Mobilizing Light and Shadow: Popular Nationalism, Political Culture, and the Early German Cinema, 1895-1918

This dissertation explores representations of the German nation as projected onto German cinema screens in the years between the invention of film in 1895 and the end of the Kaiserreich in 1918. This was a period of intense growth for the German film industry. From a novelty feature in travelling exhibitions at the end of the nineteenth century, film was a part of the everyday lives of millions of Germans by the First World War. Unified only in 1871, Germany was a young state and attempts to define, popularize, and harness its national image formed a central and contested aspect of German political culture. This dissertation argues that the conflicting cinematic representations of the German nation in this period should be understood within the larger context of Wilhelmine political history and that invocations of the nation were instrumental in the development of the German cinema. Kaiser Wilhelm II, political pressure groups on the radical right, foreign and domestic film producers, and, ultimately, military and civilian authorities of the German state all promoted cinematic visions of the nation that were overlapping, complementary, and conflicting. Kaiser Wilhelm II was Germany’s first film celebrity and personified onscreen a nation of monarchists and military might, yet his media-constructed political authority was overshadowed by his film stardom. Around 1900, imperialist political associations such as the Navy League and the Colonial Society began to use film to construct an image of the nation as an assertive power, transforming their political agendas into cinematic attractions. In the decade preceding the First World War, critics and reformers became increasingly concerned with the effects of film on the German audience. Part of the response to this criticism—and to Germany’s weak position in the international film market place—was the production of films depicting the heroes and events of the national past. Following the outbreak of war in 1914, cinema connected audiences to the war experience and promoted an image of the nation at war. Between 1916 and the end of the war, the state-driven consolidation of the industry and a wave of propaganda films aimed at the domestic audience brought together the nation as it was conceived by the state with the nation as projected in the cinema.Ph.D.2018-02-12 00:00:0