The History of German Literature on Film by Christiane Schönfeld (review)

Reviewed by: The History of German Literature on Film by Christiane Schönfeld Anne Fuchs The History of German Literature on Film. By Christiane Schönfeld. (History of World Literatures on Film) New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic. 2023. x+698 pp. £150. ISBN 978–1–62892–376–6. This is an immensely rich, carefully researched, and magisterial history of German film adaptations, spanning 130 years of German film history. Covering hundreds of adaptations from early silent film in the late nineteenth century to the present day, Christiane Schönfeld takes her reader on a fascinating journey across nine chronological chapters that track how both canonical and popular literary texts in the German language have shaped German as well as international cinema and television history. Situated in contemporary Adaptation Studies, the book explores the history of German film adaptations in close dialogue with technological and cinematic advances, the availability of film funding, the role of production companies, box office successes and flops, and censorship legislation, as well as reception history. By approaching her topic from a perspective that is always sensitive to shifting socio-political contexts, Schönfeld places cinema history squarely in the complex history of Germany from the Empire to the present day. Abandoning questions of fidelity to the source text, she advances a transnational understanding of adaptations as 'multi layered narratives that intersect the past with the present while providing creative and reflective spaces for the future' (p. 6). But this does not mean that Schönfeld neglects formal analysis: throughout her book she skilfully integrates nuanced discussions of cinematographic innovations in her cultural tapestry. Chapter 1 examines the role of German literature in early silent film, where references to works by Goethe, Schiller, or E. T. A. Hoffmann served to address middle-class apprehensions about the new medium. As many of these films—for example, French film-maker Georges Méliès's numerous Faust adaptations—are lost, Schönfeld reconstructs this forgotten history though archival materials, film fragments, and press reviews. She is also careful to highlight rare examples of early film production by women such as Alice Gay's 1903 Faust adaptation. Chapter 2 investigates how in the period before the First World War 'the literalization of film' (p. 34) appealed to a sceptical Bildungsbürgertum, while also enabling an increasingly confident engagement with modern society by a new generation of artists, writers, and film-makers. Gerhart Hauptmann, Clara Viebig, Arthur Schnitzler, and Bertha von Suttner were authors who believed in the ability of film to communicate a literary narrative in its complexity. Schönfeld dedicates ten pages to August Blom's disaster movie Atlantis (1913). Based on Hauptmann's eponymous novel, this two-hour silent film was marketed as a disaster movie of epic proportions whose reception was hugely impacted by the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. The banning of enemy productions after the outbreak of the First World War resulted in the foundation of UFA and a wave of wartime adaptations which were seen to be a safe choice. Despite censorship the period saw the rise of one of the most innovative adaptors in the field, Richard Oswald. Tracking his work from 1914 onward, Schönfeld pays special attention to his Es werde Licht! films (1916–18), End Page 424 so-called 'social hygiene films' which tackled the taboo topic of girls' prostitution in Wilhelmine society. Chapter 3 explores the Golden Age of silent cinema in the Weimar Republic from the interlocking perspectives of the dominant role of UFA and the impact of censorship. Rose Bernd (1919), a monumental UFA production based on Hauptmann's play, was unprecedented in exposing the extortion, sexual abuse, and rape of the female protagonist. The film's release preceded the introduction of far-reaching censorship legislation in 1920, which, throughout the Weimar period, prevented the depiction of the modern, sexually active woman on screen. However, the ferocious appetite of a rapidly growing film industry for new scripts led to a steady flow of film adaptations. While Gerhard Lamprecht's Buddenbrooks (1923) employs avant-garde techniques to interweave social critique in a film based on Thomas Mann's canonical work, Fritz Lang's and...