Doctoral Defense: Ibsen through the Camera Lens in the Third Reich

Abstract

Far from Home: Ibsen through the Camera Lens in the Third Reich (2020) is the first monograph on adaptation practices in Nazi cinema and explores the extensive (mis)use of Ibsen on screen in Hitler’s Germany: which Ibsen texts were adapted in the Third Reich and why, how was Ibsen adapted, and, finally, what are the ideological implications of these films? The dissertation probes five scarcely explored Ibsen adaptations – Hans Hinrich’s Das Meer ruft (1933), Fritz Wendhausen’s Peer Gynt (1934), Detlef Sierck’s St€utzen der Gesellschaft (1935), Hans Steinhoff’s Ein Volksfeind (1937), and Harald Braun’s Nora (1944) – in their respective historical moments, shows why these films are important within the legacy of Nazi cinema, sheds new light on relations between German, Norwegian, and, by extension, Scandinavian culture in this era, and argues that the extreme historical context highlights the need to frame adaptation studies in a wider social and cultural field. The work draws upon poststructuralist turns in adaptation theory and cultural studies, and situates the respective films in their immediate historical contexts. Applying heterogeneous models of ideology rather than deterministic propaganda models, it argues that the five films played a role in creating and maintaining the Volksgemeinschaft, but also serve as prisms of the inner contradictions in the matrix of Nazi ideology and Hitler’s Germany.