{"id":2134,"date":"2003-08-20T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2003-08-20T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/?p=2134"},"modified":"2022-04-28T16:56:46","modified_gmt":"2022-04-28T16:56:46","slug":"rosenstrasse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/?p=2134","title":{"rendered":"Rosenstrasse\/Rosenstra\u00dfe (2003)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Plot <\/strong>New York 2001. After her husband dies, Ruth seems to be acting very distraught, according to her daughter Hannah. When Hannah starts probing into the past, she finds out that her mother, whose Jewish parents were deported during World War II, was raised by an “Aryan” woman named Lena. Hannah travels to Berlin and finds the now almost 90-year-old Lena. The old woman tells Hannah her story: the story of the women of the Rosenstrasse. Lena was married to a Jewish musician. One day when he didn’t come home from work, she went out looking for him. After a bureaucratic odyssey, she is sent to the Rosenstrasse, where she finds other women also looking for their Jewish husbands who have been incarcerated there. It is in the Rosenstrasse that Lena meets little Ruth. Upon the wives’ diligent insistence, the men are released, but Ruth’s mother is deported. Ruth stays with Lena until relatives in the United States send for her. After losing her own mother, Ruth cannot stand losing Lena too, and, in a furious rage, throws the ring that she once received from her mother at Lena’s feet. When Hannah returns with this ring, Ruth is finally able to come to terms with her past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Film note<\/strong> The opening shots of Margarethe von Trotta\u2019s Rosenstrasse (Rosenstra\u00dfe) <\/em>(2003)consist of a series of close ups of headstones, beginning with onebearing the word \u201cFather\u201d, which fades into another displaying the word \u201cHusband\u201d, and the succeeding ones are marked with symbols such as the star of David, signifying that the dead are Jewish. Almost every successive shot after this is slightly wider, incorporating more headstones each time; the way people and the past are remembered, and Jewish suffering, individual and collective, are key themes in Rosenstrasse<\/em>. This essay explores this important film in relation to German \u2018heritage\u2019 cinema, the \u2018genre\u2019 of Holocaust cinema, and the authorial preoccupations of director Margarethe von Trotta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New German heritage cinema<\/strong> Eric Rentschler famously detailed a split between two periods of German film, the New German Cinema movement, and then, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of a \u201ccinema of consensus\u201d (264). The latter, in comparison to the \u201cchallenging and unsettling\u201d New German Cinema, is \u201cunabashedly conventional in its appearance and structure\u201d (Rentschler 264). Margarethe von Trotta is primarily identified as a director of the New German Cinema era, so to examine a work of hers set within at least the time period established for the cinema of consensus is an interesting one. Rosenstrasse<\/em> is also linked by many critics to German \u201cheritage\u201d cinema, which Paul Cooke notes is \u201cthe most pronounced trend within German film production from the late 1990s onwards\u201d (88), and has also been described as conservative and conventional, leading Christine Haase to note \u201cthe close links between heritage film and the cinema of consensus\u201d (41). However, quite where Rosenstrasse <\/em>fits in regards to this conventionality is up for debate. It already ticks one box in the German heritage cinema checklist in that its chosen area of history is the Third Reich, one which other films under that label, such as Aimee and Jaguar (Aimee und Jaguar) <\/em>(1999), <\/em>also situate themselves. One of the conventional features of heritage films is an attempt to \u201cshift the focus away from the question of German culpability for past crimes to an exploration of the extent to which the nation itself suffered under the Nazis\u201d (Cooke 91). Rosenstrasse<\/em>, with its focus on the protest of non-Jewish German women against the imprisonment of their Jewish husbands, in many ways follows this same path of exploring the victimhood of so-called \u2018ordinary\u2019 Germans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although it begins with imagery signifying Jewish suffering, it is in fact through Lena, a non-Jewish German woman, that the majority of the narrative of the protest is told. It is through her memories that the spectator experiences the Third Reich, and even though the film is also concerned with the experience of Ruth, a Jewish German, it is through the eyes of Lena that we see the large majority of her experience, with only a few flashbacks directly from Ruth. The film is arguably more concerned with Lena\u2019s suffering than Ruth\u2019s; and, critically, her suffering as a result of her Jewish husband\u2019s plainly greater suffering under imprisonment. Aimee and Jaguar <\/em>has been criticised for a similar tendency, with Stuart Taberner pointing out that \u201cat the conclusion of Aim\u00e9e und Jaguar<\/em> the dominant mood is one of loss. Significantly, however, this loss appears as a German loss\u201d (364). The spectator is associated with Lilly\u2019s perspective, that of the ordinary German, in the final part of the film after Felice is arrested and taken to Theresienstadt concentration camp, particularly in one key moment: a close up of Lilly writhing around on the floor and screaming. This is a heart-breaking presentation of grief, but the grief of a non-Jewish woman, inferring that Felice\u2019s imprisonment and death make Lilly a victim of the Nazi regime. Rosenstrasse<\/em> follows this logic and is part of a worrying trend that implies that \u201cJews and non-Jews suffered the same damages, losses, and traumas\u201d (Koepnick 72). By bringing up and then focusing largely on the suffering of ordinary Germans both films struggle to avoid relativizing the two experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brad Prager remarks that these films \u201cgenerally depict the war years in a way that romanticises the history of German-Jewish partnerships and excises the spectre of racist zealotry among all but the most diabolical Nazis\u201d (79). Rosenstrasse<\/em> is centered around German-Jewish partnerships \u2013 it is about married German-Jewish couples, and the children of these unions, of which Ruth is one. Taberner remarks that in Aimee and Jaguar<\/em> the \u201cGerman-Jewish romance [\u2026] is narratively and visually located in the Weimar Republic\u201d and that this is \u201can affirmation of the progressive values of Weimar, of tolerance, creativity and self-realisation, and a rejection of the philistine bigotry of the Nazis\u201d (363). This echoes one of Lena\u2019s flashbacks in Rosenstrasse,<\/em> set in a Berlin jazz bar, where the tolerance of the Weimer era is overtly clear with the inclusion of a black lounge singer and non-white couples dancing alongside the main characters. What this implies is that the Third Reich was an anomaly in an ultimately accepting and open-minded Germany, and that the Rosenstrasse protest is an example of a German-Jewish solidarity that the Nazis could not fully destroy. It makes the film appear to depict a world in which, as Hilary Potter argues, Nazism is presented as \u201can entirely un-German phenomenon imposed on an unwilling nation\u201d (214).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is furthered by the inclusion of multiple Germans who sympathise with the Rosenstrasse protestors. One of the protestors, Klara, is given money by her boss so she can continue missing work and wait for her husband\u2019s release. A woman wearing a Nazi pin joins the protests on behalf of her sister. One of the guards at the detention center lets the protestors retrieve items from their imprisoned husbands, and when Lena asks if she can sneak in to see her husband Fabian, replies that it would cost him his life \u2013 not that he simply will not let her. It is only fear of the consequences that prevents him from helping her, suggesting that he secretly supports the women. As Potter says, \u201cin the film only the Nazis are truly culpable\u201d (214). There is no sense of the complicity of ordinary Germans, or that their inability to act in any truly significant way against the Nazis is problematic. Potter also points out that Lena\u2019s father\u2019s attempted deal with Fabian to exchange his passage to England for their divorce \u201cmarks him out as a Machiavellian anti-Semite, but not one who would necessarily, willingly endorse genocide\u201d (214). She points out that his shocked reaction to Arthur\u2019s mention of the horrors inflicted upon the deported Jewish people could even \u201chumanise\u201d his character (214). The film arguably alleges here that although many Germans were anti-Semitic, most were not anti-Semitic to the extent the Nazis were. Similarly, Arthur\u2019s use of pictures of mass killings he witnessed as leverage is not examined \u2013 he is close enough to take detailed pictures of the event, yet his level of involvement in these killings is not discussed. As Potter states, \u201cthe viewer is invited to overlook this, to see his anguish and to concentrate instead on his endeavours to save Fabian and to support Lena and Ruth\u201d (215). Here, the mass killings of Jewish Germans are used as the basis of a Nazi soldier\u2019s attempt at redemption; his feelings are centralised, not the suffering he witnessed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Holocaust films <\/strong>Thomas Elsaesser notes that \u201cthe most persistent criticism of Schindler\u2019s List<\/em> is Spielberg’s focus on one individual, tilting the narrative away from the destiny and destruction of a people, towards the story of Schindler\u201d (162). Perhaps this use of indirect address of the suffering of the Holocaust is due to the fact that, as Elsaesser also states, the Holocaust is an event \u201cthat defies representation and yet demands it with equal finality\u201d (147), leading to many issues and complexities. Prager asserts that \u201cpopular modes of coming to terms with the Holocaust presuppose that there can be some understanding between victims and contemporary observers [\u2026] this is by and large false currency and is predicated primarily on purchasing reconciliation and papering over collective wounds\u201d (91) in other words, there is often a lack of engagement with the specificity and magnitude of the Holocaust victims\u2019 suffering in favour of finding ways contemporary observers can relate to or comprehend it. Again, perhaps the decision to focus Holocaust films around non-Jewish Germans is a way to avoid this presupposition, as perhaps a non-Jewish character who witnesses suffering is easier for contemporary spectators to identify with. However, it would be remiss not to note the clear differentiation between Schindler\u2019s List<\/em> and the other films, including Rosenstrasse<\/em>. Schindler\u2019s List <\/em>is still centrally concerned with the suffering of the Jewish people, even though presented through the story of a non-Jewish German. Elsaesser points out that, in regards to the controversial shower scene, \u201c[Spielberg] is careful in this scene also to direct the eye towards the background, to a long column of figures disappearing into an underground bunker which the viewer need not be told stand for the gas chambers\u201d (162). The main focus of the scene itself, although eventually revealed to be an actual shower, hinges on the spectator\u2019s expectations of the horrors of the Holocaust. In many scenes similar to this, the Jewish people are central, and their suffering is not minimised, as is arguably the case in Rosenstrasse <\/em>and Aimee and Jaguar.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, this is not necessarily the only interpretation of the presentation of Jewish suffering in Rosenstrasse<\/em>. Sally Winkle describes how von Trotta\u2019s film subtly demarcates the different levels of trauma suffered by Jewish and non-Jewish Germans, in contrast to other German heritage films. She compares Ruth and Lena\u2019s flashbacks in the film: \u201cRuth\u2019s flashbacks focus on her traumatic memories of fear, death, and the agonizing loss of her mother, her home, and familiar stability\u201d while \u201cLena\u2019s memories are those of a non-Jewish German woman who [\u2026] did not directly experience the overwhelming fear and loss that Ruth felt following the arrest and deportation of her mother\u201d (440). The fact that Ruth\u2019s flashbacks are short, largely devoid of dialogue, and initially unclear contextually, support this comparison, and although the majority of the film focuses on Lena\u2019s recollections, the significance of the beginning of the film\u2019s focus on Ruth\u2019s pain is clear. The spectator\u2019s first experience of the Third Reich in the film is through Ruth\u2019s memories of her family and neighbours being taken away. A palpable sense of fear permeates the scene of a young Ruth hiding from the same fate, conveyed by the grey toned colour scheme, the empty rooms, and the sweeping intensity of the score. Similarly, in contrast to the happy anticipation of the reunification of the Rosenstrasse women and their family members, the final moment outside the detention centre is a young Ruth asking \u201cWhen is my mother coming?\u201d, to no response. Here, moments that focus on German victimhood are ostensibly undercut by reminders of the incomparable extent of the suffering of Jewish Germans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

von Trotta\u2019s oeuvre<\/strong> Winkle also points out that this focus on memory is significant in von Trotta\u2019s other work, specifically her 1981 film Marianne and Juliane (Marianne und Juliane)<\/em>. As already noted, von Trotta is largely associated with the New German Cinema movement, due to the fact that her first and best-known films fit within the remits of the movement delineated by critics such as Rentschler. The interweaving of flashbacks of the past with the present, and the continual connections between the two, stylistically and content-wise, reveal the key concerns of von Trotta\u2019s film, namely as Susan Linville states, \u201cthe mutual illumination of past and present, with the intersection of public and private, and with the tension between remembering and forgetting\u201d (447). Juliane\u2019s growing obsession with discovering the truth about her sister Marianne\u2019s death, and the scene in which the sisters as young children are horrified to the point of vomiting upon watching scenes from Night and Fog<\/em> (1951) depicting Nazi concentration camps, illuminate Linville\u2019s argument. Winkle points out that this concern with memory, and grappling with the past, are also key concerns of Rosenstrasse<\/em> (443-444). As aforementioned, it can be argued that Rosenstrasse <\/em>presents two differentiated strands of suffering at the hands of the Nazis, that of ordinary Germans and that of Jewish people. How von Trotta does this, crucially, is through depictions of memory, and grappling with the past \u2013 specifically from the perspective of women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winkle writes that another connection between Rosenstrasse <\/em>andvon Trotta\u2019s earlier films, including Marianne and Juliane, <\/em>is how it \u201chighlights female subjectivity, relationships between women, and the importance of solidarity and female agency\u201d (429) \u2013 Rosenstrasse <\/em>is centred around a group of women protesting against the Nazi elite, structured through the memories and activities of women. In one moment of the film, as Nazi soldiers aim a machine gun directly at the crowd, the camera pans across the line of women, focusing on their faces. Many look scared, many look determined \u2013 but none move, clearly emphasising female solidarity in this moment. However, in comparison with von Trotta\u2019s earlier avowedly feminist films, Winkle argues that Rosenstrasse <\/em>\u201cmight be better described as a \u201c\u201cwoman-centred\u201d film with feminist tendencies\u201d (443). The film is not so much an interrogation of the structures of a patriarchal society as it is a showcase of an event of women\u2019s courage and determination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clearly, although on one hand Marianne and Juliane<\/em> and Rosenstrasse <\/em>may be said tofit in the two distinct categories set out by Rentschler \u2013 New German Cinema and the cinema of consensus respectively \u2013 there is one way von Trotta\u2019s focus has not appeared to change; an emphasis on the significance of memory, both personal and national. However, why Rosenstrasse<\/em> is labelled as a part of consensus cinema is the extent of conventionality within the film. The emphasis on good ordinary Germans, a connected German-Jewish victimhood, and a presentation of female resolve rather than a feminist examination of womanhood and patriarchy are elements of this. There are many others, from the historically accurate and dimly lit grey and blue toned depictions of Nazi Germany that easily differentiate it from the lighter and brighter toned present, in comparison to the more complex and interwoven flashback structure of Marianne and Juliane,<\/em> to the comforting conclusion to the film. This latter element is a clear example of the problems this film and other similar films tend to have \u2013 Prager notes that heritage films \u201c[incline] towards the affirmative assertion that the case can be closed [\u2026] and that the past can be left behind\u201d (92). This is epitomized in the final scene of Rosenstrasse<\/em>; ending with Hannah and her gentile boyfriend Luis\u2019 wedding leaves the viewer with a feeling of joy and implies a sense of closure. Unfortunately, with the subject matter of Rosenstra<\/em>sse, <\/em>this could suggest that the crimes of the Third Reich and the suffering of the Jewish people is something to simply be moved on from. The final moment of the film is a close up on Ruth\u2019s smiling face as she watches the happy couple, accentuating this even further, implying that Ruth\u2019s reliving of her traumatic past is \u2018finished\u2019 \u2013 perhaps it could even be interpreted to suggest that Jewish people such as Ruth can \u2018move on\u2019 from the Holocaust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though there are a myriad of reasons as to why Rosenstrasse <\/em>appears to be more of a conventional film than von Trotta\u2019s prior work, it is important to note that there are previous versions of the screenplay for Rosenstrasse, <\/em>which did not gain adequate financial backing, in which there was more emphasis on the culpability of ordinary Germans, and a less easily consumable flashback structure (Potter 193-196). Both Potter and Winkle cite commercial reasons for the more conventional final version (Potter 188, Winkle 435), and although Rentschler is ultimately critical of the cinema of consensus, he clearly states that \u201cdramatic shifts in the nature of German film subsidy since the early 1980s have influenced the content and shape of productions, diminishing the possibility for political interventions and the presence of alternative perspectives and formal experiments\u201d (267), and the eventual national and international success of Rosenstrasse<\/em> supports this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All this is perhaps why most discussions of Rosenstrasse <\/em>find it difficult to wholly judge the film, as it is a mix of elements that can be interpreted in a multitude of ways. This essay has focused on the film\u2019s unfortunate tendency to follow along the same lines as many other German heritage and Holocaust films, including that it focuses on the victimhood of non-Jewish Germans under the Nazi regime while seeming to dismiss the suffering of Jewish people. This, alongside the notion of good ordinary Germans in contrast to the Nazis, and the suggestion of a \u2018moving on\u2019 from the trauma of the Holocaust, can perhaps be seen to reflect the \u201cperceived need in Germany following reunification [\u2026] to reclaim and recount stories that cast German history during World War Two in an at least marginally more \u201cpositive\u201d light\u201d (Winkle 430-431). It is potentially this which leads to Rosenstrasse\u2019s <\/em>unfortunate implications, as it is arguably von Trotta\u2019s apparent attempt to present a \u2018positive\u2019 depiction of the heroism of German women that leaves little room for the complexities of such a \u2018positive\u2019 reconsideration of the past to be fully considered. It is fundamentally an excellent case study in terms of Germany\u2019s trouble with depicting and remembering its own past \u2013 ironically, a clear theme in von Trotta\u2019s own work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cooke, Paul. Contemporary German Cinema<\/em>. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012. Print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elsaesser, Thomas. \u201cSubject Positions, Speaking Positions: From Holocaust, Our Hitler, and Heimat to Shoah and Schindler\u2019s List\u201d. The Persistence of History: Cinema, Television and the Modern Event<\/em>. Ed. Vivian Sobchack. New York: Routledge, 1996. 145-183. Print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Haase, Christine. \u201cDownfall (2004): Hitler in the New Millennium and the (Ab)uses of History\u201d. New Directions in German Cinema<\/em>. Eds. Paul Cooke and Chris Homewood. New York: I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2011. 39-76. Print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Koepnick, Lutz. \u201cReframing the Past: Heritage Cinema and the Holocaust in the 1990s\u201d. New German Critique<\/em> 87 (2002): 47-82. Print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Linville, Susan. \u201cRetrieving History: Margarethe von Trotta’s Marianne and Juliane\u201d. PMLA<\/em> 106 (1991): 446-458. Print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Potter, Hilary. The Dynamics of German Remembering: The Rosenstra\u00dfe Protest in Historical Debate and Cultural Representation<\/em>. 2014. University of Bath, PhD Dissertation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prager, Brad. \u201cMusic After Mauthausen: Re-Presenting the Holocaust in Stefan Ruzowitzsky\u2019s The Counterfeiters (2007)\u201d. New Directions in German Cinema<\/em>. Eds. Paul Cooke and Chris Homewood. New York: I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2011. 77-93. Print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rentschler, Eric. \u201cFrom New German Cinema to the Post-Wall Cinema of Consensus\u201d. Cinema and Nation<\/em>. Eds. Mette Hjort and Scott Mackenzie. London: Routledge, 2000. 260-277. Print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taberner, Stuart. \u201cPhilo-Semitism in Recent German Film: Aimee und Jaguar, Rosenstras\u00dfe and Das Wunder von Bern\u201d. German Life and Letters<\/em> 58 (2005): 357-372. Print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winkle, Sally. \u201cMargarethe von Trotta\u2019s Rosenstrasse: \u201cFeminist Re-Visions\u201d of a Historical Controversy\u201d. A Companion to German Cinema<\/em>. Eds. Terri Ginsberg and Andrea Mensch. West Sussex: Blackwell Publishing, 2012. 429-461. Print. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written by Alex Kelly (2020); Queen Mary University of London<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article may be used free of charge. Selling without prior written consent prohibited. Please obtain permission before redistributing. In all cases this notice must remain intact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9 2020 Alex Kelly\/Mapping Contemporary Cinema<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Production Companies: Studio Hamburg Letterbox Filmproduktion GmbH (Hamburg)
\nTele-M\u00fcnchen Fernseh GmbH & Co. (Munich)
\nDistributors: Concorde Filmverleih GmbH (Munich)
\nProducers: Richard Sch\u00f6ps, Henrik Meyer, Markus Zimmer and Kerstin Ramcke
\nScreenplay: Margarethe von Trotta and Pamela Katz
\nDirector: Margarethe von Trotta
\nCinematographer: Franz Rath
\nEditor: Corina Dietz
\nMusic: Loek Dikker
\nCast: Doris Schade (Lena), Katja Riemann (young Lena), Maria Schrader (Hannah), Jutta Lampe (Ruth), Svea Lohde (young Ruth)
\nRunning Time: 135 mins.
\nClassification: Age 12 and older, 9-11 with parental guidance.
\nBox office gross: domestic $732,036, international $5,341,090 Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2137,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[107,16,234,278,238],"class_list":["post-2134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film-note","tag-107","tag-germany","tag-heritage-film","tag-holocaust","tag-womens-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2134"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2276,"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2134\/revisions\/2276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}