Georg Buchner in the German cinematic tradition: Film, theater, and the art of adaptation
Item
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Title
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Georg Buchner in the German cinematic tradition: Film, theater, and the art of adaptation
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:b4a95563e2e4:11119
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identifier
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11401
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Creator
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Ungurianu, Lioba Anne,
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Contributor
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Brigitte M. Peucker
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Date
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2011
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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German literature | Film studies | Theater | adaptation | Dimitri Buchowetzki | Georg Büchner | Georg Klaren | Werner Herzog | Woyzeck
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Abstract
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German films based on the works of Georg Buchner (1813--1837) constitute a fascinating body of cinematic texts, with more than a dozen productions spanning the period from the 1920s to our days. This dissertation is structured around four of the most significant Buchner-related films: two adaptations of Danton's Death (by Dimitri Buchowetzki in 1921 and by Hans Behrendt in 1931) and two adaptations of Woyzeck (by Georg Klaren in 1947 and by Werner Herzog in 1979).;Instead of merely comparing the adaptations to the original texts, my focus is on the broader "intertextual space" (a term proposed by Christopher Orr and Eric Rentschler), which involves: (1) Buchner's reception in Germany, including the elusive nature of his work and a wide-spread notion that he was a precursor of modernism. (2) The stage history of Buchner's plays and various levels of interconnection between cinema and theater. (3) Relevant cinematic developments, including both specific influences and more general shifts in filmmaking, as the films in question belong to four very distinct periods of German cinema.;Buchowetzki's eclectic Danton reflects the struggle of film to emerge as a legitimate art form in the early Weimar years, and reveals a characteristic breadth of influences, ranging from Max Reinhardt's theatrical experiments to popular entertainment in Ernst Lubitsch's costume dramas. Behrendt's Danton is shaped by the challenges of early sound film and a resurgence of theatrical aesthetics in cinema. Klaren's Wozzeck produced in the Eastern Zone shortly after the end of WW II, revives a socialist reading of Buchner and, attempting to overcome the Nazi legacy, draws on the aesthetics of Weimar expressionism. Herzog's Woyzeck accentuates existentialist preoccupations in the context of the New German Cinema as well as within his own oeuvre, including The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Stroszek, and Nosferatu. The study of all of these films adds a new dimension to the history of Buchner's reception in Germany and helps to highlight important facets of the history of German cinema; it also allows the examination of pivotal theoretical and practical questions concerning the adaptation of literary texts to the medium of motion pictures.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Germanic Languages & Literatures
