Hitler - Films from Germany History, Cinema and Politics since 1945

The first book-length study to critically examine the recent wave of Hitler biopics in German cinema and television. A group of international experts discuss films like Downfallin the context of earlier portrayals of Hitler and draw out their implications for the changing place of the Third Reich in the national historical imagination.

MARTIN A. RUEHL is lecturer in German Thought at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages, Cambridge University, UK, specializing in the cultural and intellectual history of modern Germany. His research concentrates on the myths and memories that have shaped German society and culture in the twentieth century. He has published books and articles on Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, and Stefan George. For the Cambridge MPhil in Screen Media and Cultures, he lectures on fascist cinema and the representations of fascism in post-war European film.


KAROLIN MACHTANS is assistant professor of German in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at California Polytechnic State University, USA. From 2006 to 2010, she was DAAD Lecturer at Sidney Sussex College and St John's College at the University of Cambridge, UK. Her research interests lie in twentieth and twenty-first-century German literature and film, Turkish-German and German-Jewish literature, representations of the Holocaust, and the interrelations between literature and history. Her first book, which examines the autobiographical writings of Saul Friedländer and Ruth Klüger in the context of their scholarly work, was published in 2009 by Max Niemeyer Verlag. She is currently working on a book-length study of the representation of Istanbul in German literature and film.

Introduction: Beyond the Gorgon's Gaze: Representing Hitler in German Cinema since 1945; K.Machtans & M.Ruehl
The Führer's Fake: Presence of an Afterlife; E.Rentschler
'Hitler's shadow still looms over us': G.W. Pabst's Der letzte Akt and its contemporary public response; M.Töteberg
Our Hitler: A Film by Hans Jürgen Syberberg; T.Elsaesser
Entombing the Nazi Past: On Downfall and Historicism; S.Hake
Tragedy and Farce: Dani Levy's Mein Führer - Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler; M.D.Richardson
Man, Demon, Icon: The Cinematic Image of Hitler between Representation and Historical Reality; M.Elm
Hitler Wars: From Hirschbiegel to Harald Schmidt; M.Butter
Hitler Nonfictional: Hitler's Image in Recent Documentary Films; K.Stutterheim
Encountering Hitler: Seductive Charisma and Memory Spaces in Heinrich Breloer's Speer und Er (2005); A.Bangert
Conclusion: Far Away So Close: Loving to Hate Hitler; J.von Moltke