by Elizabeth Ward
In: The GDR Today: New Interdisciplinary Approaches to the History, Memory and Culture of the German Democratic Republic edited by Stephan Ehrig, Marcel Thomas and David Zell
Peter Lang, 2018
ISBN: 978-0995456440
Michael Kann’s debut film, Stielke, Heinz, fünfzehn (Stielke, Heinz, Fifteen, (1987), was supposed to signal the thematic, artistic and popular renewal of one of the core interests of East German cinema, the antifascist film. Yet upon release, the film’s treatment of its subject matter was described as ‘superficial’ by film officials and as an ‘embarrassment’ by film critics. As a film made by a post-war director primarily for a post-war audience educated and socialized exclusively in the GDR, Stielke, Heinz, fünfzehn offers a fascinating case study of the generational reconfigurations of the ‘staple of GDR filmmaking’ as well as uncovering wider societal debates about the challenges of transmitting the ‘central founding myth’ of the GDR to the first generation of Germans born into the socialist system.
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Elizabeth Ward 