University of California German History assignments Please follow the introduction carefuly , there are 3 assignments. Before you begin, please watch the

University of California German History assignments Please follow the introduction carefuly , there are 3 assignments.

Before you begin, please watch the movie Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. The Lives of Others (Links to an external site.)(2007) First.

Question 1: In his essay Brockmann makes a reference to Friedrich Schiller’s aesthetic theory and writes: “In his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795), Friedrich Schiller had proclaimed that ‘there is no other way to make the sensuous man rational than by first making him aesthetic,’ that is, that ordinary human beings can be elevated into extraordinary ones only by confrontation with great art” (p. 614-15). Please respond to these two questions (together about 250 words):

1. How does this reference to Schiller relate to this sence https://uci.yuja.com/V/Video?v=1164787&node=4294951&a=1373455414&autoplay=1from the film The Lives of Others?

2. Brockmann considers such Schillerian trust in the power or art deeply problematic for the depiction of a Stasi officer like Gerd Wiesler . Based on your own viewing of the film: for what reasons do you agree or disagree with Brockmann’s assessment?

Question 2: In his talk https://www.ted.com/talks/hubertus_knabe_the_dark_secrets_of_a_surveillance_state/transcript#t-39271 , the historian Hubertus Knabe describes the methods of the East German Secret Police (Stasi) and emphasizes especially the method of Zersetzung (11:30-13:30): “The Stasi often used a method which was really diabolic. It was called Zersetzung, and it’s described in another guideline. The word is difficult to translate because it means originally “biodegradation.” But actually, it’s a quite accurate description. The goal was to destroy secretly the self-confidence of people, for example by damaging their reputation, by organizing failures in their work, and by destroying their personal relationships. Considering this, East Germany was a very modern dictatorship. The Stasi didn’t try to arrest every dissident. It preferred to paralyze them, and it could do so because it had access to so much personal information and to so many institutions. Detaining someone was used only as a last resort. For this, the Stasi owned 17 remand prisons, one in every district. Here, the Stasi also developed quite modern methods of detention. Normally, the interrogation officer didn’t torture the prisoner. Instead, he used a sophisticated system of psychological pressure in which strict isolation was central. Nearly no prisoner resisted without giving a testimony. If you have the occasion, do visit the former Stasi prison in Berlin and attend a guided tour with a former political prisoner who will explain to you how this worked.”

Choose a scene from the film The Live of Others that represents the method and/or the effects of Zersetzung either especially well or frustratingly insufficient in your analysis. Explain your choice of scene and your assessment in about 250 words.

Question 3: Take a look at this early scenehttps://uci.yuja.com/V/Video?v=1164785&node=4294948&a=1969615235&autoplay=1 from the film The Lives of Others. How does this scene introduce the theme of observation and establish and foreshadow the main narrative and conflicts of the film? (500 words) 38: Das Leben der anderen (2006) or the
Power of Art
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Cinematographer: Hagen Bogdanski
Screenplay: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Producer: Quirin Berg, Max Wiedemann (Wiedemann & Berg
Film, BR, ARTE, Creado Film)
Editor: Patricia Rommel
Production Design: Silke Buhr
Costume Design: Gabriele Binder
Music: Stephane Moucha and Gabriel Yared
Sound: Christoph von Schonburg and others
German Release Date: March 15, 2006
Actors: Ulrich Mtihe (Gerd Wiesler); Sebastian Koch (Georg Dreyman);
Martina Gedeck (Christa-Maria Sieland); Ulrich Tukur (Anton
Grubitz); Thomas Thieme (Bruno Hem pt); Hans- Uwe Bauer (Paul
Hauser); Volkmar Kleinert (Albert Jerka); and others
Awards: Academy Awards, 2007: Oscar for Best Foreign Language
Film; David di Donatello Awards, 2007: David for Best Euro­
pean Film to Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck; European Film
Awards, 2006: Best Actor to Ulrich Mlihe, Best Film to Max
Wiedemann and Quirin Berg, Best Screenwriter for Florian
Henckel von Donnersmarck; French Syndicate of Cinema Critics,
2008: Critics Award for Best Foreign Film to Florian Henckel von
Donnersmarck; German Film Awards, 2006: Film Award in Gold
for Best Cinematography to Hagen Bogdanski, for Best Direction
to Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, for Best Performance
by an Actor in a Leading Role to Ulrich MLihe, for Best Perfor­
n1ance by an Actor in a Supporting Role to Ulrich Tukur, for Best
Production Design to Silke Buhr, for Best Screenplay to Florian
Henckel von Donnersmarck, for Outstanding Feature Film to
Quirin Berg and Max Wiedemann; and others
Georg Dreyman and Christa-Maria Sieland. Screen capture.
F
LOlUAN HENCKEL VON DoNNERSMARCK’s first feature film Das Leben der
anderen (The Lives of Others) was greeted by critics on both the left
and the right as the first important cinematic look at the East German
dictatorship after the spate of historical comedies about the GDR that
ctil111i11;1tcd wit·h Good Bye Lenin’ in 2003 (see chapter 36). Anna Funder,
writinµ, i11 the lcfr-liberal British newspaper Guardian, proclaimed
610 +
DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN
(2006)
DAS LEllEN !)ER A NJ)El{EN
somewhat exaggeratedly that the film “may well be the first rc:tl i�11, 11111
trayal of the GDR” ever made.1 John Podhoretz, film revicwl’r 1!11 Jin
right-wing American magazine Weekly Standard, praised Dbis /,,’/11·11
anderen for being one of the few films to take a hard look at thl’ �m l,d
world since the collapse of Communism in the East bloc: “You �·.111 1111111
on two hands and a foot the number of major motion pictures lll:l(k Nl111,
the dissolution of the Soviet Union that have attempted any kind ol’ 1 i I I
oning of the human cost of communism in the 20th century. “2
Ironically, however, the left-wing cultural critic Slavoj Zizl’.k .11′),�II
in the pages of the left-liberal American publication In These ‘fi111/’I 111 11
Das Leben der anderen underplayed the true repressiveness or 1 lw I ,,i�l
German regime. Similarly, the left-liberal German historian I I u lw1 I 11�
Knabe, who ran the memorial museum in Berlin’s former Stasi J)1’iMi11 ill
Hohenschonhausen, where the film’s first scene is set, criticized von I )1111
nersmarck for whitewashing the SED dictatorship and refused to k1 111111
do camera work in Hohenschonhausen.3
Whereas films like Leander Haussmann’s Sonnenallee had trl’:11nl 1111
GDR as essentially ridiculous, Das Leben der anderen restored thl’. Sl’l’I( 111
ness that had accrued to it during the years of the cold war. For t Ill’ I ·..1 �1
German psychoanalyst Annette Simon, daughter of the celebratl’.d w11J11
Christa Wolf, this was the real accomplishment of von Donnersmarck 111111:
“He attempts to show the repression of surveillance, which was so i111i11�
pitable to human beings, in a way that is effective for the masses. “‘1 ‘1111
film takes place largely within the confinement of urban apartmcn 1 s 01 111
the work space of the East German state security police, the Stasi (shorl llll
Staatssicherheit, or state security). It is a claustrophobic thriller/mclod,·.1111.t
about life in a socialist dictatorship that drives some of its most· 1:1k1ll1 ° d
citizens to suicide. At the same time, however, the film is an optimis1ic 1.i11
about the transformative power of art and empathy. As Diana Diamond li.1�
written, the film’s protagonist “comes for the first time to experirncl· .11 1,
L Anna Funder, “Tyranny of Terror,” The Guardian, May 5, 2007, Fmt11l’t’., 11111/
Reviews section, 14; accessed at http://www.guardian.eo.uk/books/200
may/05/featuresreviews.guardianreview12. This statement, of course, i)!.111 >r 1�
the many portrayals of the GDR made in films created in the GDR itscll’, lil111s lrk1
Sonnensucher or Spur der Steine, many of which were highly realistic.
2 John Podhoretz, “Nightmare Come True: Love and Distrust in the !’.:1st C,·1
man Police State,” The Weekly Standard 12, no. 25 (March 12, 2007): 36 3H,
here, 38.
3 Slavoj Zizek, “The Dreams of Others,” In These Times, June 2007, 48. /\,�11
available at http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3l 83/. Anna F11nder, “‘i’y1
anny of Terror.”
4 Annette Simon, “Das Leben und die anderen: Eine Polcmik,” Foru.1·n rll’r / 1
choanalyse 23, no. 2 (June 2007): 174-80; here, 175. Unless ot hcrwise 1101nl, .ill
tTanslations from Gernun-lang;uagc sources :ire my own.
11
(2006)
+ 611
poetry, and music, and this newfound aesthetic dimension in turn expands
his capacity for and comprehension of human experience.”5 Von Donners­
marck himself stated that, “More than anything else, The Lives of Others is
a human drama about the ability of human beings to do the right thing,
no matter how far they have gone down the wrong path.”6 Das Leben der
anderen became an international sensation, winning the prize for best Ger­
man film at the German Film Awards of 2006, for best European film at
the European Film Awards of the same year, and for best foreign-language
film at the 2007 Academy Awards.
Set in East Berlin in the early spring of 1984, the film is primarily
about the transformation of a Stasi officer, Gerd Wiesler-played bril­
liantly by the late Ulrich Mi_ihe ( 1953-2007), a veteran of the East Ger­
man acting scene who had himself been a victim of the Stasi in the 1980s.7
Wiesler, a true believer in socialism, takes his job as defender of the state
seriously. The film’s viewers are put into Wiesler’s position as he eaves­
drops on the writer Georg Dreyman (played by Sebastian Koch), who is
being pursued by the Stasi not for political reasons, but because the cul­
ture minister Bruno Hempf (played by Thomas Thieme) wants access to
Dreyman’s beautiful girlfriend, the actress Christa-Maria Sieland (played
by Martina Gedeck). Wiesler is initially suspicious of the writer Dreyman,
but as he learns more about Dreyman’s life, he gradually becomes sym­
pathetic. The film’s focus on surveillance and eavesdropping also evokes,
as Diana Diamond has suggested, “the experience of film viewing itself,
5 Diana Diamond, “Empathy and Identification in Von Donnersmarck’s The Lives
f
f
o Others,” Journal o the American Psychoanalytic Association 56, no. 3 (2008):
811-32; here, 816. On this film and the issue of empathy, see also Jenniter Mar­
ston William, Cognitive Approaches to German Historical Film: Seeing is Not
Believir� (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 92-100.
6 Anna Funder, “Tyranny of Terror.”
7 Muhe claimed that his former wik, the actress Jenny Grollmann, had spied on
him for the Stasi. Grollmann, who was dying of cancer at the time, sued Mtihe
for libel and won. Grollmann’s Stasi boss, meanwhile, claimed that he had made
up most of Grollmann’s alleged reports to the Stasi. This real-lite story uncannily
paralleled the plot of Das Leben der anderen, in which the actress Christa-Maria
Sieland spies on her lover Georg Dreyman and the Stasi officer Gerd Wiesler makes
up reports. As a result of the court case between Mtihe and Grollmann, the parts
of Donnersmarck’s Das Leben der anderen: Filmbuch that contained Muhe’s allega­
tions were blacked out prior to tiirther sales in Germany, and sales of the DVD of
the film were temporarily stopped in Germany. See Hubertus Knabe, Die Tater sind
unter uns: Uber das Schiinreden der SED-Diktatur (Berlin: Propylaen, 2007), 18081; and the obituary for Ulrich Mtihe, Daily Telegraph, July 27, 2007, 29. See also
“‘Es hat ja schon viele Versuche gegeben, die DDR-Realitat einzufangen’: Florian
Henckel von Donnersmarck und Christoph Hochhausler im Gesprach mit Ulrich
Muhe,” in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Das Leben der anderen: Filmbuch
(Frankfort: Suhrkamp, 2006), 182-204, especially 200-204.
612 •
DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN
DAS LEBEN /JER AN/JEREN
(2006)
particularly the film apparatus and our relationship to it as spect,11 or�.”
Diamond further notes that the film’s spectators “are to Wiesler wl1,lt
Wiesler is to Dreyman, and this makes our identification with Wiesln’�
transformation more palpable.”8
A key moment in Wiesler’s development from relentless Stasi ol 11
cer to secret sympathizer occurs when Wiesler learns that the survcill:111u•
operation against Dreyman is happening for personal, not political r’l’, 1
sons. “So we’re helping a member of the Central Committee to get lltN
rival out of the way,” Wiesler is told by his superior officer,Stasi lieut1;11. 1 1il
colonel Anton Grubitz (played by Ulrich Tukur). “Is that why we joi1wd
up?” Wiesler asks in response. “Do you remember the oath we sworl’ l!I
be the shield and sword of the Party?”9 For Grubitz the observatio11 ol
Dreyman is a chance to advance his career; for Wiesler it is a vioL1rio11 ol
an oath he swore to uphold the socialist party and its purported idc:11�. I 1
quickly becomes clear to Wiesler that his victim Dreyman is actually 111
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