Jews in German cinema

Jews made significant contributions to the development of the German film industry prior to the rise of Nazism. By 1933, around 20% of German professionals in the film industry were Jewish.[1] Nazi antisemitism, including a ban on Jewish professionals in the film industry and culminating in the Holocaust, caused an exodus from Germany of film professionals, many of whom were Jewish or non-Jews with Jewish family members. Many of the remaining Jewish film professionals who were unable to escape were murdered, including Kurt Gerron, Otto Wallburg, and Paul Morgan.[2] The seizing of German film studios by the Nazis during the 1930s marked the demise of a Golden Age of German cinema marked by innovative filmmaking, including German expressionist cinema and a number of films now regarded as masterpieces.[3] Notable Jews during Germany's Golden Age of Cinema include Hedy Lamarr, Peter Lorre, Billy Wilder, Conrad and Robert Wiene, Fritz Lang, Hans Janowitz, Ernst Lubitsch, Jules Greenbaum, Erich Pommer, Robert Siodmak, and Max Nivelli. Some non-Jews such as Douglas Sirk fled because they had Jewish spouses or children. Some Jewish Holocaust survivors and refugees who returned remained active in West German or East German cinema, including Ludwig Berger, Hans Jacoby, Hans Oliva-Hagen (father of singer and actress Nina Hagen), and Buddy Elias (a cousin of Anne Frank).

History

The cinema of the Weimar Republic, between 1918 and 1933, is considered to be Germany's Golden Age of Cinema. On March 28, 1933, Joseph Goebbels delivered a speech at the Berlin Hotel Kaiserhof to a crowd of film industry professionals announcing that the film industry would be expected to conform to "volkish contours" and that Jews would be expelled from the film industry. By the next day, executives at the UFA GmbH film studio began hiring Jewish workers and cancelling contracts. The German film industry publication Film-Kurier began publishing articles denouncing "studio Jews".[4] By 1934, so many Jewish directors, producers, and other professionals had been expelled from the industry that UFA's head of production Ernst Hugo Correll complained that the quality of the German film industry had substantially declined.[5]

German Jewish film professionals who fled Germany often continued to work in the film industry in countries they fled to, including the United States, the United Kingdom,[6] and elsewhere. Approximately 800 German directors, producers, composers, actors, and writers fled to Hollywood, many of them Jewish.[3]

In 2001, the Jewish-themed film Alles auf Zucker! became a hit with German audiences.[7]

See also

References

  1. ^ "The Jewishness of Weimar Cinema" (PDF). Berghahn Books. Retrieved 2025-06-22.
  2. ^ "Stories of Survival: The German Cinema Exodus to Hollywood". Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. Retrieved 2025-06-22.
  3. ^ a b "Fleeing the Nazis for a haven in Hollywood". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2025-06-22.
  4. ^ "The Emigration of Filmmakers Under National-Socialism". filmportal.de. Retrieved 2025-06-22.
  5. ^ ""The Language of Shadows" – Transformations of Weimar Cinema". Berlin International Film Festival. Retrieved 2025-06-22.
  6. ^ "Exile in Britain: Emigrants and the British cinema-goers, 1933-1945". Bill Douglas Cinema Museum. Retrieved 2025-06-22.
  7. ^ "Jewish Film, 1990-Present". MyJewishLearning.com. Retrieved 2025-06-22.
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