The Department of German presents Tobias Nagl

The Department of German presents Tobias Nagl, Associate Professor of Film Studies, The University of Western Ontario. Tobias Nagl will present a lecture on Red and Black: Kuhle Wampe (1932), Anti-Colonialism and the ‘Color Line’ in Weimar Germany.

Slatan Dudow’s Kuhle Wampe oder: Wem gehört die Welt? (1932) is one of the most well-known proletarian movies of the Weimar Republic, and it briefly mentions the “colonial question” in its concluding discussion of imperialism and (international) solidarity. This talk attempts to situate this moment in the larger context of communist anti-colonialism/anti-racism and the propaganda activities of left-wing media tycoon Willi Münzenberg. Kuhle Wampe, like its pacifist companion piece Niemandsland (1931, Victor Trivas) was produced by Münzenberg’s production company Prometheus-Film, stars singer-actor Ernst Busch and has a soundtrack by Hans Eisler who increasingly began to integrate Jazz elements into his compositions at this moment. To understand these exceptional films and their take on race and colonialism, we have to look at Münzenberg’s Internationale Arbeiterhilfe (Workers International Relief), the Liga gegen Imperialismus und Kolonialunterdrückung (League Against Imperialism and Colonial Oppression) or Georg Padmore’s German-produced, clandestinely distributed newspaper The Negro Worker. This transnational solidarity network exploited Germany’s postcoloniality after World War I to its own advantage, led to fascinating cultural expressions and created a space for the articulation of new Black and Brown political subjectivities in the European metropoles.