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4 - Female Sacrifice, Sexual Assault, andDehumanization: Bourgeois Tragedy, Horror, and theMaking of Jud Süß
- Edited by Elisabeth Krimmer, University of California, Davis, Patricia Anne Simpson, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
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- Book:
- German #MeToo
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 08 October 2022
- Print publication:
- 19 July 2022, pp 100-122
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Summary
SEXUAL ABUSE AND FEMALE SACRIFICE are constitutiveelements of Veit Harlan's notorious Nazi propagandafilm, Jud Süß (JewSuss). Promoted byJoseph Goebbels and released in 1940 to fomenthatred toward the Jews, this film features thevillainous Joseph Sus Oppenheimer, a cunning andgreedy financier from Frankfurt's Jewish ghetto whogains favor with Karl Alexander, the new duke ofWurttemberg. Though loosely based on real eventsthat took place in Stuttgart in the 1730s, the filmdistorts historical facts—for example, by depictingOppenheimer as a Jew bent on having his way withbourgeois Christian women. From young maidens forcedto perform sexual favors for the duke atOppenheimer's behest to Oppenheimer's rape of theyoung, innocent, and already-spoken- for DorotheaSturm, sexual violence against women propels thefilm's action. The work thus builds on severalestablished genres that revolve around the abuse anddeath of beautiful women. These genres span genderedand anti-Semitic expressions of abjection inportraying victimization, violence, andexclusion.
The two cultural antecedents I wish to consider in thiscontext form a surprising pair: eighteenth-centurybourgeois tragedy and twentiethcentury horror film.The former is well represented by Gotthold EphraimLessing's Miß SaraSampson (1755) and Emilia Galotti (1772), two works thatclosely adhere to the tropes of the genre, featuringa close fatherdaughter relationship, a weak orabsent mother, a tyrannical and depravedaristocracy, and the seduction of a virtuous yetcorruptible maiden. The horror film, too,prominently features women as victims of sexualabuse, as exemplified by Friedrich Murnau's Nosferatu, eine Symphonie desGrauens (1922; Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror), inwhich a monstrous male character becomes obsessedwith hunting down and killing an innocent butalluring female. By discussing features common tothese works, this essay illuminates the influence ofthe German cultural heritage on the making ofJud Süß. In turn,these commonalities shed light on representations ofvictimization central to the #MeToo movement,thereby revealing different manifestations of therape culture characteristic of male-dominatedsocieties.
1 - On Potatoes, Forgeries, Mistaken Identities, and Cultural Revolution in Uwe Timm's Postwall Novel Johannisnacht
- from Part I - Inheriting the Social-Justice Legacy of the 1968 Generation
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- By Deborah Janson, associate professor of German at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia
- Edited by Jill E. Twark, East Carolina University, Axel Hildebrandt, Moravian College, Pennsylvania
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- Book:
- Envisioning Social Justice in Contemporary German Culture
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 14 March 2018
- Print publication:
- 15 May 2015, pp 21-46
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Summary
IN THE WAKE OF UNIFICATION, Germany suddenly became home to citizens who had previously belonged to two distinct German nations. At the same time, the end of the Cold War brought many immigrants from Eastern Europe, adding to the war refugees, asylum seekers, and foreign laborers who had comprised the immigrant population in previous decades. As a result, since the early 1990s more foreigners have been living in Germany than in any other European Union country (Green 83). Also since then, Germans have been grappling with issues of national and cultural identity—experiencing what it means, for example, to have an eastern or western German as their coworker, or a Russian, Turkish, Tunisian, Ghanaian, or other foreign-born resident as their neighbor. The confusion associated with living in a newly “unified” country that is also a land of immigration has been exacerbated by the nearly simultaneous acceleration of globalization. On the one hand, this development has been, according to Rüdiger Safranski, particularly welcome in Germany because of its promise of “refuge from a disagreeable nationalist past” (12). Yet with the collapse of social and political boundaries, globalization has also intensified identity issues for individuals who no longer feel secure about their membership in a certain class, race, or nation. Equally characteristic of a broad segment of German society in the 1990s and beyond is what Gerhard Schulze refers to in his book Die Erlebnisgesellschaft (The Experience Society, 2000) as “das Projekt des schönen Lebens” (35; the project/pursuit of the beautiful life). Whereas people used to work long and hard to meet external demands, protect themselves against nature's threats, acquire useful products, and achieve long-term goals, they now often have the luxury of pursuing experiences that will, if successful, give them immediate gratification while contributing to the type of life that enhances their self-concept. Schulze writes: “Jetzt kommt es darauf an, [das Leben] so zu verbringen, dass man das Gefühl hat, es lohne sich. Nicht das Leben an sich, sondern der Spaß daran ist das Kernproblem, das nun das Alltagshandeln strukturiert” (60; It [a successful life] now depends on living life in a way that allows one to feel it is worth it. Not life itself, but the fun that one can derive from it is the central problem that structures everyday activities).