Mass Media and Historical Change. Germany in International Perspective, 1400 to the Present

The Media during the Cold War | 151

• such as directives from the Defence Ministry in the case of war movies and
  from the Interior Ministry and the Chancellor’s Office if films dealt with the
  Nazi past. The ‘Inter-Ministry Committee’ monitored the import of films from
  Eastern Europe. The state additionally exerted its influence through specific
  subsidies and tax breaks (Hugo, in Zuckermann 2003: 69f.). Censorship con-
  tinued to be justified in the name of manners and morals. This was augmented
  by anti-Communist arguments or claims that rearmament and international
  understanding might be endangered. In many cases censorship was applied in
  order to prevent critical scrutiny of the past. Foreign films, too, were forbidden
  in the Federal Republic, with similar arguments. For instance Rossellini’s mas-
  terpiece Rome, Open City was prohibited in West Germany until 1961, because
  it showed the cruelty of German Gestapo; and other films were radically short-
  ened or incorrectly translated (like Casablanca).
  A comparable control of the media of this period is also evident in maga-
  zines and literature, which were subject to examination by the ‘Bundesprüf-
  stelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften’ (Federal Inspection Authority for
  Writings Liable to Corrupt the Young). Based on the Law for the Protection
  of Children and Youth, the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the State
  Ministries for Youth caused roughly six hundred books and about a thousand
  magazines, comics, and other media to be placed on their index between 1953
  and 1963. This occurred mostly because of depictions of nudity, but also if
  there were negative representations of society and its elites, as in the case of
  Ulrich Schamoni’s novel Dein Sohn lässt grüßen (Buchloh 2002: 132–36). In
  the field of cultural policy, the Adenauer era thus demonstrated a restorative
  character that was nevertheless in line with international tendencies.
  While the number of cinemagoers in the United States and Great Britain
  had already decreased considerably during the 1950s, the cinema in Germany
  counted record numbers as late as 1956, since television did not become estab-
  lished as a mass medium until the following decade. There is only limited
  evidence for the oft-feared Americanisation of German cinema. West German
  films were very much more successful because they strongly mirrored the taste
  of the indigenous public. New German productions as well as remakes were
  seen by about 45 per cent of viewers, whereas American films reached only
  30 per cent. Conversely, German films were quite successful in Austria, but
  in the rest of the world hardly at all. From an aesthetic point of view Adenau-
  er-era cinema is considered lowbrow, and therefore it was spoken of as ‘super-
  ficial cinema of pop and sentimentality’ that left ‘no traces’ behind (Göttler,
  in Jacobsen, Kaes and Prinzler 2004: 171). Yet there was a certain continuity
  with the shattered Ufa, since former Ufa employees were part of this cinema
  boom (Kreimeier 1992: 365–87).
  Historians have variously taken an interest in West German postwar
  cinema as a means of examining the culture of that time. The fact that