A safer Ontario means more police and prosecutors making sure my car doesn't get stolen. It means building new jails to keep criminals behind bars. And it means there's no need to worry when I play at the park. We're making every corner of Ontario safer to make all of Ontario safer.
That's how we protect Ontario. For all of us. Learn how at ontario.ca. Pay for by the Government of Ontario.
It's springtime, which means that Princeton University Press is having its annual 50% off spring sale. From May 4th through June 9th, you can get 50% off nearly every single print, ebook and audiobook from Princeton University Press. Just go to press.prinston.edu to get 50% off incredible books like Disneyland and the Rise of Automation. And beyond belief, how evidence shows what really works.
There's so many fantastic books you can get an incredible deal on. Go to press.prinston.edu and use the code spring50. That's S-P-R-I-N-G-50 at press.prinston.edu. This sale only lasts for a month, so go and get some books.
Welcome to the new Books Network. Hello everybody and welcome back to the new Books Network. I'm Jenna Pittman, I'm the most familiar. Today we'll be talking to Yaka Fortat about his new book, Remembering National Socialism in Austrian Post Workbound, 1945 to 1955, published by Braille in 2025, and Remembering National Socialism in Austrian Post Workbound.
Yaka Fortat explores the narrative and memory of Austrian elites in the emergence, development and consequences of the actual socialism. Yaka, I'm so excited to welcome you to the show. Hello. Thank you for the invitation.
Yeah. I wonder if you could begin the episode just by telling us a little bit about yourself and how you came to write Remembering National Socialism in Austrian Post Workville. Alright, so I've been working for a long time on Austrian cinema and German cinema. I've been always interested in how those countries dealt with the Nazi past, with the Holocaust, with the Nazi atrocities, how they shaped the memory of those events, and particularly in cinema.
So this project results from my very long interest in Austrian culture and German culture, to end the way those countries came to bear with the past. So the book that we are going to talk about is actually a result of a very long project that started approximately in 2018. I was always interested in German culture and German film, and then I realized that not very much was written on the same issues regarding the Nazi past in the Austrian context. There are a lot of articles, books, any other sources that are dedicated to the German memory, German cinema, many directors, many films, but in comparison to the great amount of films made in Germany and to the amount of literature that has been written until now, I noticed a kind of gap that no one was actually interested in the case of Austria, even though it was a country that also shared the responsibility of national socialism.
So this was the time that I came up with, and it ended now in 2025 with the book. Yeah, thank you. That's very interesting, and it must be very relieving to have this book completed, knowing that it's been such a long project. Can I dive into the book a little bit?
Would you mind describing your argument in remembering nationalism, and why film is such an effective way to approach memory and historical narratives that have emerged from that film? Sure, so film is a very important medium, especially in the 1950s, 1940s, when the films that I analyzed were made, everyone goes to the cinema, it's a very popular medium, and in the case of the very early post-war reality, cinema is also a place for social meetings, for entertainment. You can still notice the traces of the recent war, and sometimes people simply went to cinema just to get warm, because in the winter with some cities bumped, it was also a very nice place to go, and to stay warm for a while. So the films that I examined were made between 1945 and 1955, and some of them were very successful in terms of the box office and the number of moviegoers.
I was able to reconstruct the popularity of those films on the basis of virtual movie theater programs. So I studied Archival Press to see how popular those films were, how long they were screened, and then I could estimate whether they found their audience or not. And the argument is that even though the Austrians didn't want to talk about the recent past, because they would prefer to concentrate on contemporary issues, on how to cope with the war and how to go on, how to move on after the war, and how to later in the early 50s, how to enjoy the results of the economic growth, just like in Western Germany, you could say there was a kind of workshops wonder, an economic miracle. So no one was particularly interested in discovering or rediscovering this very recent past, because also due to the fact that lots of people were involved in Nazi crimes, they were members of the Nazi party and the DAP, so they weren't very eager to talk about it.
But still, there were some filmmakers that found the topic interesting, they touched upon those issues. So the question was how those filmmakers dealt with this chapter of history, how to talk about it, at the same time not discouraging the potential audience from watching those movies. That's very interesting, and I guess I've never considered that. I've watched a little bit of US World War II era in post-World War II films, but not so much in the Austrian and German case, and definitely not really paying attention to the detail of what topics they're focusing on, and maybe creating some distance between the memory of war, and the present moments, that's definitely very interesting.
What is the narrative of historical discourse in the case of post-war Austria, and what really shapes these discussions, and where do these narratives come from? The films that I examined were quite exceptional, because there were many productions dedicated to the memory of the Nazi past, so when the Austrians, the Austen filmmakers, first of all, wanted to show some interesting things related to the past, they picked up different topics, how to talk about, for example, more distant past. So they focused above all on the Habsburg monarchy on Franz Joseph, and his wife Elizabeth, called CCC, they made a number of films of about famous composers, like Schruberg, Beethoven, or Taus, and they wanted to show the late 19th century or early 20th century as the most beautiful and the most splendid time in the history of Austria. So when they finally discovered that it is possible to talk about national socialism, they didn't want to present their country or their nation as very involved in those atrocities, in the reality.
So according to this official conviction, that was also politically motivated by the Allies, they very eagerly picked up the idea to present Austria as the first victim of the Nazi aggression. This was officially formulated in 1943 in a so-called Moscow Declaration, so the Allied Märty Märscö, and they formulated some very important documents relating to the particular European countries. And in the case of Austria, they decided that Austria should be declared as the first victim of Hitler, at the same time, however, they reminded that Austria should bear responsibility for participation in the war at the site of Nazi Germany. So the second part was very Southern forgotten, and Austrian cultural elites, including filmmakers, didn't want to show this co-responsibility.
So according to this discourse, even if they talked about the Nazi time, there were some taboo topics, they're not too much, not too much, not too much, not too much on the Holocaust, for example, so it was allowed to talk about some persecution and the oppression of some Jewish people living in Vienna, but the involvement of ordinary people in this persecution or the events leading to the Holocaust were actually forbidden, but weren't very popular. German, what the media posts were, and how does that narrative differ from Austrian film to German film? It is a very good question, because those two countries have a lot of things in common, but still you could notice some differences. And the first essential difference is that in Germany, at the same time, there were plenty of so-called rubble films, films that showed the immediate results of the air war, so the Germans filmmakers showed the ruins, the conditions of people living in those ruins, and very, very sad stories about soldiers or prisoners of war returning from the captivity to Germany and destruction, both the country itself and the population.
The Austrians didn't want to show this, they didn't show the ruins, there were only few films about those returnees or displaced persons, and the topic was very marginally dealt with. So this is the first difference, and on the other hand we can see still a very optimistic message of those films, that even if we suffer from the current situation, there is always hope and the relations between people and the among the families are going to be reestablished very soon. So the Second World War was reduced to a very short event that took a kind of, that resembled a natural force, that showed up very suddenly, like a catastrophe, and then thanks to the eagerness, thanks to the hard-working Austrians, this situation was very soon improved. And this is so interesting to see the cinema precisely in this very short period in the after-war times, how to catch this very, very particular moment in history, when we still see some results of this war, but we want to forget it as soon as possible.
That is very interesting enough, thinking about the narrative, like it slowly just almost naturally kind of appears that all of a sudden there's war when there, in fact, this very long history, which kind of set those conditions. That's very interesting to kind of think about how just that allowed is almost an element of Austrians kind of creating some distance between complacency and enabling the Nazi national socialism to have power. Would you agree? Yeah, sure.
This thing of course, the aspect of correspondence is very interesting in this regard, because we see the great history, the Second World War, the Holocaust, the deportations, the persecution, and how to tell about it. So the best way is to focus on ordinary people and very ordinary characters who must face those events. And then we see the decisions that they have to make, sometimes very difficult decisions. Is it worthy to help somebody that needs that help?
And this was possible, yeah, but still in a very, very limited way, as I wanted to show in my book. Well, that's very interesting. I know the divided Germany and the two narratives in both of those places is not the focus of your book. But I guess I am curious, and I think some of our listeners might be as well, as to if the narrative that comes out of the Admarchie and GDR differed and how that differed from Austrian post-war film as well.
Yeah, we can see, first of all, some differences in the political situation of Austria and West Germany, although both countries were divided into four occupation zones, the situation began to change because in 1949, two German countries emerged, the GDR and the FRG. On the other hand, in Austria, this division was continued. It lasted until 1955, so it lasted about 10 years, the division into occupation zones. And the Austrians were very interested in becoming a neutral country.
So you can see some differences in the 1950s, how those paths in India approached the past begin to diverge. The Germans very soon re-established the army and joined the NATO in 1955. So you can see that many zones produced in the 1950s in which Germany are actually war drivers. They take place in on the Eastern Front, they show the plight of the German soldiers and the captivity, and the Austrians on the other hand, didn't want to talk about it yet because they believed they are going to be neutral.
So they weren't interested in becoming involved in the world politics and they want to stay away from the Cold War that just started. So you can see even in the number of films produced in the late 1940s and then 1950s, I write about it in one of the chapters that between 1949 and 1954, so it's about five years, no single film about war or nationalism was made in Austria. Then two films, very important titles were made in 1954, the last bridge, it was an international co-production between Austria and Yugoslavia, one of the best war movies ever made in my opinion, and then it was soon followed by 1955, the last 10, the last days of Pabst, very renowned Austrian German director, and then after 1955, those films weren't made anymore because everyone was enjoying the miracle of 1955, the so-called state treaty, finally we are free, independent and neutral. So let's put the past on the shelf and let's focus on the future.
That's very interesting, kind of the difference in all of those different areas in the Civil War period. So earlier in our conversation, you mentioned that the films that you examined in the study are exceptional, what films you analyze and how did you choose the films that you studied? And I guess now I'm also curious, what was your process in watching these films and how did you approach that? Yeah, there were a number of films that I occupied myself with and I tried to divide, well, I tried to order them according to some groups, so the first group consists of films where the Nazi past is only touched upon, it's only mentioned on the margins, it's only a part of background and it doesn't play a very important role in the narrative, and there were some films that were made between 1947 and 1949.
Then the second group was about films showing those men returning from captivity, I call them Heinrich Eber films, Heinrich Eber means a returnee, it means a man who spent the wartime on the front or in the captivity and now returns to see the country destroyed and his relations with his wife or friends damaged and those films show how to restore those relations and the third largest group are the films about the Antonin Nazi resistance and these are the films that I found most interesting because they show on the visual layer you can see all the symbols, for example, of the Nazi, you can see the swastika or the Nazi, the black cars that were used by Gestapo, the Gestapo policemen themselves in their long black coats and all of those visual icons that we associate very easily with National Socialism and then we see the story of ordinary people, how they are resistant, the Nazis and how they are organized. So it was not very difficult, between 12 or 15 such productions, so my first step was to study very carefully the interesting literature on the Austrian film, the history of Austrian cinema and there were only a few books in 100 English and three or four written in German by the Austrian film scholars, so I studied very carefully the whole history of Austrian cinema and they I tried to trace the series to trace those films that might fit, that might include a narrative of the Nazi past that might be set in those times. What was different for your study about studying these very exceptional film representations as opposed to looking at maybe a more broad like broad representation because it seems like you focused a lot on this narrative, this film genre of resistance and these ordinary people resisting and I guess I'm wondering what is different about that specifically and how that kind of is representative of Austrian film in this era a little bit more probably. Okay, my intention was to conduct a very complex analysis of those films, so I focused on the narratives of course, to distinguish some of their most important characters in those films and the dramaturgy, the structure of those films and at the same time not forgetting about a style because those resistance films were very interesting due to the very specific style that they were produced in, some of them were irrelevant of the American and the war cinema or very very late expression as German cinema, so you can see for example a city when it's very dark and you can discern the elements background and then you have this atmosphere of fear that the characters move in places that look very suspicious and then we have some intrigues, sometimes very melodramatic affairs taking place in those narratives, so it was the first element to focus on the style and narrative and on the other hand I wanted to examine the resection, so I availed myself of two kinds of data, on the one hand I examined the popularity, the already mentioned movie theater programs, I wanted to see how long those films were distributed, sometimes they were very sun forgotten, like one of the films about the resistance, it was only screened for about 30 or 40 days, something like that, while on the other hand you could see some films that were screened for about 400 days, so it was more than a year, they were extremely popular, they reappeared after short breaks and they were screened in all or literally all movie theaters in Vienna, regardless of the district, every single one was divided into four districts too, so you could see that they were popular everywhere, and on the other hand I was obviously interested in the press reviews, I wanted to see how the press critics received those films, what were the aspects that they focused on, if they found those narratives comfortable, if they found it innovative, so I hope that I managed to do it, that the readers that maybe will read this book will notice that they have some precise information on every possible aspect of those films.
Yeah, absolutely, and I think that does come across, it's a very very very comprehensive and well-written study, my question is also, did you find that the directors may be background or personal that you've seen to influence the narrative in any way? It was also a very very important aspect, some of those directors of the filmmakers, I mean actors, even music composers or director of photography, many of them were involved in national socialists, so the German film industry just took over, the Austrian film industry in 1938, they created even a kind of company, the VIN film and it was controlled by the Nazi politicians, so the hat of this VIN film, Karel Harbels continued his career after the war, so he wasn't harmed in any way by the densification and after a short break he resumed the film production and he engaged also some actors that were very prominent before the World War II or during the World War II, the most prominent example is Paul Adesley, a very good actress that was active already in the 1920s, then she continued her career in 1930s, 1940s she played in very notorious propaganda film, Heinke van in 1941 that showed the alleged persecution of German civilians by the Poles in during the Nazi occupation of Paul and so there were plenty of people who continued their careers after 1945, so the question is whether we are able to come to terms with the Nazi past, providing that so many of the filmmakers were involved, and you could see that in the films where the, where not so many filmmakers were involved in national socialism, the narrative was a bit different, the very good example is that they aforementioned Pops and a director that made his already in the 1920s in Weimar cinema, he continued to shoot films after 1945 and the films that are most critical in dealing with national socialism were made by him, either he was the director of those movies or he was the author of The Striped, so the personal background of the filmmakers was also an aspect that I wanted to include. Yeah, absolutely, yeah and I think that's so important, you kind of brought up the point of are we fully reconciling with this past, if these movies are heavily influenced by people who were connected with national socialism and very much bear responsibility in that regard. I guess I'm very curious, out of the 12 or so films that you focus on here, which one would you recommend are listeners watch before reading National Socialism in Austrian post-war film, are there any that were particularly interesting to you or you think of you a listener of this podcast who wants to read your book might enjoy watching?
I think that's a film that should be definitely watched by anyone who is interested in European cinema or war dramas and history of the Second World War is the last film that I examined, they're led by Popsd made in 1955. Some of viewers might find it familiar if they watched the downfall, a very important film made it in Germany in 2004. The Untagank or the down phone shows the last 10 days of Adolf Hitler in his bunker in Berlin just at the eve of the war and the problem of his fanaticism and losing control and sanity. So this film made in 2004 was probably, couldn't have been made probably without the first one, maybe in 1955, that was an Austrian production with Austrian actors with the Austrian crew and it is a very, very good movie that shows the end of the war and the end of the world for the Nazis.
How anything that they worked for is going to collapse within a couple of days. So it is definitely a good film to watch and anyone interested how those events were put into the background. I think that the film made in 1948, the Angel with the, the Angamide Pozzona, I forgot the English title, I guess it's the Angel with the Trumpet and it shows a kind of very long chapter of the Austrian history starting in the 80s of the 19th century and then you can see that although the narrative extends for about yeah like 60 years, the Nazi era is reduced to only 20 minutes and it is a film that shows you precisely that it was possible to talk about this past but not too long. So definitely those two.
Okay yeah I mean that's going to be my weekend plan so I'm just going to get cozy the weather is getting cold so that sounds perfect. Those are going to be my movies for the weekend so thank you. How does this study, remembering, remembering National Socialism and Austrian post-war film contribute to our understanding of memory of national socialism a little bit more broadly? I think that not everyone is aware of the fact that Austria is really correspondible for the emergence and the development and the results of national socialism and we still I guess the popular view is that Austria is such a cozy nice beautiful country inhabited by so lovely people and it was a kind of myth that the Austrians created it after the war that they didn't want to show those dark chapters of the history and this conviction of being the first victim of Hitler's aggression that was a gift from the Allies actually from Britain from the Soviet from the Soviet Union from the US it was a myth that they really believed in so I think that after reading your book you might be aware that it was not the case that many were involved that there was a problem of anti-Semitism in the pre-war Austria even though those things are only marginally touched upon you can discern the problem that being a Jew in the 1930s especially after the annexation after the Anschlussen 1938 it was a very difficult situation so you could probably change your mind about Austria and and realize that it was not the case yeah and then this myth is only a myth actually and I think that the second contribution to the debate on the cinema is that some scholars analyzed the films like for example the Lestorica the last British from the last 10 days as German productions simply because they were very popular in Germany or they were screened in Germany and they were commented on among the critics they have functioned as German productions and it is not the case because they were either co-productions or they were made entirely in Austria so you could see that even some prominent films that are now that are good known and exist in the literature they are actually not German so it is a kind of contribution to these relations between Austria and Germany and the Austrians it's very interesting thank you for that and that really makes me think about and definitely probably the most popular film about Austria in the post-work period in the US is the musical film the sound of music and I never I think I watched it as a kid I had a big idea of what the film was and then I never thought about it again until I got to grad school and it came up in a conversation with my advisor and he was like I hate that movie and he kind of went into this whole kind of what you just said how there's this narrative of Austria being the first victim and it just being it's just a very misrepresentative narrative of maybe the reality and that narrative becomes part of the popular memory so it does really matter when you kind of look at these representations that come up come across and film I think it's you've identified a really important niche in the scholarship where you know the Austrian filmmaking aspect really just needs to be explored much much more in depth and hopefully this book fills some of those gaps and creates some space for other scholarships to come come forward so I always like to ask what you're working on now now that this big one project is behind you what are kind of your next steps?
Mm-hmm currently I think I'm starting a new project that is related to the Austrian-German film relations I wanted to I like to see how those most famous and most popular films were received in Germany and from the perspective of precisely the effort of the Austrians to present themselves as a very attractive country that had nothing to do with the Nazis it relates to the CC films the Habsburg films made in 1950s and early 60s and the convictionists that the German critique critics didn't like those movies but in fact as my some initial research indicates they were fascinated they were enchanted to see the beautiful mountains like the pictures that you mentioned in the film The Sound of Music and it was so it was it was kitsch it was it was a very of a very bad quality but still the critics were enchanted so I like to analyze this reception in a very careful way what were the aspects that the German critics found so interesting even though the critics in other countries like for example in Switzerland or in France they just called the spade a spade and they claimed those films are terrible now in the terms of quality but the Germans were enchanted so I'd like to find the reasons for it and it is the project that I'm going to focus on in the next couple of years I guess yeah that's very fascinating I mean I think that's a very exciting next study to TV dead so I definitely look forward to seeing more as that develops. For our listeners remembering National Socialism in Austrian post-war film published by Braille in 2025 it's available now. Yaka thank you again so much for being on the show today I really enjoyed chatting with you. Thank you it was a pleasure too.