1. See Salewski, Michael, ed., Die Deutschen und die Revolution: 17 Vorträge für die Ranke-Gesellschaft (Göttingen, 1984)Google Scholar and Fritzsche's, Peter excellent review article, “Did Weimar Fail?” Journal of Modern History 68, no. 3 (1996): 629–56. Fritzsche's article extends far beyond a historiography of the revolution, but it repeatedly emphasizes new perspectives on transformative forces in Weimar Germany.Google Scholar

2. Kracauer, Siegfried, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (Princeton, NJ, 1947);Google Scholar see also the Kracauer special issue of New German Critique 54 (1991). Good discussions about using film as a historical source include “The AHR Forum” on film and history,Google ScholarAmerican Historical Review 93, no. 5 (12 1988): 1173–1227;Google ScholarFerro, Marc, Cinema and History, trans. Greene, Naomi (Detroit, 1988);Google ScholarSklar, Robert and Musser, Charles, eds., Resisting Images: Essays on Cinema and History (Philadelphia, 1990);Google ScholarLandy, Marcia, Cinematic Uses of the Past (Minneapolis, 1996).Google Scholar

3. Literary scholar Marc Silberman offers a good model for analyzing interactions between a film's representations of revolution and Weimar society's experiences in his “Imagining History: Weimar Images of the French Revolution,” in Framing the Past: The Historiography of German Cinema and Television, ed. Murray, Bruce A. and Wickham, Christopher J. (Carbondale, IL, 1992), 99–120.Google Scholar

4. Balázs, Bela, “Der revolutionäre Film,” Die Rote Fahne, 10 October 1922, in, Film und revolutionäre Arbeiterbewegung in Deutschland, 1918–1932, ed. Kühn, Getraude, Tümmler, Karl, Wimmer, Walter, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1975), 1:37.Google Scholar

5. Hake, Sabine, The Cinema's Third Machine: Writing on Film in Germany, 1907–1933 (Lincoln, NE, 1993), 24, 186;Google ScholarMurray, Bruce Arthur, Film and the German Left in the Weimar Republic: From Caligari to Kuhle Wampe, (Austin, 1990), 125.Google Scholar

6. As Bruce Murray emphasizes, each group that argued to keep films out of politics, whether film company executives, theater owners, trade journals, political leaders from parties across the spectrum, educators, or members of the Lampe Committee, which gave tax exemptions to films of “artistic merit,” defined its preferred films either as educational or pure entertainment and designated those it opposed as political. Murray, Film and the German Left, 66–70.Google Scholar

7. Ibid., 100–7, 130. See also “Filmographie (Filmdokumente der revolutionären deutschen Arbeiterbewegung 1911–1932),” in Film und revolutionäre Arbeiterbewegung, ed. Kühn et al., 2: 499–515; and Filmdokumente zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, 1911–1933: Bestandskatalog, Film-Archiv 7, Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv (Koblenz/Berlin, 1991).Google Scholar

8. In addition to Marc Silberman, “Imagining History,” see Sabine Hake, “Lubitsch's Period Films as Palimpsest: On Passion and Deception,” in Murray and Wickham, Framing the Past, 68–98, and Silberman, Marc, German Cinema: Texts in Context (Detroit, MI, 1995), 3–18.Google Scholar

9. A German version of a foundational episode in Weimar films is Frederick II and his military exploits. “Foundational episodes” of other countries are more problematic than often assumed. See, for instance, Ferro, Cinema and History, 68–70. Michael Salewski's comment that the Americans, French, English, Russians, and Chinese with “their” revolutions “don't have much to question or to explain away” suggests a questionable assumption of the Sonderweg argument. Salewski, Die Deutschen und die Revolution, 8.Google Scholar

10. On the “legend of the unfulfilled revolution” that took shape during these years, see Fritzsche, Peter, Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany (New York, 1990), 225–29.Google Scholar

11. Ibid., 225. See also Winkler, Heinrich August, “Die gespaltene Gesellschaft,” in his Weimar 1918–1933: Die Geschichte der ersten deutschen Demokratie (Munich, 1993), 285–306;Google Scholar and Peukert, Detlev, “Deceptive Stability, 1924–1929,” in his The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity, trans. Richard Deveson (New York, 1989), 191–246.Google Scholar

12. Peter Fritzsche comments that “successful politics in the Weimar period required learning populist, ‘antisystem’ gestures.” Fritzsche, Rehearsals, 150.Google Scholar

13. See Thomas J. Saunders, “History in the Making: Weimar Cinema and National Identity,” in Murray and Wickham, Framing the Past, 42–67;Google ScholarSaunders, Thomas J., “The Hollywood Invasion: Amerikanismus and Amerikamüdigkeit,” in his Hollywood in Berlin: American Cinema and Weimar Germany (Berkeley, 1994), 117–44.Google Scholar

14. See “Die Kraft des Beispiels—Der Sowjetfilm in den Klassenkämpfen des imperialistischen Deutschlands der Weimarer Republik,” in Film und revolutionäre Arbeiterbewegung, ed. Kühn, et al. , 1:277–423, and within that section see the documents surrounding the Potemkin censorship controversies: “Fanal Panzerkreuzer Potemkin,” 323–69.Google Scholar Anton Kaes describes these censorship battles (May–June 1926) as the breakthrough that brought proletarian-revolutionary films into the broad public arena. Kaes, Anton, “Film in der Weimarer Republik,” in Geschichte des deutschen Films, ed. Jacobsen, Wolfgang, Kaes, Anton and Prinzler, Han Helmut (Stuttgart, 1993), 78.Google Scholar

15. Fritzsche, Peter develops this notion (without referring to the film industry) in his article “Landscape of Danger, Landscape of Design: Crisis and Modernism in Weimar Germany,” in Dancing on the Volcano: Essays on the Culture of the Weimar Republic, ed. Kniesche, Thomas W., Brockmann, Stephen (Columbia, SC, 1994), 30. As he stresses, the interpretation of Weimar Germany as ongoing interaction of crisis and experimentation comes from Peukert, The Weimar Republic.Google Scholar

16. Metropolis (released 10 January 1927 at the Ufa Palast am Zoo). Director: Fritz Lang for Ufa; Screenplay: Fritz Lang, Thea von Harbou; Camera: Karl Freund, Günther Rittau; Special Effects: Eugen Schüfftan; Sets: Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut, Karl Vollbrecht; Sculptures: Walter Schultze-Mittendorf; Costumes: Änne Willkomm; Music: Gottfried Huppertz. Cast: Brigitte Helm (Maria/Robot-Maria); Alfred Abel (Joh Fredersen); Gustav Fröhlich (Freder Fredersen); Rudolf Klein-Rogge (Rotwang); Fritz Rasp (Slim); Theodor Loos (Josaphat); Erwin Biswanger (Worker No. 11811); Heinrich George (Groth). The original length was 4189 meters, but prior to distribution beyond Berlin and abroad it was cut to 3170 meters. In circulation now is a new print approaching the original length.Google Scholar

17. Film-Kurier, 11 January 1927; reprinted in Haas, Willy, Der Kritiker als Mitproduzent: Texte zum Film 1920–1933, ed. Jacobsen, Wolfgang, Prumm, Karl and Wenz, Benno (Berlin, 1991), 196.Google Scholar

18. Kracauer, Caligari to Hitler, 162–64; Kreimeier, Klaus, Die Ufa-Story (Munich, 1992), 132, 185–86.Google Scholar

19. Gay, Peter, for instance, dismisses the film as “repulsive” in his Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York, 1968), 141. Practitioners of cultural studies from disciplines other than history have led the way in analyzing this film in its historical context.Google Scholar See, for example, Kaes, Anton, “Cinema and Modernity: On Fritz Lang's Metropolis,” in High and Low Cultures: German Attempts at Mediation, ed. Grimm, Reinhold and Hermand, Jost (Madison, 1994), 19–35.Google Scholar

20. The film can be seen as a “mirror and image of its time,” wrote critic Axel Eggebrecht in “Metropolis,” Die Weltbühne (18 January 1927): 115. For scholarship on Metropolis, see Geser, Guntram, Fritz Lang: Metropolis und Die Frau im Mond: Zukunftsfilm und Zukunftstechnik in der Stabilisierungszeit der Weimarer Republik (Meitingen, 1996), 157–71.Google Scholar

21. On the 8-hour shift see Feldman, Gerald, The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation, 1914–1924 (Berkeley, 1994), 754–57, 799–800Google Scholar and Feldman, Gerald and Steinisch, Irmgard, “Die Weimarer Republik zwischen Sozial- und Wirtschaftsstaat: Die Entscheidung gegen den Achtstundentag,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 18 (1978): 353–439.Google Scholar On the worker-industrialist agreements of 1918–1919 see Wulf, Hans Albert, “Maschinenstürmer sind wir keine”: Technischer Fortschritt und sozialdemokratische Arbeiterbewegung (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), 81–84.Google Scholar

22. H. G. Wells's contention that the 10-hour clock derived from mistaken arithmetic ignores the reference. See Hans Siemsen, “Eine Filmkritik, wie sie sein soll,” Die Weltbühne (14 June 1927): 948. Wells's scathing critique was widely published, including the New York Times, 17 April 1927.Google Scholar

23. Quoted in Fritzsche, Rehearsals for Fascism, 120.Google Scholar

24. See Wulf, “Maschinenstürmer sind wir keine,” 95–117 and Nolan, Mary, Visions of Modernity: American Business and the Modernization of Germany (New York, 1994).Google Scholar

25. von Gottl-Ottlilienfeld, Friedrich, “Fordism,” [from his Fordismus: Über Industrie und technische Vernunft (Jena, 1926)]Google Scholar in The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, ed. Kaes, Anton, Jay, Martin, Dimendberg, Edward (Berkeley, 1994), 401. See also Wulf, “Maschinenstürmer sind wir keine,” 118–62.Google Scholar

26. Rauecker, Bruno, “Die Bedeutung der Rationalisierung,” in Die Arbeit: Zeitschrift für Gewerkschaftspolitik und Wirtschaftskunde 11 (1925): 688; quoted in Wulf, “Maschinenstürmer sind wir keine.” 77. On Taylorism in Germany, see Nolan, Visions of Modernity, 42–50.Google Scholar

27. Braunthal, A., “Rationalisierung der Produktion oder Intensivierung der Arbeit?” in Gewerkschafts-Archiv 1 (1926): 217; quoted in Wulf, “Maschinenstürmer sind wir keine”, 76.Google Scholar

28. Expressionist precedents for demonization of technology include Kaiser, Georg, Gas I (Berlin, 1918)Google Scholar and Toller, Ernst, Masse Mensch (Potsdam, 1920).Google Scholar See Giesing, Michaela, Girshausen, Theo, Walter, Horst, “Moloch ‘Technik’—Die Gesellschaft auf dem Theater des Expressionismus,” in Weimarer Republik, ed. Kreuzberg, Kunstamt and Institut für Theaterwissenschaft der Universität Köln (Berlin and Hamburg, 1977), 763–67.Google Scholar A good survey of the visual elements of Metropolis is given by Eisner, Lotte, Fritz Lang (New York, 1977), 82–93.Google Scholar

29. Guntram Geser suggests that the film's antitechnology perspective contributed to its financial failure, but Lang's extravagant production demands, along with disastrous distribution and editing decisions, are at least equally plausible factors. Geser, Fritz Lang: Metropolis, 13, 42–46; on the film's production costs, see Kreimeier, Die Ufa Story, 183–84.Google Scholar

30. The film's linkage of female sexuality and technology has received intense scholarly attention. See, for instance, Mellenkamp, Patricia, “Oedipus and the Robot in Metropolis,” Enclitic 5, no. 1 (1981): 20–42; Andreas Huyssen, “The Vamp and the Machine: Technology and Sexuality in Fritz Lang's Metropolis,” New German Critique 24–25 (1981–1982): 221–37;Google Scholar and Lungstrum, Janet, “Metropolis and the Technosexual Woman of German Modernity,” in Women in the Metropolis: Gender and Modernity in Weimar Culture, ed. von Ankum, Katharina (Berkeley, 1997), 128–44.Google Scholar

31. On women in Weimar politics see Bridenthal, Renate, Grossmann, Atina, and Kaplan, Marion, eds., When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (New York, 1984), 1–20, 33–65;Google ScholarHagemann, Karen, Frauenalltag und Männerpolitik: Alltagsleben und gesellschaftliches Handeln von Arbeiterfrauen in der Weimarer Republik (Bonn, 1990), 509–638;Google Scholar and Frevert, Ute, Women in German History: From Bourgeois Emancipation to Sexual Liberation (New York, 1989), 156–75.Google Scholar

32. Lang, Fritz, Metropolis (London, 1989), 61.Google Scholar

33. Carol Diethe sharply comments on the implications of the absurd assumptions about women epitomized in this scene: “It is perhaps in Metropolis, however, that we realize just how impoverished the gaze is for the woman spectator. What is she to make of all those silly worker-women smashing up the machinery which will flood their homes and endanger their children (who all seem to be home alone); could any group of women really be so stupid?” Diethe, Carol, “Beauty and the Beast: An Investigation into the Role and Function of Women in German Expressionist Film,” in Visions of the “Neue Frau”: Women and the Visual Arts in Weimar Germany, ed. Meskimmon, Marsha and West, Shearer (Aldershot, England, 1995), 119.Google Scholar

34. A scene of women similarly flailing their arms at the head of the rampaging crowd appears in Ernst Lubitsch's sequence leading up to the storming of the Bastille in Madame Dubarry (1919).Google ScholarRosenhaft, Eve develops a superb discussion of these problems in her “Women, Gender, and the Limits of Political History in the Age of ‘Mass’ Politics,” in Elections, Mass Politics, and Social Change in Modern Germany: New Perspectives, ed. Jones, Larry Eugene and Retallack, James (Cambridge, 1992), 149–173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35. Siegfried Hartmann, “Metropolis-Technik,” Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 20 January 1927.Google Scholar

36. As a British analyst wrote in 1915: “… the instinct of self-preservation makes the members of every crowd fear, and therefore tend to hate, any individual who differs from them.” Conway, Martin, The Crowd in Peace and War (New York, 1915), 82.Google Scholar A good history of writings about the crowd is McClelland, J. S., The Crowd and the Mob: From Plato to Canetti (London, 1989).Google Scholar

37. See Eisner, Lotte, The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt, trans. Roger Greaves (Berkeley, 1969), 143–46.Google Scholar

38. Schmitt's, Carl influential essay Der Begriff des Politischen (Munich, 1932), which spells out this notion, was first published as a newspaper series in 1927.Google Scholar See also Schartl, Matthias, “Ein Kampf ums nackte Überleben: Volkstumulte und Pöbelexzesse als Ausdruck des Aufbegehrens in der Spätphase der Weimarer Republik,” in Pöbelexzesse und Volkstumulte in Berlin: Zur Sozialgeschichte der Strasse, ed. Gailus, Manfred (Berlin, 1984), 125–67.Google Scholar

39. Gehler, Fred and Kasten, Ulrich, Fritz Lang: Die Stimme von Metropolis (Berlin, 1990), 134. A competing quotation by Lang, apparently from the 1960s, has him initially disagreeing with the ending, then later embracing it: “Yet, today, when you speak with young people about what they miss in the computer-guided establishment, the answer is always: ‘The heart!’ So, probably the scenarist, Mrs. Thea von Harbou, had foresight and therefore was right and I was wrong.”Google ScholarOtt, Frederick W., The Great German Films (Secaucus, NJ, 1986), 80.Google Scholar

40. Winkler, Weimar 1918–1933, 18and 188. Nineteenth-century novels in which reconciliation between the two classes occurs include Gutzkow, Karl, Die Ritter vom Geiste (Leipzig, 1852),Google ScholarSpielhagen, Friedrich, Hammer und Amboss (Schwerin, 1869),Google ScholarKretzer, Max, Im Sturmwind des Sozialismus (Berlin, 1883).Google Scholar

41. Murray, Film and the German Left, 100.Google Scholar

42. Quoted in Michaela Giesing, Theo Girshausen, Horst Walther, “Thematische Perspektiven: Beziehungen zwischen Theater, Sozialphilosophie und ästhetischer Theorie der ‘Expressionisten,’” in Weimarer Republik, Kreuzberg Kunstamt, 775. The authors point to Ernst Toller's Die Maschinenstürmer (1922) as an exemplar of this perspective.Google Scholar

43. Die Weber (released on 14 May 1927). Director Friedrich Zelnik for Friedrich Zelnik–Film GmbH, Berlin; screenplay: Fanny Carlsen, Willy Haas, based on Gerhart Hauptmann's drama Die Weber; camera: Frederik Fuglsang, Friedrich Weinmann; intertitles and line drawings: George Grosz; sets: Andrej Andrejew; music: Willy Schmidt-Gentner. Cast: Paul Wegener (Herr Dreissiger); Valeska Stock (Frau Dreissiger); Emil Lind (Herr Pfeiffer); Wilhelm Dieterle (Moritz Jäger); Dagny Servaes (Luise Hilse); Georg John (Ansorge); Hermann Picha (Baumert); Hans Sternberg (police chief); Emil Birron (Friedrich Wilhelm IV).Google Scholar

44. Critique by “Doorwien,” “Die Weber im Film,” Die Rotte Fahne, 17 May 1927, reprinted in Film und revolutionäre Arbeiterbewegung, 1:186.Google Scholar

45. For a complete listing of Zelnik's films and a brief biography, see the entry under his name in Bock, Hans-Michael, ed., CineGraph: Lexikon zum deutschsprachigen Film, vol. 6 (Munich, 1984–1997).Google Scholar

46. Georg Ledebour, “Einigung durch gemeinsame Aktion,” Die Weltbühne (15 March 1927): 403.Google Scholar

47. Georg Ledebour, “Sind gemeinsame Aktionen möglich?” Die Weltbühne (19 April 1927): 617. Such sentiments afford a leftist version of appeals described by Peter Fritzsche that “demarcated the creeping extent of ‘antisystem’ attitudes, a populist insurgency against economic privilege that threatened the political establishment…” Fritzsche, Rehearsals for Fascism, 149.Google Scholar

48. James Sheehan, for example, emphasizes its local nature and its lack of articulated goals for changing the social order. Sheehan, James J., German History 1770–1886 (Oxford, 1989), 644.Google Scholar

49. Vorwärts, 6 July 1844, reprinted in Kroneberg, Lutz and Schloesser, Rolf, eds., Weber-Revolte 1844: Der schlesische Weberaufstand im Spiegel der zeitgenössischen Publizistik und Literatur (Cologne, 1979), 219.Google Scholar

50. For a contemporary account of the uprising, see Wilhelm Wolff, “Das Elend und der Aufruhr in Schlesien” (1844) in ibid., 241–64.

51. Vossische Zeitung, 16 May 1927, Evening Edition. See also Kaes, , “Film in der Weimarer Republik,” in Geschichte des deutschen Films, ed. Jacobsen, et al. , 88.Google Scholar

52. “Hauptmanns verfilmte Weber,” Film-Kurier, 14 May 1927, 2.Google Scholar

53. “Der Weber-Film,” reviewed by “F—e.” This article, in the clipping files of the Bundesarchiv/Filmarchiv in Berlin, is identified only with the handwritten date of 1927.Google Scholar

54. “Raca,” (i.e., Kracauer) in Frankfurter Zeitung, 30 May 1927;Google Scholar substantial portions of this review are reprinted in Prinzler, Hans Helmut, Gebauer, Dorothea, Seidler, Walther, Verleihkatalog Nr. 1, Deutsches Institut für Filmkunde aand Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), 320.Google Scholar

55. See Ferro, Cinema and History, 68–70.Google Scholar

56. All intertitles were copied from the film in the Bundesarchiv/Filmarchiv in Berlin; the translations are mine.Google Scholar

57. This seems a clear instance of the populism that Peter Fritzsche describes as gaining momentum, when he describes the Nazis as populists, “railing against unrepresentative, distant rulers and generating a sense of collective unity…” Fritzsche, “Did Weimar Fail?”, 635.Google Scholar

58. The complete text of the song is in Kroneberg and Schloesser, Weber-Revolte, 469–72.Google Scholar

59. “Die Weber im Film,” Vossische Zeitung, 16 May 1927. The Weltbühne critic focused on Willy Schmidt-Genter's musical score, whose fast, hard-hitting rhythms, he reported, quickly incited audiences to wave their fists and stamp their feet. “Weber-Film,” Die Weltbühne (31 May 1927): 881.Google Scholar

60. Vossische Zeitung, 16 May 1927. A disapproving critic commented that “the unprecedented, gripping filmic scenes unleash political demonstrations, at least in Berlin, that we would rather not see in the cinema.” “Die Weber,” Kinematograph, 1057 (22 May 1927): 17.Google Scholar

61. Pictures of the still-standing Christ were “one of the favorite photographic tropes.” Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit (Berlin, 1994), 173–74. See also Winter, Jay, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning (New York, 1995), 92.Google Scholar

62. The image of Jesus as “the first social democrat,” which is prominent in novels of nineteenth-century authors such as Max Kretzer, also is suggested. Roper, Katherine, German Encounters with Modernity: Novels of Imperial Berlin, (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1991), 128–32.Google Scholar

63. See n. 31 above.Google Scholar

64. “Hauptmanns verfilmte ‘Weber’,” Film–Kurier, 14 May 1927.Google Scholar

65. Frankfurter Zeitung, 30 May 1927, excerpted in Prinzler et al., Verleihkatalog, no. 1, 320.Google Scholar

66. Premiered 15 March 1929. See Dahlke, Günther and Karl, Günter, eds., Deutsche Spielfilme von den Anfängen bis 1933, (Berlin, 1993), 183–84.Google Scholar See also Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung, no. 31 (1931), 617, which displays a full-page photo of a woman at a loom, with an infant nearby on the wooden floor. Entitled “Bei den letzten schlesischen Hauswebern,” the caption explains, “Either the husband is working in the factory or he is dead and the wife has to feed the family.”Google Scholar

67. “Die Weber,” Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung, no. 22, 5 June 1927, 11.Google Scholar

68. Ibid.

69. Schinderhannes (released 1 February 1928). Directed by Kurt Bernhardt for Prometheus Film-Verleih und Vertriebs-GmbH, Berlin. Screenplay: Kurt Bernhardt and Carl Zuckmayer, based loosely on Zuckmayer's drama of the same name; camera: Günther Krampf; sets: Heinrich Richter; music: Pasquale Perris. Cast: Hans Stüwe (Hannes Bückler, known as Schinderhannes); Frida Richard and Bruno Ziener (his parents); Albert Steinrück (Leyendecker); Lissi Arna (Julchen); Fritz Rasp (Heinrich Benzel); Oscar Homolka (magistrate).Google Scholar See also “Schinderhannes,” Illustrierter Film-Kurier, 806 (1928), excerpts of which are reproduced in Film und revolutionäre Arbeiterbewegung, ed. Kühn et al., 2:59–62.Google Scholar

70. A critical examination of the elements of Schinderhannes mythology is given by Mathy, Helmut, Der Schinderhannes: Zwischen Mutmassungen und Erkentnissen (Mainz, 1989).Google Scholar For a summary of the charges against Johannes Bückler, see ibid., 30.

71. For a survey of the epochs of Schinderhannes literature, see Franke, Manfred, “Der Räuber, wie er im Buche steht,” in his Schinderhannes: Das kurze wilde Leben des Johannes Bückler, neu erzählt nach alten Protokollen, Briefen und Zeitungsberichten (Düsseldorf, 1984), 307–75.Google Scholar On Schinderhannes as part of the “robber literature” that began with Friedrich von Schiller's drama Die Räuber in 1782, and for Schinderhannes lore of the Weimar era, see ibid., 314–22, 356–68.

72. Viebig, Clara, Unter dem Freiheitsbaum (Stuttgart, 1922), 229.Google Scholar

73. Elwenspoek, Curt, Schinderhannes—der Rheinische Rebell (Stuttgart, 1925), 119, 222–23. On Elwenspoek's interpretation, see Franke, Schinderhannes, 360–61. Schinderhannes gained stature as a German revolutionary when the communist Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung published a series from Elwenspoek's book in the spring of 1926.Google Scholar

74. Ibid., 363. Zuckmayer, Carl, Schinderhannes—Schauspiel in vier Akten (1927; repr. Hamburg, 1956). The play premiered on 14 10 1927 at the Lessing Theater in Berlin.Google Scholar

75. For a complete list of Bernhardt's films and a brief biography, see the entry under his name in CineGraph, vol. 1.Google Scholar

76. For two such critiques, from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, see “Schinderhannes—der erste Prometheus-Grossfilm,” Film Kurier, 2 February 1928, 1; and Alexander Abusch, “Schinderhannes als Film,” Die Rotte Fahne, 3 February 1928, in Film und revolutionäre Arbeiterbewegung, ed. Kühn et al., 2:63.Google Scholar

77. As an advertisement for a film version of Rudolf Herzog's popular novel Die vom Niederrhein (1908; repr. Stuttgart, 1922) had blared: “60,000,000 German hearts are beating for the Rhineland!” Film-Kurier, 16 May 1925.Google Scholar

78. All intertitles come from viewings of the film at the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv and the Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin, and all translations are mine. For contemporary discussion of the intertwining of ideas from the French Revolution and battles over the left bank of the Rhine, see Hans Wollenberg, “Schinderhannes—Prometheus-Film im Tauentzien-Palast,” Lichtbild-Bühne, 2 February 1928 and Belphegor, “Schinderhannes,” Film Kurier, 2 February 1928.Google Scholar

79. Viebig's novel refers to a public flogging that results from Hannes's theft of several animal hides, a far cry from heroic resistance to the occupiers. Viebig, Freiheitsbaum, 81.Google Scholar

80. In a later scene, discussed below, a crowd erupts into a lynch mob. The close-ups of enraged faces in both these crowd scenes are a visual convention that Fritz Lang invokes in the kangaroo-court scene of M (1931).Google Scholar

81. “Schinderhannes,” Berliner Börsen-Zeitung, 2 February 1928.Google Scholar

82. Zuckmayer, Carl, “Schinderhannes,” Illustrierter Film Kurier, no. 806 (1928); reprinted in Film und revolutionäre Arbeiterbewegung, ed. Kühn, et al. , 2:61.Google Scholar

83. This interpretation is developed by Murray, Film and the German Left, 131–32.Google Scholar

84. Abusch, , “Schinderhannes als Film,” in Film und revolutionäre Arbeiterbewegung, ed. Kühn, et al. , 2:64. On Prometheus' commercial goals, see Murray, Film and the German Left, 121–35.Google Scholar

85. Franke also emphasizes the dangerous implications of such imagery and language in his discussion of performances of Zuckmayer's drama and the enthusiastic applause such allusions raised. Franke, Schinderhannes, 368.Google Scholar

86. Elwenspoek early on alludes to Schinderhannes's supposedly anti-Semitic tendencies. Elwenspoek, Schinderhannes, 13, and Franke shows that even the earliest Schinderhannes literature was already mythologizing his intent to plunder “the Jews, other profiteers, and the enemies of the Fatherland and their agents in Germany.” Franke, Schinderhannes, 321. Mathy argues, however, that the anti-Jewish aura surrounding Schinderhannes's exploits is more evidence of prejudices of the wider society than of his intent. Mathy, Der Schinderhannes, 32–39xs.Google Scholar

87. Wollenberg, “Schinderhannes,” Lichtbild-Bühne, 2 February 1928.Google Scholar

88. Schlageter and Hoelz epitomized the heroic rebel to their respective admirers. See Manfred Franke, Albert Leo Schlageter: Der erste Soldat des 3. Reiches—Die Entmythologisierung eines Helden (Cologne, 1980). On Max Hölz, see Albert Winter, “Gerechtigkeit für Max Hölz!” Die Weltbühne, 16 November 1926, 768–71.Google Scholar

89. Berliner Börsen-Zeitung, 2 February 1928.Google Scholar

90. The films support the argument of Detlev Peukert that the republic had lost legitimacy but raise questions about his contention that the republican consensus was being replaced by “glimmerings of a new, totalitarian consensus.” Peukert, Weimar Republic, 241.Google Scholar

91. The films lend credence to Karlheinz Dederke's conclusion that “attempts to legitimate the Weimar Republic by the revolution [of 1918/19], were meager and without resonance,” but this argument needs further examination in light of other concepts of the German revolution prevalent at the end of the 1920s. Dederke, “Sinngebung der Novemberrevolution in den Jahren 1918/1919 and 1928/29,” in Salewski, Die Deutschen und die Revolution, 427.Google Scholar

92. Two subsequent films did refer to revolutionary transformation of institutions and the Communist movement that would carry it out: Piel Jutzi's Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück (1929) and Slatan Dodow/Bertolt Brecht's Kuhle Wampe (1932). Each depicts conditions in depression-ridden Germany that raise a host of important issues.Google Scholar