Screening the Red Army Faction: Historical and Cultural Memory by Christina Gerhardt

Abstract

Reviewed by: Screening the Red Army Faction: Historical and Cultural Memory by Christina Gerhardt Claire E. Scott Christina Gerhardt. Screening the Red Army Faction: Historical and Cultural Memory. Bloomsbury, 2018. 307 pp. Paper, $35.96. Leading up to a 2005 exhibition on the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF; Red Army Faction) at the Kunst-Werke Museum in Berlin, journalists debated what the legacy of the RAF had become and what it should be. Christina Gerhardt, who uses this exhibition to frame her book Screening the Red Army Faction, argues that the history of the RAF and cultural depictions of militant terrorism in Germany are not complete without recognizing international solidarities. Screening the Red Army Faction is a well [End Page 109] researched book that connects the history of the RAF to its depiction in a range of visual and audiovisual materials. Gerhardt argues that our cultural memory of the RAF needs to properly contextualize these events within other contemporaneous and international political movements, including anti-imperialism, anticolonialism, labor movements, and feminist movements. This laudable goal is a loft y one that is achieved, albeit unevenly, within the book’s six chapters. Screening the Red Army Faction progresses chronologically, starting with historical context and background from 1945 to 1970. In the first chapter, Gerhardt lays out her argument for why our investigation of the history of the RAF needs a more global context. For example, she highlights how the Algerian War played a role in politicizing social movements in West Germany by citing how Algerian immigrant protests in 1958 inspired the first official political position of the Verband Deutscher Studentenschaften (VDS; German National Union of Students) against apartheid and colonial wars. Concern about the Algerian War also found expression in the work of artists on the left, such as Volker Schlöndorff’s film Wen kümmert’s (1960; Who cares) (28–29). Unfortunately, Gerhardt is quickly forced to admit that once we reach the 1970s, both these militant groups and the films about them take on a more domestic focus. Performing close readings of lesser-known, more globally focused works such as Schlöndorff’s Wen kümmert’s might have better served Gerhardt’s intervention. Instead, the first films that Gerhardt analyzes in detail are Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (1975; The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, 1975) and Deutschland im Herbst (1978; Germany in autumn). Domestic relations between the student movement and the press dominate these canonical works of New German Cinema in ways that sometimes undermine Gerhardt’s emphasis on global solidarities. The fourth chapter of the book is the most compelling for readers of Feminist German Studies because of its significant contribution to feminist scholarship on RAF-themed films. In this chapter, Gerhardt effectively ties cultural representations of the RAF to other social movements, specifically labor movements and the women’s movement in West Germany. Gerhardt’s close readings would definitely be useful secondary sources when teaching these films, because they are both detailed and accessible. In a compelling reading of R. W. Fassbinder’s Mutter Küsters’ Fahrt zum Himmel (1975; Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven, 1976) Gerhardt categorizes this work as a combined melodrama and Arbeiterfilm (worker film). She also examines two films directed by Margarethe von Trotta, [End Page 110] Das zweite Erwachen der Christa Klages (1978; The Second Awakening of Christa Klages, 1978) and Die bleierne Zeit (1981; Marianne and Juliane, 1981), highlighting their connection to contemporaneous feminist causes including childcare and abortion rights. Gerhardt then looks at Christian Petzold’s Die innere Sicherheit (2000; The State I Am In, DVD release 2009) and Schlöndorff’s Die Stille nach dem Schuss (2000; The Legend of Rita, 2000) as examples of the emphasis on Cold War politics in RAF-themed films from the early 2000s. She concludes by shift ing away from film to visual art for an analysis of Gerhard Richter’s series of paintings October 18, 1977 (1989) and the Kunst-Werke exhibit (2005). By dealing with different types of screens in these final chapters, Gerhardt illustrates how all of these visual representations provide spaces for re-imagining the RAF in the twenty-first century. The strength of Gerhardt...