Liesl Frank, Charlotte Dieterle and the European Film Fund. Martin Sauter
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Similarly to many of his fellow émigrés, Feld had a difficult start in the US, not least because entry for production designers into their union was as strict as it was for other below-the-line-personnel. But, as Asper explains, since ‘Feld remained very close to his fellow émigrés’ (Asper 2002: 383), he eventually managed with their help to elbow his way into the Hollywood film industry. Not only that, but archival evidence shows that during this period of hardship Feld became a beneficiary of the EFF, and his is just one example of how crucial this organisation was for the survival of émigré film artists. In hindsight, the fact that Feld got his first break in an anti-Nazi film - after 11 years in exile - seems no surprise, as it seems to have become a rite of passage for émigrés to first prove their mettle in this particular genre. However, at long last, in 1946, Feld did obtain union membership, and his struggles in exile notwithstanding, as the title of Asper’s book aptly suggests, this was indeed better than the alternative: death in a concentration camp.
Asper also discusses a number of other émigrés who had previously received scant attention from film historians, including the editors Albrecht Joseph and Rudi Fehr or the choreographers Ernst and Maria Matray. The parallels to Horak are clear: Asper too started his research on exiled film artists with a series of oral histories, and in both cases the results of their findings led to crucial contributions to the field of exile research. In Horak’s case this was ‘The Palm Trees ...’, while Asper’s Etwas ... was no doubt influenced by Horak and as such could be considered an expansion of Horak’s work in ‘The Palm Trees ...’ as well as Fluchtpunkt Hollywood. Neither work is concerned with any aspect of exile in particular, but rather represents an all-inclusive overview of film exile, illustrating the diversity and the consequences of the German-speaking emigration to Los Angeles. More than Horak‘s, because of its scope and its emphasis on below-the-line personnel, Asper’s book also serves as a memorial to émigrés who had fallen by the wayside of exile research until he put them centre stage, commemorating their life, achievements, and ordeals as a result of Nazi rule.
In the introduction to Etwas ., Asper briefly sketches the political situation in Germany following Hitler’s rise to power, before moving on to discuss the various stations of exile such as France, England, the Netherlands, and Palestine, and dedicating a paragraph to those film artists who did not make it into exile and were subsequently murdered in the concentration camps, including the aforementioned Willy Rosen, Otto Wallburg and Kurt Gerron. But the body of Etwas . consists of ten chapters, each dedicated to a particular profession at the Hollywood film-studios, and discussing the impact of the émigrés. By covering virtually all professions associated with filmmaking - directing, producing, acting, writing, editing, cinematography, production-design, post-production - Asper is able to shed light on those among the émigrés who had until that point rarely been mentioned by exile researchers, including Reginald Le Borg, Gerd Oswald (directors), Helmut Dantine, Wolfgang Zilzer (actors), Albrecht Joseph (editor), and Fini Rudiger (animator). He would continue this enterprise in a later work, Nachrichten aus Hollywood, New York und anderswo (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2003), where he considers the correspondence of cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan and his wife Marlise with Siegfried and Lili Kracauer. Asper’s introduction consists of a biography of both Schüfftan and Kracauer, based on secondary as well as archival material, interspersed with excerpts from the Schüfftan-Kracauer correspondence and focussing on their lives following their arrival in the United States. Asper stresses that though Schüfftan’s and Kracauer’s friendship ‘was already mentioned by Karsten Witte in the afterword of the [second] German edition of Kracauer’s From Caligari to Hitler, nobody has so far followed up on it’ (Asper 2003: 1).18 Nachrichten ..., by contrast, shows how a focus on a cinematographer can open up new perspectives, and his study was also useful for my own research since both Kracauer and Schüfftan were at one time beneficiaries of the European Film Fund.
In the last chapter of Etwas ... , Asper considers exile film and film genres. Once more echoing Horak, Asper singles out Zuckmayer’s play Der Hauptmann von Köpenick,19 remade in Hollywood under the title, I Was a Criminal (USA 1945). As we have seen, Horak used I Was a Criminal as an example to emphasize the difficulties which a study of exile film introduces into the definition of a national cinema. The film was made in Hollywood, is based on a German play, is cast nearly in its entirety with émigré actors, and has an émigré director remaking a film he himself had previously made in Weimar Germany. All this prompts Horak to question whether this film should be seen as part of American or German film history. By contrast, Asper’s intriguing and extensive account of the film’s production highlights the difference in approach between Horak and Asper. Asper’s forte lies in the investigation of empirical data rather than any address to academic concerns, such as, for instance, issues in national cinema.
One shortcoming of Etwas ... is its tendency to the anecdotal, another is its failure to mention any aid organisations in which the émigrés were involved other than the short chapter he dedicated to the European Film Fund, though as one of the few consistent accounts on this organisation that are available, Asper‘s book is an important milestone for my own research. Other aid organisations, however, such as, for instance, the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, the Emergency Rescue Committee or the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom, to name but a few, are almost entirely ignored, highlighting a gap in exile research that is waiting to be filled.
A subsequent work, Filmexilanten im Universal Studio (Berlin: Bertz & Fischer Verlag, 2005), also has its origins in interviews Asper conducted in the 1980s with Henry Koster, Hans J. Salter and Curt Siodmak, who drew Asper’s attention to ‘the vast extent and significance of the work of the exiled German speaking film artists at Universal’ (Asper 2005: 292). Asper also mentions that it was the appointment of Jan-Christopher Horak as founding director of Universal Studio’s Archives and Collections which inspired him to embark on the project, as Horak not only ‘opened the archives to researchers from day one, but also encouraged [Asper] in his undertaking .’(Asper 2005: 292). The synergy between Horak and Asper would eventually result in the article discussed above, ‘Three Smart Guys‘, which Asper terms an ‘interim result of his undertaking’ (Asper 2005: 292). But while ‘Three Smart Guys’ focuses on the influence on Universal of only a small group of émigrés - Henry Koster, Felix Jackson and Joe Pasternak -Filmexilanten examines how Universal was influenced and shaped by the émigrés as a whole. Here, Asper does not solely home in on the twelve years of Nazi power, but looks at the studio’s history from its beginnings until the 1950s. Like Horak, Asper is interested here in the impact of the émigrés on certain aspects of Hollywood or/ and American culture.20 He argues that ‘Universal is particularly suited for such an examination [measuring the émigrés’ influence] as émigré directors, producers, screenwriters, composers, actors and actresses worked there for well-nigh thirty years ...’ (Asper 2005: 11). Although the same applies to, for instance, Warner Bros.,21 Universal was distinct in that it was founded and run by a German immigrant. In addition, Universal had close affiliations with the German film industry going back to the Weimar Republic while Paramount’s - as well as MGM’s - affiliations with UFA were of a merely financial nature.22 23 Lastly, although most of the major studios took on their fair share of refugees following Hitler’s rise to power, it is safe to say that Universal, along with Paramount and Warner Bros., was more of a haven for refugees than, for instance, Columbia, RKO or even MGM. Hence, Asper concludes that Universal not only gave a large number of émigrés including, for instance, Curt Siodmak, Koster, Pasternak, Jackson, Salter, etc., their first start in the US film-industry, but by doing so it contributed substantially to their successful integration into American society. Indeed, none of them returned to Germany following the end of WWII as other, less integrated, émigrés did. At the same time, the émigrés saved Universal from financial ruin, as evidenced in the Deanna Durbin musicals which were a collaborative effort between producer Joe Pasternak, director Henry Koster and screenwriter Felix Jackson.24 Moreover, the émigrés’ ‘contributed to a transfer of European culture by adapting it for an American audience’ (Asper 2005: 289). This transfer of culture is particularly palpable in Universal’s Deanna Durbin musicals, which have a distinct European flair, as opposed to, for instance, MGM’s Meet Me In St. Louis (MGM, USA 1944), which seems far more