Fassbinder’s Jews: Screening Jewish/German History in Berlin Alexanderplatz

This essay considers representations of German-Jewish culture in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s adaptation of Berlin Alexanderplatz. After reconstructing the historical and political context in which Fassbinder adapted the film, the essay analyzes key scenes from the film containing Jewish figures: Franz Biberkopf’s conversations with the Ostjuden Nahum and Eliser; scenes juxtaposing biblical discussions of ritual sacrifice with the sights and sounds of industrial slaughterhouses in Weimar Berlin; and, finally, the epilogue’s presentation of an abattoir where bodies are piled atop one another and Franz Biberkopf is tortured and butchered alive. Ultimately, Fassbinder’s use of the visual vernacular of the Holocaust cinema to tell Biberkopf’s story positions his fictional Germans on-screen in the roles that history had assigned the real Jews. This troubling treatment of Jewish life and death evinces the self-exculpatory nature of the guilty nightmares still haunting West Germany as it entered its fourth decade of existence.