11 - Hollywood in Germany

Summary

Translated by Sally E. Robertson

The Third Reich forced a third of the German film industry to emigrate - producers and theater owners, directors and actors - most of them Jews who, given the racial ideology of Hitler's regime, had no future in Germany. Already in the 1920s, noted directors such as Ernst Lubitsch and F. W. Murnau had made their way from Berlin to Hollywood. Neither before nor since have the major American studios experienced a qualitatively or quantitatively more significant infusion of talent. German immigration clearly gave American film an indisputable artistic shot in the armin areas from comedy and film noir to drama and the biopic (or biographical picture). The ranks of those who emigrated included directors Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, Wilhelm Dieterle, Henry Koster, Detlef Sirk, Curtis Bernhardt, and Max Ophuls; cinematographers Curt Courant, Karl Freund, Franz Planer, and Eugen Schüfftan; and actors Marlene Dietrich, Alexander Granach, Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt, Albert Bassermann, Curt Bois, Felix Bressart, Reinhold Schunzel, and others. Few of them returned from their film exile after the end of World War II. The most prominent of those who did so was probably Erich Pommer, who, as an American film officer, helped to rebuild production in the Western occupation zones. Authors, producers, directors, and actors who had worked in the industry before 1945 were active in the industry after the war, and it is clear that it was not only Nazis who worked in the film industry of the Third Reich.