Catholic film work in the GDR
Catholic film work in the GDR included film reviews, media education, and the production and distribution of films.
Fields of activity
Movie review
In the 1950s, the Christians of the GDR adjusted to the "provisional finality" of the division of Germany and began to set up their own pastoral care. The contact with the West was never lost from sight. The development of media work in the church sector should also be seen against this background. The main initiator was youth pastoral care, which at the time played a pioneering role in pastoral activities. On July 1, 1954, the working group of youth pastoral care offices founded the "Church headquarters for film and amateur play" in Erfurt. The management was transferred to Karl Munter, who was replaced by Hans Donat in 1955 . Donat began reviewing films from the GDR cinema program as early as 1954. This was the beginning of Catholic film work in the GDR . From the beginning she was in opposition to the ruling SED party , which unilaterally determined the forms of culture in the GDR, for example using film productions for propaganda purposes. The active members of the Catholic film industry turned against this claim of filmmaking for political purposes with detailed reviews of all films in the GDR cinemas, which contained not only content, but also aesthetic and film analysis .
Donat found support in creating film reviews in the initial phase from Karl Munter, from 1955 to the end of the 1970s from Hans-Joachim Schink from Erfurt and from 1975 to 1990 with Helmut Morsbach and from 1988 to 1990 with Silke Ronneburg in Berlin. This small group of film critics, in contrast to state university institutions, was able to record and review the entire GDR cinema program and also to compile a comprehensive review of the entire DEFA annual production as well as to reproduce the reviews and send them to them by post every four weeks To send 1200 Catholic pastoral care offices and church offices. There the film reviews were posted in showcases and billboards. Up until German reunification on October 3, 1990, the film critics wrote a total of 4530 reviews, which were included as a short version in the standard work Lexicon of International Films . After the reunification of the two German states, the production of film reviews was discontinued after 36 years because there was no longer a separate East German cinema program and all films were reviewed by the now all-German magazine film-dienst .
Media education
Günter Särchen supported the review group from Magdeburg with the procurement of films for the work in media education. This consisted of roundtables and discussions about films in the context of church educational events as well as special course weeks and weekend days. It was aimed primarily at employees in pastoral care who acted as multipliers on a broad level. At these educational events there was a more differentiated treatment, which could only be reproduced in a simplified and abbreviated form in the film reviews. The aim was to develop an artistic sense of quality, especially among young people, to sharpen their eye for special films and to train their judgment. At such media education events, films from western Germany, among others, were shown that had been illegally imported and copied without government approval. Image and sound materials were secretly passed on through church official channels within the Eastern Bloc to support pastoral parish work. The production and distribution of films are rare exceptions in the context of Catholic film work in the GDR, which for political reasons could practically not achieve a broad impact.
Risks to those involved
Although mass organizations in the GDR were permitted to produce printed matter for internal use, they had to mark these documents with the note “For internal use”. This is what the reviewers did when it came to distributing their reviews of films, but they were still at high risk for two reasons. First, because the film reviews also circulated outside of “internal service use” and second, because complaints from state organs due to the political pressure on the churches usually “did not show solidarity with these activities and the Catholics who supported them”, as Bernd Schäfer said in his study "State and Catholic Church in the GDR" highlighted. Rather, the risk was privatized, since the responsible bishops did not want to take responsibility for disseminated materials if they themselves did not agree with the content and tendency of such activities and statements. Ultimately, therefore, the always given note “Only for internal church service” offered just as little protection as faked government approval numbers for printed matter. In the GDR there was such an unmanageable abundance of approval numbers, which, depending on the distribution environment, were assigned by the city council, the district, the district or a ministry that over time a certain superficiality in the Control discontinued. This lax practice led Günter Särchen to update the approval number given by the Soviet military administration to Hugo Aufderbeck, student pastor in Halle, with the respective date in 1945, or to invent further approval numbers completely freely and to attach them to print products of the Catholic Image Agency Magdeburg in order to so to give the appearance of an officially issued license.
Effects
When all-German projects could no longer be carried out after the construction of the Wall in 1961 and the churches in the GDR were practically on their own, interdenominational relations intensified. There was mutual benefit both in terms of film criticism and in the showing of films in parishes to cooperations between Catholic and Protestant churches as well as in educational events in media education. The Protestant Christian Silke Ronneburg, who volunteered to support Catholic film work and was also a member of the Catholic Film Commission for the Berlin Bishops' Conference , represented an unprecedented personal connection . In all areas, however, the reunification in 1990 marked an abrupt end to these ecumenical networks. The media work of the Catholic Church in the GDR was the responsibility of laypeople who, in accordance with the Second Vatican Council, acted as carriers of the mission of the Church in their own right because of their baptism. Their far-reaching decision-making powers, granted over decades by their ecclesiastical superiors, “are above all proof of the trust they enjoyed during this time”, as Alexander Seibold sums up in his study “Catholic film work in the GDR”.
literature
- Catholic Institute for Media Information (KIM) and Catholic Film Commission for Germany (Ed.): Lexicon of international films. Cinema, television, video, DVD . Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-86150-455-3 (Red. Horst Peter Koll, Stefan Lux and Hans Messias with the help of Jörg Gerle, Josef Lederle and Ralf Schenk, welcomed by Klaus Brüne).
- Lexicon of International Films 2001. 48,000 films with short reviews. System theme (CD-ROM for Windows 95/98 / NT 4.0 / MacOS from 8.1).
- Journal film-dienst and Catholic Film Commission for Germany (ed.): Lexicon of international films , partial year volumes: Filmjahr 2001/2002/2003/2004/2005/2006/2007. Schüren Verlag, Marburg 2002 ff., ISBN 978-3-89472-624-9 (= film year 2007) (Red. Horst Peter Koll and Hans Messias with the help of Jörg Gerle [DVD]).
- Herbert Janssen (Ed.): Films in the GDR 1945–86. Critical notes from 42 years of cinema . Catholic Institute for Media Information (KIM), Cologne; Reinhold Jacobi, Catholic Film Commission for Germany, Bonn, Verlag Katholisches Institut für Medieninformation, Cologne / Bonn 1987.
- Hans Donat, Helmut Morsbach: Films in the GDR 1987–90. Critical notes from 4 years in cinema . Edited by Martin Thull, Catholic Institute for Media Information (KIM), Cologne; Peter Hasenberg , Catholic Film Commission for Germany, Bonn, Verlag Katholisches Institut für Medieninformation, Cologne / Bonn 1991.
- Alexander Seibold: Catholic film work in the GDR. "We took on a certain cunning" . Lit, Münster 2003, ISBN 3-8258-7012-X .
- Alexander Seibold: Dzialalnosc pasterska Kosciola jako odrebna przestrzen spoleczna w panstwie ateistyczno-socjalistycznym . In: Socjalizm w zyciu powszednim. Dyktatura a spoleczenstwo w NRD i PRL , Wydawnictwo TRIO and Center for Contemporary Historical Research Potsdam, Warszawa 2005, pp. 81–88, ISBN 83-7436-047-X .
- Astacus astacus. Splitter on philosophy and culture , issue VIII / JUL 2015: Cinema celeste, ISSN 2194-7805 .
- Astacus astacus. Splitter on philosophy and culture , special edition IX / OCT 2015: Cinema celeste Zeitzeugen, with contributions by Hans Donat, Helmut Morsbach, Hans-Joachim Schink, Günter Särchen, ISSN 2194-7805 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hans Donat: The film work in the pastoral care of the Catholic Church in the GDR, in: Astacus astacus. Splitter on philosophy and culture , special edition IX / OCT 2015: Cinema celeste Zeitzeugen, ISSN 2194-7805 .
- ↑ See Astacus astacus. Splitter on philosophy and culture , issue VIII / JUL 2015: Cinema celeste, ISSN 2194-7805 .
- ↑ Alexander Seibold: Catholic film work in the GDR. "We took on a certain cunning" . Lit, Münster 2003, pp. 103f .; see. also the TV documentary from 2000: The film work of the Catholic Church in the GDR , BR-Alpha, 29'10 ″.
- ↑ Bernd Schäfer: State and Catholic Church in the GDR. , Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar 1998, p. 362.
- ↑ Alexander Seibold: Catholic film work in the GDR. "We took on a certain cunning" . Lit, Münster 2003, p. 62f.
- ↑ Alexander Seibold: Catholic film work in the GDR. "We took on a certain cunning" . Lit, Münster 2003, p. 112.
- ↑ Alexander Seibold: Catholic film work in the GDR. "We took on a certain cunning" . Lit, Münster 2003, p. 125.