Interministerial Committee for East-West Film Issues

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Interministerial Committee for East-West Film Issues , originally the Interministerial Film Examination Committee , was an inter-ministerial committee that was responsible for the censorship of foreign films in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1953 to 1966/67 .

history

Already on January 23 and February 14, 1951 there were two meetings, concerning the import of films from the Eastern Zone and the Soviet import films , in which a central committee for the import of films from socialist countries was recommended. This should not be made public. On January 5, 1953, representatives of the Foreign Office , the Federal Ministry of Economics , the Press and Information Office , the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Ministry of the Interior , which had initiated the meeting, met to regulate the "import of films from Soviet-directed countries" . The founding of a committee was unanimously decided to only allow films that were politically harmless. The Ministry of Economic Affairs chaired the committee. On December 8, 1953, the committee began its work. He had the Soviet film Maximka shown at the Stern cinema in Bonn and then banned its import. In May 1954, four of 13 films registered for the Mannheim Culture and Documentary Film Week were not admitted. In addition, the committee only approved the other performances on condition that the DEFA secondment was not expressly welcomed. In 1955 DEFA applied for a filming permit in West Germany in order to be able to produce a documentary about famous organs. To this end, DEFA proposed a German joint effort. The committee rejected this, as a precedent could be created and lead to the undesired and not always controllable actuation of DEFA reception staffs. Further attempts by DEFA to cooperate with West German film producers were also prevented by the Interministerial Committee for East-West Film Issues.

At the beginning of 1967 the examination of films was transferred to the Federal Office for Commercial Economics . The Committee for East-West Film Issues was only supposed to be active on particularly controversial issues, but this did not happen. In 1967 the Federal Office denied that such a committee existed at all and described the meetings as departmental meetings. It is no longer possible to determine exactly when the committee was dissolved, and the Federal Ministry of Economics could not determine this in 1988 either.

Legal basis

The legality of the committee was controversial. Until 1961 it existed without a legal basis. It was justified by the Military Government Act No. 53 of September 1949, which only took economic aspects into account, and from the late 1950s with Section 93 of the  Criminal Code , which made the distribution of unconstitutional films a criminal offense.

In September 1961 the Transfer Act was passed, which made the import of films from certain “ socialist ” countries subject to authorization. This law was attacked in 1967 before the Federal Constitutional Court . The court ruled five years later that the law complied with the Basic Law . According to the author Stefan Buchloh, the committee did not adhere to the limits set by the law. None of the films concerned could be proven to have an active, combative, aggressive stance against the free democratic basic stance or against the idea of ​​international understanding .

Prohibited films

The committee examined about 3,180 films between 1953 and 1966, about 130 were banned. These included:

GDR

The subject of Wolfgang Staudte could first be presented only in student film clubs. Thereupon the West Berlin film producer Erich Mehl submitted an abridged version, which was also not approved for commercial cinemas. Mehl then turned to the West German press. The Berlin Telegraf published a plea for the subject . The courier praised the film as avant-garde . The radio station RIAS criticized the ban as inexplicable . Seven months later, in November 1956, a heavily shortened version was also allowed for commercial cinema. The shortening was 12 minutes and the film was provided with a preamble that reversed the basic message of the film, that the career of Diederich Heßling would only be an individual fate.

Berlin - corner Schönhauser was rejected in autumn 1958 although the film portrayed the reality in the GDR very critically. Three weeks later, an abridged version in which the scene in a West German emergency reception center had been removed was also rejected. A third demonstration on March 13, 1959 in front of 24 officials did not allow clearance, although representatives of the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Economics saw no legal basis for a ban. The lender withdrew the application for import. Five years later, the Socialist German Student Union screened the film without permission. The film was then submitted again to the Interministerial Committee for East-West Film Issues and again received no approval.

The Laughing Man - Confessions of a Murderer wasperformed in front of friends and acquaintanceson September 9, 1966 by the Freiburg insurance company Helmut Soeder , after he had received it as a present at the Leipzig trade fair . Before a planned renewed screening, the criminal police asked him to submit the film to the committee, which Soeder refused. A house search was carried out on suspicion of treasonous relations and the threat of a fine of 1000 DM. He sued the Frankfurt Administrative Court ,whichreferredthe case to the Federal Constitutional Court in May 1967. On April 25, 1972, the court declared the Transfer Act to be constitutional with eight votes out of ten.

Czechoslovakia

Soviet Union

Austria

North Vietnam

  • Two soldiers were banned for showing a peaceful North Vietnamese soldier.
  • The wren was forbidden because he portrayed a South Vietnamese soldier in a negative way, which was seditious.
  • You are the winner because it did not correctly portray the economic situation in North Vietnam.

References

literature

  • Stefan Buchloh Perverse, harmful to minors, subversive. Censorship in the Adenauer era as a mirror of the social climate . Frankfurt 2002, pp. 183-286.
  • Roland Seim Between Freedom of the Media and Censorship Intervention: A media and legal sociological investigation of censorious influences on German popular culture . Münster 1997, pp. 161-173.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ German Bundestag 4th electoral term, printed matter IV / 1575: answer to the small question from the SPD parliamentary group - printed matter IV / 1504 - , Bonn October 23, 1963. Online (PDF; 188.2 kB)
  2. ↑ a b Stefan Buchloh Pervers, harmful to minors, subversive. Censorship in the Adenauer era as a mirror of the social climate . Frankfurt 2002, pp. 220-221
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Federal Agency for Civic Education, censorship of DEFA films in the Federal Republic , December 18, 2008
  4. ↑ The Federal Minister of the Interior to the Federal Minister of Economics, attn. by Mr. Schattenberg, May 3, 1955, in: BArch, B 102/34486, here according to the Federal Agency for Civic Education, Censorship of DEFA Films in the Federal Republic , December 18, 2008
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g Stefan Buchloh Perverse, harmful to young people, subversive. Censorship in the Adenauer era as a mirror of the social climate . Frankfurt 2002, pp. 231-232
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad Stefan Buchloh Perverse, harmful to young people, hostile to the state. Censorship in the Adenauer era as a mirror of the social climate . Frankfurt 2002, pp. 224-226
  7. ↑ Stefan Buchloh Pervers, endangering young people, subversive. Censorship in the Adenauer era as a mirror of the social climate . Frankfurt 2002, pp. 242–245
  8. ↑ a b Stefan Buchloh Pervers, harmful to minors, subversive. Censorship in the Adenauer era as a mirror of the social climate . Frankfurt 2002, pp. 227-228
  9. ^ A b Spiegel.de, Forbidden Films in the Federal Republic - The Censorship of the Cold Warriors , July 7, 2014
  10. ^ Lexicon of Film Terms, Interministerial Committee for East / West Film Issues (IMA) , July 15, 2011