Migration and refugees in German cinema: transnational entanglements

Abstract

ABSTRACTContrary to popular sentiment which sees the current, so-called ‘refugee crisis’ as unprecedented, (forced) migration and the displacement of larger groups of population have a long history in most countries of the world. Consequently, the cinema, ever since it existed, has addressed many aspects surrounding the realities and imaginations of the issue. Indeed, the cinema could be seen as a laboratory in which different scenarios are played through, different situations are experienced and different (subject) positions are occupied. Taking the German cinema as a case study, I intend to take a long view at these phenomena by concentrating on three different historical periods: the displacement of German Jews, political opponents of Nazism and others from Germany after 1933; the forced migration of German-speaking populations around and after the end of the Second World War from eastern Europe (Silesia, Eastern Prussia, Bohemia, etc.), and the influx of migrants and refugees into Germany from the 1960s onwards and well into the twenty-first century.