Trophy, evidence, document: appropriating an archive film from Liepaja, 1941

Abstract

Many German soldiers filmed with their private cameras during World War II, but only lately have some of these private films become part of public archives and begun circulating in documentary films and historical television. An early example is an archive film depicting mass shootings in the Latvian town of Liepaja in July 1941, recorded by Reinhard Wiener, a German marine sergeant and amateur cinematographer. From a wartime trophy, the footage transformed into evidence through its first public screening during the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. It then migrated into different historical documentaries and films such as Erwin Leiser’s Eichmann und das Dritte Reich (CH/FRG 1961) and Stefan Ruzowitzky’s Das radikal Böse (AUS/GER 2013). The paper describes the context, analyzes the status of the footage, and traces its transformation from wartime trophy to evidence and finally into an archival document.