The study confirms that Bauer’s role in Nazi Germany was more significant than previously known and was systematically covered up by him after 1945.
By Oliver Bradley
During this year’s Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale), in February, media sources revealed that Alfred Bauer, founding director of the festival had played an important, yet previously unknown role in the steering body of National Socialist Film Board – the Reichsfilmintendanz.
In response to published reports on Alfred Bauer’s role, festival directors suspended the awarding of the Alfred Bauer Silver Bear – already for this year’s festival, in February.
The Alfred Bauer Prize, instituted a year after Bauer’s death, in 1987, was awarded to the festival’s best first-feature film.
The newspaper reports also moved the film festival’s management to commission the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) to investigate Alfred Bauer’s position in the Nazi film bureaucracy.
Founded in 1949, the Leibniz Institute was Germany’s first institution for academic research and scholarship on the Nazi dictatorship. It is based in Potsdam, Germany, on the outskirts of Berlin.
The Reichsfilmintendanz was created by decree of Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, dated February 28, 1942, and was the central institution for controlling film production in the Nazi regime.
Alfred Bauer was advisor to the Reichsfilmintendant. After the end of the war he continued his career in the German film industry. And in 1951, he became the first director of the newly-founded Berlin International Film Festival; he held this position until 1976.
The study commissioned by the IfZ and conducted by PD Dr. Tobias Hof shows that Alfred Bauer must have been aware of the important role of the Reichsfilmintendanz in the propaganda apparatus of the Nazi regime. According to the IfZ investigators, Bauer’s employment in the Reichsfilmintendanz contributed to the functioning, stabilisation and legitimation of the Nazi regime.
Bauer also joined various National Socialist organisations early on (from 1933) and became a member of the NSDAP (the Nazi party) in 1937.
Furthermore, the study reveals that during his denazification process (1945-1947), Bauer tried to conceal his role in the Nazi regime through deliberately false statements, half-truths and claims and instead constructed an image with which he presented himself as an opponent of the Nazi regime.
“The new and now scientifically researched findings about Alfred Bauer’s responsibilities in the Reichsfilmintendanz and his behaviour in the denazification process are startling. Nevertheless, they constitute an important element in the process of dealing with the Nazi past of cultural institutions which were founded after 1945. The question, therefore, arises as to which personnel-oriented continuities shaped the German cultural scene in the post-war years. The new knowledge also changes the view of the founding years of the Berlinale,” says Berlinale Executive Director Mariette Rissenbeek. “The IfZ study also indicates that there are still numerous research gaps in the historical analysis of the post-war film industry.”
The Alfred Bauer Prize with provisionally renamed the 70th Anniversary Silver Bear, for this year’s festival.
The complete study of the IfZ’s findings may be found here: Summary, PDF