Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Atonement with the Nazi Past

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Rainer Werner Fassbinder was arguably one of the greatest German directors after World War II. During his fifteen-year career, Fassbinder directed and produced among his other film works 40 full-length films. Fassbinder was born in a small Bavarian town, Bad Wörishofen, on May 31, 1945, and died presumably of a drug overdose at the young age of 37 on June 10, 1982. He was the most prominent German film director, actor and screenwriter in the New German Cinema. He continued the tradition of great German movies, and dealt with the German Nazi past, the average person’s involvement in the dictatorship and the tendency to suppress the memory of those years after World War II.
The political reality and hard times in the 1920’s helped with the rise of the rightwing nationalist party. Adolf Hitler was an avid movie fan and embracing new technologies for his party, such as flying in an airplane to hold speeches in several cities on one day, realized the potential that existed for Nazi propaganda. His future propaganda minister, Josef Goebbels, a short man with a clubfoot, eventually would control the film industry. Goebbels removed all Jewish involvement with the film business, which led to many talented people having to leave Germany (as long as they still could get out). Equally, he removed all people were not in line with the official party thinking, so many more people, such as Fritz Lang, the director of Metropolis, left.
At the beginning of the Nazi era, more propaganda movies, such as “Triumph des Willens”(Triumph of the Will) from Leni Riefenstahl about the Nazi party congress 1934 in Nuremberg, in which she glorifies Hitler and the masses that paid homage to him, were made (“Leni Riefenstahl”). Nazi officials noticed that ov...

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...xy.clemson.edu/EBchecked/topic/202295/Rainer-Werner-Fassbinder>.
Rother, Rainer "Riefenstahl, Leni." Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500 to the Present. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2003. Credo Reference. Web. 16 February 2014.
Smith, Duncan "Rainer Werner Fassbinder 1945-1982." Encyclopedia of German Literature. London: Routledge, 2000. Credo Reference. Web. 14 February 2014.
The Marriage of Maria Braun. [Die Ehe der Maria Braun]. Dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Perf. Hanna Schygulla, Klaus Löwitsch, Ivan Desny. Trio Films, 1979. DVD.
Thompson, Kristin , and David Bordwell. Film History, An Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages, 2010. 8. Print.
Veronika Voss. [Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss]. Dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Perf. Rosel Zech, Hilmar Thate, Cornelia Froboess. Laura Film/Tango Film, 1982. DVD.

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