Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2021
How do you explain the Cold War to a generation who did not live through it? For Jörg and Anna Winger, co-creators and showrunners of the Deutschland series, you bring it to life on television. Part pop culture reference, part spy thriller, and part existential crisis, the Wingers’ Cold War is a fun, fast-paced story, “sunny and slick and full of twenty-something eye candy.” A coproduction of Germany's UFA Fiction and Sundance TV in the United States, the show premiered at the 2015 Berlinale before appearing on American and German television screens later that year. Especially popular in the United Kingdom, it sold widely on the transnational market. It has been touted as a game-changer for the German television industry for breaking new ground for the German television industry abroad and expanding the possibilities of dramatic storytelling in Germany, and is credited with unleashing a new wave of German (historical) dramas including Babylon Berlin, Dark, and a new production of Das Boot.
1 Stephen Dalton, “‘Deutschland 83’: Berlin Review,” HollywoodReporter.com, February 11, 2015 (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/deutschland-83-berlin-review-772394).
2 Gabriel Tate, “Back in the Field,” dramaquarterly.com, March 8, 2019 (http://dramaquarterly.com/back-in-the-field/).
3 Tate, “Back in the Field.”
4 “Exclusive: An inside look at SundanceTV's digital strategy for Deutschland 83,” the drum.com (https://www.thedrum.com/news/2015/07/06/exclusive-inside-look-sundancetvs-digital-strategy-deutschland-83).
5 In the second season, historical signposts include the assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister and the Soviet attack on a South Korean passenger jet. These are meant to invoke a climate of uncertainty, fear, and suspicion, but seem too remote from the story at hand. The Chernobyl disaster is underutilized, but I argue that is because the existential threat has passed in Deutschland 86 (see following).
6 Lavinia Wilson, cited in Tate, “Back in the Field.”
7 Costumer designer Katrin Unterberger noted that East German clothing was also hand stitched, apparently to differentiate it from West German off-the-rack apparel. Michael Pickard, “Back to the 1980s,” dramaquarterly.com, December 12, 2017 (http://dramaquarterly.com/back-to-the-1980s/).
8 Imogen Fox, “The Seven Things We Like about the Fashion in Deutschland 83,” The Guardian, January 4, 2016 (https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/tvandradioblog/2016/jan/04/fashion-in-deutschland-83).
9 As I suggested previously the femme fatale here is a device that commits Martin to the mission. She remains undeveloped, as do most of the (Western) women characters in the show. The attack on Martin in his hotel room is familiar to viewers from Bond films, while also allowing the production to mount “a spectacular action scene worthy of a Jason Bourne movie” to close out its first two episodes (Dalton, “‘Deutschland 83’”). In service of the plot, she internationalizes the Cold War and, by losing to Martin, contributes to the myth of master spy “Kolibri.”
She also served to diversify the cast. In a 2018 interview, Anna Winger noted, “I'm actually really struck now by how white German shows are. When we made Deutschland 83, I said, speaking as an American, ‘Everybody can't be white, we have to mix that up.’ And the answer always was: ‘Yeah, but in 1983 everybody WAS white.’” Of course, they were not. The casting decisions relegating nonwhite actors to minor roles—as femme fatale and bellicose American General Arnold Jackson (played by African American Errol Trotman-Harewood)—reflect the parochial expectations of contemporary German television producers. Winger cited in Lars Weisbrod, “Why Deutschland 86 Isn't a ‘Black-and-White’ Cold War Spy Thriller,” Vulture.com, October 25, 2018 (https://www.vulture.com/2018/10/deutschland-86-anna-jorg-winger-interview.html).
10 Martin's politics are thus reduced to political paroles and official pronouncements. This is underscored when Martin meets Alexander Edel in the barracks in Daun. Edel, an admirer of Green Party leader Petra Kelly, probes Martin's politics. Martin, indifferent, disappoints: “You sound just like my father,” Alexander says.
11 Jörg Winger in SundanceTV Presents, “Q&A with Cast and Creators at the Goethe-Institut,” Deutschland 83, Disc 3 (New York: Kino Lorber, 2015).
12 Moreover, the final episode of season 1 suggests that Schweppenstette has long protected Ingrid from the vagaries of the state.
13 See, for example, Emily Nussbaum, “Clone Club: The Eighties Flashbacks of ‘Halt and Catch Fire’ and ‘Deutschland 83’,” The New Yorker, August 10 and 17, 2015 (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/10/clone-club), and Walter Iuzzolino in “Walter's World,” dramaquarterly.com, February 12, 2016 (http://dramaquarterly.com/walters-world/).
14 Jeremy G. Butler, “Mad Men,” in How to Watch Television, ed. Ethan Thompson and Jason Mittell (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 42.
15 See, for example, Cynthia Littleton, “SundanceTV's ‘Deutschland 83’ Breaks Cultural Barriers with Cold War Chiller,” Variety.com, June 17, 2015 (https://variety.com/2015/tv/news/deutschland-83-sundancetv-german-language-drama-1201522499/).
16 Shaun Walker, “The Russian Spy Who Posed as a Canadian for More Than 20 years,” The Guardian, August 23, 2019 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/23/russian-spy-elena-vavilova-posed-as-a-canadian-estate-agent-for-over-20-years).
17 Consider that, in order to successfully complete his mission, Martin must “pass” in West Germany. He adapts easily to Western society, faltering only when it comes to certain goods. His knowledge of popular culture is solid. He is also on top of military protocol, given that he slips seamlessly into the employ of a West German general. It is not his accent that gets him in trouble, but his dental work; he can adopt West German dialect easily enough (Orangen, not Apfelsinen), but he does not know how to order a proper steak.
18 Asked what they would miss if they had to live in the actual GDR, they reproduced some of those stereotypes: “the freedom to travel,” “freedom—bananas, good coffee, and travel.” SundanceTV Presents, “Q&A.”
19 David Renshaw, “Meeting the Creators of ‘Deutschland 83,’ the German TV Show That Will Make You Nostalgic for the Cold War,” Vice.com, January 26, 2016 (https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/dp59gj/germany-now-is-a-utopia-meeting-the-creators-of-deutschland-83).
