt am Main: Fritz Bauer Institut, 1995), 61
55. Nevertheless such "hunts of humans" by the SS did happen; cf. Wildt, "The Invented and the Real, " 242
56. Loewy, "Ein Märchen vom Zocker, " 61 [translated from German]
57. Cf. Der Spiegel, "Die ganze Wahrheit schwarz auf weiß, " 184
58. Cornelia Brink, Ikonen der Vernichtung: Öffentlicher Gebrauch von Fotografien aus nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern nach 1945 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1998)
59. Cf. Nicole Wiedemann, '"So ist das, was das Bild dokumentiert, das Gegenteil von dem, was es symbolisiert': Holocaustfotografie im Spannungsfeld zwischen Geschichtswissenschaft und Kulturellem Gedächtnis, " in Die Medien der Geschichte; Historizität und Medialität in interdisziplinärer Perspektive, ed. Fabio Crivellari et al. (Konstanz: UVK, 2004) 317-349
60. cf. also Keilbach, "Photographs, Symbolic Images, and the Holocaust."
61. Cf. here and on the following, Manuel Köppen, "Von Effekten des Authentischen - Schindlers Liste: Film und Holocaust, " in Bilder des Holocaust: Literatur - Film - Bildende Kunst, ed. Manuel Köppen and Klaus R. Scherpe (Cologne: Böhlau, 1997), 145-171
62. In Shoah one survivor relates that on the train going to Auschwitz, he saw a fieldworker who mimed the fate awaiting the people on the train. Only later did he understand the meaning of that gesture. Spielberg shows - shot from the train - a boy making this gesture, and thus symbolizing to the viewer that the train is not going to the safety of Brünnlitz, but to Auschwitz instead; cf. Tobias Ebbrecht: "Sekundäre Erinnerungsbilder: Visuelle Stereotypenbildung in Filmen über Holocaust und Nationalsozialismus seit den 1990er Jahren, " in Medien - Zeit - Zeichen, ed. Christian Hissnauer and Andreas Jahn-Sudmann (Marburg: Schüren, 2007), 39
63. For example, Art Spiegelman was reminded of "slightly gentrified versions of Julius Streicher's Der Stürmer caricatures"
64. see Village Voice (March 29, 1994), 24-31
65. Even such contrarian thinkers as Niklas Luhmann and Umberto Eco agree that a distinction between primary knowledge of the world and secondary knowledge conveyed by media has become virtually impossible. Cf. Eco, "Reports from the Global Village, " in Faith in Fakes: Essays (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1986), 133-179
66. Niklas Luhmann, The Reality of the Mass Media (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000)
67. Cf. David Ansen, "Spielberg's Obsession, " in Newsweek (December 20, 1993)
68. Köppen, "Von Effekten des Authentischen, " 158
69. Cf. Ansen, "Spielberg's Obsession." To further enhance the realism of the film, Kaminski explained that "forty percent of the film was shot using hand-held cameras." Spielberg admitted, "I tried to be as close to a journalist in recording this re-creation, more than being a filmmaker trying to heighten the suspense or action or the pathos. The black and white and hand-held camera gives the film sort of a cinema verité, documentary feel. It embodied the truth we were trying to explore and communicate what happened. It made it seem more real, somehow." http://www.schindlerslist. com, Behind the Scenes, retrieved on March 29, 2008
70. Cf. Edward Branigan, Narrative Comprehension and Film (New York and London: Routledge, 1992)
71. David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985)
72. Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folk Tale (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968)
73. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). Readers of Hayden White know that Frye was not referring to the current colloquial usage of the term as a love story, but its medieval interpretation as an adventure tale
74. Hanno Loewy, "Fiktion und Mimesis: Holocaust und Genre im Film, " in Lachen über Hitler - Auschwitz-Gelächter? Filmkomödie, Satire und Holocaust, ed. Margit Fröhlich et al. (Munich: Edition Text und Kritik, 2003), 37-64
75. Cf. Gertrud Koch, '"Against All Odds' or the Will to Survive: Moral Conclusions from Narrative Closure, " in History & Memory 9, no. 1-2 (1997), 393-408
76. Cf. Moshe Zimmermann, "Täter-Opfer-Dichotomien als Identitätsformen, " in Verletztes Gedächtnis: Erinnerungskultur und Zeitgeschichte im Konflikt, ed. Konrad H. Jarausch (Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus-Verlag, 2002), 199-216
77. Dan Diner, "Gestaute Zeit: Massenvernichtung und jüdische Erzählstruktur, " in Kreisläufe: Nationalsozialismus und Gedächtnis (Berlin: Berlin-Verlag, 1995), 123-139
78. Crowe, Oskar Schindler, 349-360; 394-399
79. Indeed, the lists were subject to the manipulations of a Jewish worker who accepted money for exchanging single names; cf. Crowe, Oskar Schindler, 361-404
80. Something that can also be illustrated by the communist resistance in the concentration camps; cf. Lutz Niethammer, Der gesäuberte Antifaschismus: Die SED und die roten Kapos von Buchenwald (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1994); research on concentration camps has also shown that the notion of a simple dichotomy of victim-perpetrator can hardly be maintained under the extreme social conditions of the camps
81. cf. Verfolgung als Gruppenschicksal, ed. Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Diestel (Dachau: Verlag Dachauer Hefte, 1998)
82. Tom Segev, Soldiers of Evil; The Commandants of the Nazi Concentration Camps (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987)
83. cf. on this question Wolfgang Sofsky, The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997)
84. Cf. Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper Collins, 1992)
85. Harald Welzer with Michaela Christ, Täter: Wie aus ganz normalen Menschen Massenmörder werden (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2005)
86. Cf. Koch, "Nachstellungen - Film und historischer Moment, " 223
87. Cf. Georg Seeßlen, Steven Spielberg und seine Filme (Marburg: Schüren, 2001), 156, 217
88. Cf., for example, the declaration of The Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust. A Conference on Education, Remembrance and Research, January 26-28, 2000: "the first major international conference of the new millennium, declares its commitment to plant the seeds of a better future amidst the soil of a bitter past. We empathize with the victims' suffering and draw inspiration from their struggle. Our commitment must be to remember the victims who perished, respect the survivors still with us, and reaffirm humanity's common aspiration for mutual understanding and justice." http://www.manskligarattigheter.gov.se/stockholmforum/2000/page1192.html, retrieved on March 31, 2008
89. For a critical view on historical analogy, cf. Tony Judt, "The 'Problem of Evil' in Postwar Europe, " The New York Review of Books 55, no. 2 (2008)
90. Loshitzky "Introduction, " in Spielberg's Holocaust, 6
91. Natalie Zemon-Davis, '"Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead': Film and the Challenge of Authenticity, " Yale Review 76, no. 4 (1987), 457-482
92. Cf. Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)
93. Joshua Hirsch, for example, talks about "postmodern reactionism": Afterimage: Film, Trauma, and the Holocaust (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004), 141
94. Koch, '"Against All Odds' or the Will to Survive."
95. Hayden White, "The Modernist Event, " in The Persistence of History: Cinema, Television, and the Modern Event, ed. Vivian Sobchack (New York and London: Routledge, 1996), 17-38
96. Cf. Anton Kaes, "Holocaust and the End of History: Postmodern Historiography in Cinema, " in Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the "Final Solution, " ed. Saul Friedländer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 206-222
97. Branigan, Narrative Comprehension and Film, 1
98. Cf. Jörn Rüsen, "The Logic of Historicization: Metahistorical Reflections on the Debate between Friedländer and Broszat, " in Passing into History: Nazism and the Holocaust beyond Memory. In Honour of Saul Friedländer on His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Gulie Ne'eman Arad (Blooraington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 113-147
99. and in History and Memory 9, no. 1 & 2 (1997), 113-144