Talk:Die Deutsche Wochenschau

Copyright status

Who owns the copyright to those newsreels? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 21:06, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Self-reply: this is covered by Wikipedia:PD#German_World_War_II_images, I'll add this to the article. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 22:54, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Public holdings?

It would be nice if someone knew of a place that had comprehensive publicly-accessible copies of the full series, especially the ones with English subtitles. According to WorldCat the University of California in Berkely has about a third of them. Historian932 (talk) 20:04, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Translation of German Wikipedia article "Die Deutsche Wochenschau"

Someone requested an English translation of the German Wikipedia article "Die Deutsche Wochenschau". Below is my translation of it. I've tried to translate the original German article word-for-word wherever possible; however, in some places, such a translation results in ambiguity or awkward sentence structures, so in those instances, I've deviated slightly from the original German text.

Die Deutsche Wochenschau (The German Weekly Newsreel)

The Deutsche Wochenschau was the government-controlled weekly newsreel of movie theaters in the German Reich between 1940 and 1945. It was typically shown between the traditional short documentary (Kulturfilm) and the feature film, and it served simultaneously to report about the war during World War II and to spread Nazi propaganda. About 2,000 copies were sent throughout the Reich weekly; in addition, there were hundreds of copies in foreign languages for allied countries, neutral states, and prisoner of war camps. A considerable portion of the film recordings from this period which survive today consists of Wochenschau recordings.

History

Long before the Deutsche Wochenschau there were already regular weekly newsreels in Germany. Very early on, the documentary potential of films -- still without sound -- were exploited for various weekly newsreels even by small film studios. An early example is Messter-Woche (Messter’s Weekly), which had been shown since 1914. From the beginning of the 1930s, as a result of the introduction of films with sound, the production of weekly newsreels became increasingly concentrated among the several studios and their newsreels which dominated the market:

• Ufa-Tonwoche (Ufa Sound Weekly)
• Deulig-Tonwoche (Deulig Sound Weekly)
• Fox Tönende-Wochenschau (Fox Sound Newsreel Weekly)
• Emelka Tonwoche (Emelka Sound Weekly).

Even before the Nazis assumed power in 1933, the newsreels often had a nationalist bias; Reich Minister for Propaganda Joseph Goebbels found in them a smoothly running machine for propaganda.

In 1935, the production of the various privately produced newsreels were placed under the supervision of the Deutschen Film-Nachrichtenbüros (German Newsfilm Office), which had been founded by Goebbels, although initially it was known by the name Büro Weidemann (Weidemann Office); the German Newsfilm Bureau, in turn, was directly subordinate to the Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda. In 1939, there occurred a further organizational streamlining of the increasingly centralized newsreel coordination when the German Newsfilm Bureau was replaced by the newly created Deutschen Wochenschauzentrale beim Reichministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda (German Newsreel Headquarters of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda). That meant that the four big newsreel brands of the three newsreel producers -- UFA, Tobias-Tonbild-Syndikat, and Fox -- officially remained independent, but in fact the Reich Propaganda Ministry intervened, via the Newsreel Headquarters, directly in the composing of newsreels.

The individual newsreel firms were made directly answerable to the Newsreel Headquarters; there was neither in economic terms nor in terms of organization or staffing, scope for independent and autonomous businesses. Although the content of the newsreels had been largely harmonized by the start of the Second World War, the different logos of the individual firms still appeared in the opening credits for some months after the war's outbreak, for reasons of copyright; however, by the middle of June 1940 (from newsreel number 511), they were replaced by the uniform title Deutsche Wochenschau. Thereby any outward semblance of pluralism was abolished. In November 1940, there followed the final organizational merger of the four newsreels under the centralized production of UFA, in order to facilitate the direct influence of the Ministry of Propaganda and to bring the newsreel media completely into conformity.

Until November 1943, Deutsche Wochenschau was synchronized and finished in the main building of UFA on Krausen Street in the center of Berlin. When the building was heavily damaged by an allied bomber attack in November 1943, the newsreel work was moved to the basement and outbuildings. At the beginning of June 1944, the entire newsreel production was relocated to barracks in Buchhorst, outside Berlin. After the end of December 1944 (from newsreel 746), the last editions of Deutsche Wochenschau arrived at times only irrregularly in the few remaining movie theaters; production ended on March 22, 1945 with the theatrical version of number 755. This last edition showed, among other things, the last public appearance of Adolf Hitler in the garden of the new Reich Chancellory, just a month before his 56th birthday, during which he, among other things, awarded Iron Crosses to twenty Hitler Youths. For a long time, it had been assumed that this film had been made on Hitler's birthday, April 20, 1945. Later it turned out that it had been created during the previous month. On account of the completely destroyed transport and postal systems, it was hardly possible to transport the finished copies of the newsreel, which had been prepared in Berlin, to all areas of the German Reich that were still unoccupied. For example, on January 23, 1945, the Reich railway had already completely discontinued the civilian high speed and express transport.

Production and Characteristics

The material for the Deutsche Wochenschau was, in large part, filmed by the "film reporters" of the Armed Forces' "propaganda companies" -- a camera team was assigned to each Army platoon.

Harry Giese was engaged as the narrator; he had previously worked for the newsreels of the Tobis-Tonbild Syndikat. When Giese fell ill with jaundice, he was temporarily replaced by his colleague Walter Tappe during 1943/44. The editor in chief was at first Heinrich Roellenbleg, and later, after Roellenbleg had fallen out of favor with Goebbels, the journalist and war correspondent Fritz Dettmann. The composer Franz R. Friedl served as official in charge of music. For these newsreels, numerous cameramen were on the road in the war’s theaters: Gerhard Garms, Hans Bastanier, Horst Grund, Hans Ertl, Erich Stoll, Fritz Joachim Otto, and many more. For films of Adolf Hitler, his personal cameraman Walter Frentz was reassigned from the Air Force to the Führer's headquarters.

The compilation of the short news items on political, military, cultural, and sport events of the past weeks were shown, during the war years, in almost all movie theaters before the start of the feature film. After the final merger of the newsreel companies, a passage from the the Horst Wessel song, the Wochenschau fanfare, was played as theme music, of which two versions existed: a short one and a longer one with multiple repetitions and several drum rolls. After the beginning of the war against the Soviet Union, the Wochenschau fanfare was followed by the Russian fanfare, a passage from Les Préludes by Franz Liszt. The reporting concentrated above all on current war events, which in the course of the war’s progress -- which was proceeding increasingly unfavorably for Germany -- was ever more sugar-coated and misrepresented.

During the war and especially after the first signs of a failure on the Eastern Front in the winter of 1941/42 and the defeat in the battle of Stalingrad in 1943, the reporting of the Wochenschau became more important to Goebbels because he believed that he could usher in a decisive change in the mood of the German population via the medium of film. Therefore, as early as 1939, he often personally supervised the various production phases of each edition of the Wochenschau, previewed rough cuts, changed the text of the commentary, and decided the focus of the reporting. Adolf Hitler, in turn, consistently personally accepted the Wochenschau as important to the war until the end of 1944 (false belief: In the research literature, the opinion prevails that Hitler from the end of 1942 as much as no longer cared about the decline of the Wochenschau) and often intervened directly in the production process.

Actually, however, the credibility of the Wochenschau and thus also its effectiveness as a means of propaganda was very limited since the defeat at Stalingrad, at the latest. Of course the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda had adopted the "Regulation for Extraordinary Radio Measures" on the first day of the war: it forbade intentionally listening to enemy broadcasts and threatened above all the passing of "enemy propaganda" with harsh punishment ("in especially severe cases, with death"). There were, however, offenders who at the risk of their lives procured information and also at the risk of their lives passed it to hopefully trustworthy people. Also, by letters from the front and personal reports from soldiers on leave from the front, knowledge of the true military situation reached the populace, which was constantly threatened with possible charges of passing "enemy propaganda" and "undermining military morale". Also, the increasing destruction of German cities by the air attacks of allied bomber formations made it ever clearer that the vision of final victory, which the Wochenschau invoked to the end, would not be fulfilled.

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I have not included translations of the sections titled "Ableger" (branches of Deutsche Wochenschau's operations), "Siehe auch" (see also), "Literatur" (literature / further reading), "Weblinks" (contains links to film archives), and "Einzelnachweise" (references). If you want translations of these, don't hesitate to send me a message.

Cwkmail (talk) 11:27, 8 June 2013 (UTC)