Concerning the film Mädchen in
Uniform
I’ve
noticed that nearly no one read my last piece on German culture, but my old
post on German politics is my fourth-highest scoring one so far… We’ll have to see how this one does!
A thriving Gay community emerged
in Berlin in the late 19th-early 20th century. German law still condemned homosexuality, but
many factors emerged making things easier for the culture to prosper. Public crossdressing was even legal in
Berlin, as long as you obtained a permit (ah, my lawful, lawful people- you can’t
make this stuff up). This community
experienced a strong upswing during the latter half of the Weimar Republik
years, further cementing Berlin’s reputation as the center of Leftism in
Germany, which in turn led the Nazis to assign Göbbels to lead their campaigns
there personally. Wearing down the
strength of the Left’s stronghold was critical to the strategy that brought the
Nazis to power, and they of course succeeded.
But too often we forget how vibrant the Gemeinschaft (community) Berlin
was with tolerance, creativity, and social awareness. Among the important happenings was the first
open foray of the LGBT community into film, which produced famous Gay
influenced works like Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel), but also produced the
first film with lesbian protagonists, Mädchen in Uniform (Girls in
Uniform). It’s actually not at all as
trashy as the name implies.
Mädchen in Uniform is a strong film about forbidden affection, and social disturbance in an unfeeling society.
It passes the Bechdel test (do two or more women characters share a conversation about something other than a man?) with flying colors- indeed there are no men in the film. Briefly, teenager Manuela von Meinhardis arrives at a typically strict repressive boarding/finishing school, has all her books taken, and has a hard time fitting into classes and learning the strict regimen of bible study. Fortunately, she is assigned to the dorm run by the one sympathetic teacher (who is if anything 6 years older than her charges), Fraϋlein von Bernburg, who believes the children do better if they trust their supervisors, and are in need of emotional support. For this reason, and the kiss on the forehead she gives each girl, she is wildly popular among the students and unpopular among the teachers.
After several tender conversations with Manuela, FvB
begins kissing her on the mouth (which Manuela passionately returns in a
cinematic first), and Manuela explains to her that she has become jealous of
the other girls, that she wants to be with Fraϋlein von Bernburg alone. FvB explains that she cannot make exceptions,
but gives Manuela one of her petticoats, apparently as a token of their special
affection.
After a successful school play, the girls are
rewarded with spiked punch. Manuela
becomes drunk and loudly proclaims her love for Fraϋlein von Bernburg, and discloses the gift of
the petticoat, resulting in her imprisonment and eventual suicide attempt, with
Fraulein von Bernburg forced to resign over the scandal.
In this setting, almost any form of affection could
be read as subversive, as it is defying the emotionless structure of the
society in which the girls are confined.
The words schwul or lesbian are never used, but it is clear that the
relationship between Fraϋlein
von Bernburg and Manuela is forbidden for both its obviously lesbian overtones,
and the mere presence of affection itself in a situation which prohibits it.
To our eyes of course, glamorizing a
teacher-student romance is not the best way of advocating for sexual
permissiveness, and is troubling due to the power differential and potential
for abuse, but the film seems to attempt to address this by making the age
difference seem small enough to be inconsequential, and it’s easy to see this
being part of the reason for Fraülein von Bernburg’s dismissal. While this still renders the film somewhat
problematic, let’s work with what we have here in discussing the film’s messages.
Early in the film we are introduced to the
headmistress (or Frau Oberin) talking about the need for the girls to be
emotionless to be good “Soldatenstochtern und, mit Willen des Gott, so wie
Soldatenmutter”- Soldier’s daughters and with god’s will, Soldier’s mothers. This is showing the goals of the militaristic
state here, the investment in futureist terms, similar to Edelman’s Ponzi
scheme as children must be produced for the welfare of the state’s military
aims, but existing children, at least girls, are systematically undervalued as
we see in the film. People are only
important in serving the state, which is interpreted here as either being or
producing soldiers. The message of
individual love and fulfillment against a backdrop of a society striving to
exist only for war remains powerful.
The question of “outing” can also be addressed by
this film, even though it wasn’t to be employed as a tactic for some decades to
come. Manuela discloses her partner’s
love for her publicly, resulting in tragedy for them both. While many in the Gay community have used forcible
outing as a tool to show straight society how much of its makeup is comprised
of those it undervalues as well as to compel solidarity within the oppressed
group, here it is played as a negative, only arising out of Manuela’s
drunkenness. This definitely puts the
film in the less radical camp when viewed modernly, but we must remember that
the cast and filmmakers had good reason not to expose their comrades- the
Berlin Gay community would be marked for death within 18 months of the film’s
release, while the author, Christa Winsloe emigrated and then died fighting for
the French Resistance in 1944.
This brings us to a final point of the film-
its optimism that Gays could eventually win acceptance and support from
straights. Towards the end of the film, during
Manuela’s confinement, the other students finally decide to rebel, and go find
her; whatever she and Fraulein von Bernburg have done they regard her as their
comrade, and refuse to allow her to suffer alone any longer. They find her clinging to the top of the
school’s needlessly big, dramatic stairwell, about to jump. Some run to pull her back over the top (spoiler-
they succeed), while one rings the school’s alarm bell- an amusingly conformist
gesture calling for help from the authorities, trusting that they will do
something I suppose- and during this scene, Bernburg is telling Frau Oberin
that what she calls sin is actually love in a thousand different forms. At the end of this scene, both Bernburg and
FO run to the site of Manuela’s attempted suicide and see what the repressive
ostracizing has wrought. In the film’s
final shot, Frau Oberin, clearly horrorstruck at the damage done by her
repressive policies, walks shakily away from the camera. This suggests such a hopeful message, that those
reinforcing hetero-patriarchy will eventually see reason, that human
camaraderie can transcend prejudice and allow the LGBT community to live and
love in peace, and homophobic laws and rules will be regarded as shameful
attacks on human rights.
This was what the Berlin Gay community was
thinking and saying in 1931. Some 30,000
of their numbers would be murdered and hundreds of thousands more imprisoned in
the coming decade.
A friend of mine said it best- they made a
movingly effective holocaust movie 18 months before Nazizeit began. They just made the ending hopeful, and in so
doing, inadvertently made the film that much darker to us now.
Solidarität, Genossinnen und
Genossen.
Genossin Elise
No comments:
Post a Comment