Indian Films ofthe Deutsche Film Aktiengesellschaft
By the late twentieth century the Deutsche Film Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA), East Germany’s equivalent of Hollywood, was making state-sponsored films about the Wild West. In all, fourteen Indian films were made between 1966 and 1985 at the DEFA’s Babelsberg studio in Potsdam in coproduction with studios in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Cuba.
Like the American Westerns, these films were intended to be the equivalent of Hollywood blockbusters in the Communist regime. In them, however, the Indians were the heroes—not the villains—and the American, English, and French were the imperialists and the bad guys, playing to the political rhetoric and propaganda of communism in the cold war.The fourteen DEFA Indian films included the following, in order of release: Die Sohne der groβen Barin (The Sons of Great Mother Bear), directed by Josef Mach, 1966; Chingachgook, die groβe Schlange (Chingachgook, the Great Snake), directed by Richard Groschopp, 1967; Spur des Falken (The Falcon’s Trail), directed by Gottfried Colditz, 1968; Weiβe Wolfe (White Wolves), directed by Konrad Petzold, 1969; Todlicher Irrtum (Fatal Error), directed by Konrad Petzold, 1970; Osceola, directed by Konrad Petzold, 1971; Tecumseh, directed by Hans Kratzert, 1972; Apaches, directed by Gottfried Kolditz, 1973; Ulzana, directed by Gottfried Kolditz, 1974; Bluιtsbriider (Blood Brothers), directed by Werner W. Wallroth, 1975; Severino, directed by Claus Dob- berke, 1978; Blauvogel (Bluebird), directed by Ulrich Weiss, 1979; Der Scout (The Scout), directed by Konrad Petzold, 1983; and Atkins, directed by Helge Trimpert, 1985.
For more than five centuries, Indians have held a fascination for Europeans, particularly for Germans. It has been suggested that as early as 1620 almost 2,000 Indians had crossed the Atlantic to Europe, many of them involuntarily.
They were succeeded by many more, who later became part of traveling circuses; for example, the German Circus Sarrasani’s Wild West Show and the American Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show, all of which helped to bring the image of the noble sav- age—the exotic “other”—into the German psyche. Some Indians were even born in Europe on such tours. These shows clearly influenced the German writer Karl May (1832-1912), who subsequently published numerous travelogues and accounts of American Indians in the vein ofJames Fen- imore Cooper, before ever having set foot in North America, becoming one of the most popular authors in Germany and Eastern Europe. Using the first-person narrative in his best-known works in an attempt to create authenticity of place, he created characters such as Winnetou and his sidekick Old Shatterhand who became household names in Germany. Beginning in 1962, Harald Reinl successfully adapted these popular Karl May novels for film in West Germany. Even into the twenty-first century, reenactments of Karl May’s novels still take place in enormous outdoor amphitheatres all over Germany and eastern Europe. Germany’s fascination with the “other” continues to persist, not only in watching and identifying with “Indians,” but also in “playing Indian,” as also attested by the numerous reenactment camps set up mostly across eastern Germany and Czechoslovakia where men and women gather to dress up as Indians, live in tepees, and engage in beading and quill work.In the early 1960s the DEFA was in financial straits and began to investigate making alternative films that would bring in cash at the box office. Discussions were begun about launching a series of films dealing with North American Indians. The DEFA officials had watched the runaway success of the Karl May films in West Germany, and East Germans would frequently travel to Prague to see them. What the DEFA wanted in contrast to the Karl May films was a product that would be seen by its audience to be historically authentic, yet would also carry a message that would be appropriate for the Socialist state.
The Indians, struggling to survive imperialist and capitalist forces, would reflect the proletarian ideal of hard work and cooperation. Ideologically, these films were positioned as anti-imperialistic yet didactic entertainment that would bring historical events about the conquering of North America and the genocide of Indians into the foreground. Genocide, technological advances, and profit joined forces under capitalism. The struggle against such evil forces in a Socialist state gave legitimacy to the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Inherent contradictions within the films were leveled and harmonized by the DEFA and the end result was a product that appealed to all age groups. The Indianerfilme became politically correct mass entertainment that was a box office success both in East Germany and in many Eastern European countries, where they found a welcoming market. Most importantly, these films kept the studio in the black. Ironically, the objective of the DEFA Indian films was purely commercial, and the films were made in order to keep the corporation solvent. As the films themselves reveal, any attempt to lend accuracy or authenticity to them was quite secondary.In these films, the representation of Indians was seemingly subordinated to a European-based knowledge system and served as propaganda. The films show war and not the Aboriginal objectives of peace. The depiction of native people was no more than a racial caricature of Indians as “noble savages.” Given the insularity of the Communist countries during the cold war, the studio had no access to western landscapes in the United States. Instead, the DEFA looked for locations in Eastern Europe to represent the North American West. There are spiritual journeys in some of the DEFA Indian films, as, for example, in Die Sohne der groβen Barin (The Sons of Great Mother Bear), which was the first DEFA Indian film, and also in Tecumseh. Aboriginal people and places have had a profound impact on Europeans and these two films are, ironically, powerful witnesses to the presence of spirituality in their histories and their impact on Europeans.
Central to this worldview is the complexity of Aboriginal oral traditions, as well as the notion of time. It is against this framework that one must judge the early Hollywood Westerns as well as the Westerns from the GDR; otherwise one will mistake apparent authenticity for accuracy. But what is missing from these DEFA films is an understanding ofAboriginal oral traditions—their stories told in their ways—something that cannot be captured in books or on film.When the DEFA began making its first Indianerfilm, it was at least initially obsessed about the historical authenticity in the film. It did so to be able to tap successfully into the markets for all things “Indian.” As such, Die Sohne der groβen Barin launched the DEFA’s most successful series of films in one genre by attracting more than 10 million enthusiastic viewers (Lis- chke and McNab, 2005). The studio deliberately distanced itself from the genre of the Hollywood Western, as well as from West Germany’s adaptation of Karl May, by intentionally using the label Indianerfilm. Like its West German counterpart, the focus was on the Indian, not the cowboy, adopting the Native Americans’ point of view; nevertheless, the film was advertised as a “Western from the East,” but “based on actual historical events” (Lischke and McNab 2005).
Die Sohne der groβen Barin is based on a 1951 novel by Liselotte Welskopf- Henrich (1901—1979), a fact that purportedly gives credence to the film’s foundation on historical truth. Welskopf-Henrich was an historian, a professor of history at Humboldt University, and a novelist who was well known in East Germany for her youth books as well as her novel trilogy based on Die Sohne der groβen Barin (The Sons of Great Mother Bear, 1951). In an interview in Junge Welt (Young World), Welskopf- Henrich emphasized that Die Sohne der groβen Barin was different from similar films made in the West, not only because this film was made with the intention of providing a realistic portrayal of the Indian problem, but was also made from the Indians’ point of view.
She argued that her forty years of experience studying Indian history, as well as a trip to Canada and the United States where she visited with several groups of the Lakota, provided her with enough experience to write an authentic and historically accurate novel. A fanatic about details, Welskopf-Henrich worked as an adviser on the film until she resigned when some of the available horses resisted being ridden without a saddle. She did not allow for any compromises. Indians rode their horses bareback.Gojko Mitic, a Yugoslavian physical education student with an attractive, muscular physique, became an instant audience hit as the handsome hunk in the starring role in all of the films. Even into the twenty-first century he continues to be active in promoting these films in Germany, eastern Europe, and North America, frequently appearing with his stallion at film festivals and at suburban malls throughout Germany. All of the films reveal the native struggle against the greed of white settlers, broken treaties, corruption, and imperialism. Although most critics agree that the productions lack quality, the plots are predictable, and much of the acting is of poor quality, the hero is clearly Mitic, who draws the audiences’ sympathies and always wins the day.
In Die Sohne der groβen Barin Mitic plays the role of the Dakota-Sioux (Lakota) chief Tokei-ihto, who must avenge the death of his father Mattotaupa, who was killed by his white brother Red Fox when he refused to reveal the location of a cave that contains the tribe’s gold. The geography is muddled. The plot is rather predictable, featuring an army colonel who breaks a treaty, Indians who are relocated to a reservation, and white settlers who are greedy for gold. It is Tokei-ihto who leads his people out of the reservation back to freedom. Throughout the story— from Tokei-ihto’s arrival at the saloon where he attempts to rescue his father from the demons of firewater that sets the stage for his revenge against Red Fox, to the final settlement of the tribe on rich agricultural land across the Missouri river where, Tokei-ihto declares, the Indians will settle on “this fertile ground, to raise tame buffalo, to forge iron and make ploughs”—the DEFA message is one of finding a new way to a workers’ and collective-farming state.
Apaches is one of the more sophisticated of the DEFA films. Mitic represents Ulzana, who was a real (although minor) warrior and leader of the Chiricahua. It is set in 1846 in what was supposed to represent Santa Rita in the American Southwest and in the vicinity of southeastern New Mexico. Unlike some of the other DEFA Indian films, the film is historically accurate. Yet it is also a narrative from a European perspective. There is no Aboriginal history or oral tradition in it. It is a European- written and produced film—a Wild Western from the East made for late twentiethcentury propaganda purposes. The Apaches are portrayed as role models for the East German Communist regime. They are simply grafted onto the German myth of the noble savage, which had been propounded by Karl May and his successors.
The plot in Apaches is straightforward and simple. The theme is mining and mineral exploitation, the conquest of the land by whites, and the extermination of the Apaches. Because this film, like the others, was written and shot during the cold war, the Americans are therefore the bad guys and the Apaches are the good guys. But in spite of the Apaches winning this round of the conflict, the primary point of this film is political propaganda, just as it is in Hollywood Westerns. The purpose of the film is to show good Socialist citizens how bad the Americans really were (and still are at the time the film was made) in their relationship to Aboriginal people. However, in the process, the representation of Aboriginal people once again is subordinated to the political framework and ideology of Europe in the late twentieth century: A noble savage is still a savage. The white man is still stoic—this time in adversity and defeat. But, in the end, this film does nothing to alter the European view that, in spite of the Apaches winning one war, the Americans will inevitably conquer the Apaches. The Apaches are “real” but again they exist as celluloid “Indians,” as noble savages and part of the political propaganda of the cold war.
The Indianerfilme prove that German imperialism, strongly rooted in the nineteenth century and aided and abetted by the literature of Karl May (itself a branch of popular culture), retained a powerful hold upon German popular culture, especially about the “other” and in particular about Indians in North America in the late twentieth century. They were (are) a notable example of this pervasiveness of the German imperial imagination. They are still very popular in early twenty-first- century Germany and recently (since their release in 1996) have also become, rather ironically, a commercial cultural export to the United States and beyond. It is somewhat curious that, since their release in North America in 1996, these films have
been quite well received. In October 1996 two DEFA Indian films were screened publicly for the first time in the United States in the presence of Mitic. The American actor Richard Restoule, an elder of the Anishinabe Nation, made the following remarks: “After everything that has happened to our people, including bad films, it is good to know that people in East Germany began to think seriously about a different representation thirty years ago” (Lischke and McNab, 2005). And no doubt the story line of these Indian films, cinematic warts and all, must have struck home to Aboriginal peoples because they were seen to be closer to the truth as embodied in Aboriginal oral traditions than the American Westerns had been until recently.
Ute Lischke and David T McNab
See also Buffalo Bill; Film (German), American Influence on; Indians in German Literature; May, Karl Friedrich; Welskopf- Henrich, Liselotte
References and Further Reading
Calloway, Colin G., Gerd Gemunden, and Susanne Zantop, eds. Germans & Indians. Fantasies, Encounters, Projections. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2002.
Habel, Frank-Burkhard. Gojke Mitic, Mustangs, Marterpfahle. Die DEFA- Indianerfilme. Das grosse Buch fur Fans. Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 1977.
Lischke, Ute, and David T. McNab, eds. Walking a Tight Rope: Representations of Aboriginal People by Themselves and Others. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University, 2005
MacKenzie, John M. Propaganda and Empire. Manchester, UK: Manchester University, 1984.
------. Orientalism, History, Theory and the Arts, Manchester, UK: Manchester University, 1995.
MacKenzie, John M., ed. Imperialism and Popular Culture. Manchester, UK: Manchester University, 1986.