vene actively in the organization of theBerlin workingclass.Accordingtopro-
ducer GeorgHoellering,athousand Fichteworker athletes,members of the
world’slargest communist sport club, wererecruited to appear in the competi-
tions.⁷In 1930,the communist workers’sport groups had been excluded from
theArbeiter-Turn- und Sportbund(ATSB,Workers’Gymnastics andSportsFed-
eration) and, together with theKPD’sNaturfreunde, started the Arbeitersportver-
ein(ASV)Fichteasamodel for the union of sport andrevolution under the slo-
gan of Rotsport(Red Sports).⁸Brecht was fullyaware of the implications of
stagingapublic event forafilm production when he noted:“Naturally, the or-
ganisation of the work wasamuch greater effort for us than the (artistic)
work itself,i.e., we came more and more to treat organisation as an essential
component of artistic labour.Thiswas onlypossible because the work as a
whole was political work.”⁹Hiring worker-athletes to playthemselvesatastaged
sports event to be included inafeature film about the workingclass: nothing
better describes thegoal of the operative filmmaker to turnaudiences into polit-
ical actorsand intervene directlyinto social reality.
Exceedingthe filmmakers’expectations, theresponsestoKuhleWampe,
completewith several censorship decisions, continued this operative method
in the dividedterms of filmreception.Fourteen thousandBerliners sawwhat
conservative critics denounced asadangerousTendenzfilm(tendentious film)
after its long-awaited German release on 30 May1932inthe Atrium Theater.
The world premiere, which had taken place sixteen days earlier in Moscow,
was the reason for the train trip undertaken by Brecht in the fictional conversa-
tion quoted in the epigraph.¹⁰Presumablyfearingamass uprising,the Prussian
censors concluded in their second censorship decision on9April 1932 that,“the
overall attitude of this moving picture [is] capable of endangering public order
On theFichte club, see Herbert Dierker,“’Größter Roter Sportverein derWelt’.Der Berliner Ar-
beitersportverein Fichte in derWeimarer Republik,”inIllustrierte Geschichte des Arbeitersports,
ed. HansJoachimTeichler and GerhardHauk(Berlin: Dietz, 1987) 93 – 107. On the workers’sport
movement as a“sport political movement,”seeFritz Wildung,Arbeitersport(Berlin: Bücherk-
reis, 1929) and AndréGounot,Die Rote Sportinternationale, 1921–1937:KommunistischeMassen-
politik im europäischenArbeitersport(Münster: Lit,2002).
BenBrewster,“MakingKuhleWampe.An Interview with GeorgHoellering,”Screen15.4 (1974):
71 – 79.For recollections about location shooting, also see the short article by Ernst Busch pub-
lished inWelt amAbend,16March 1932.
BertoltBrecht et al.,“Collective Presentation,”Screen15.2 (1974): 43.
This number is taken fromthe advertisement inLichtbildbühne,7June 1932.
328 Chapter 18