by Elizabeth Ward
In: Entertaining German Culture. German Cultural History and Contemporary Transnational Television and Film edited by Stephan Ehrig, Benjamin Schaper and Elizabeth Ward
Berghahn Books
2023
Global audiences have long been attracted to films dealing with the dark chapters of Germany’s twentieth-century history, and the premise of an East German Stasi agent operating covertly in the West certainly appears to revisit familiar themes from recent productions. From the opening credits of Anna and Jörg Winger’s Deutschland 83, however, it becomes clear that the three-season series seeks to re-imagine how and where these tropes circulate. By considering the pre- and post-production transnational flows that have shaped Deutschland 83 (2015), Deutschland 86 (2018), and Deutschland 89 (2020) alongside close readings from the each of the three series, this chapter reveals the complex ways in which the Deutschland trilogy embeds transnational tropes within its aesthetic and narrative structures in order to invite new and multi-perspectival engagements with the familiar screen themes of the GDR, the Stasi, and the Cold War.
Elizabeth Ward 