Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-l82ql Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-01T05:05:49.550Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Frankfurt Canteen: Eva Heldmann’s fremd gehen. Gespräche mit meiner Freundin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2023

Get access

Summary

Why is it that some architectural structures simply do not let us go? What is it about them that haunts us and holds us in such a firm grip? Why are we never safe with respect to such sites? What makes us feel compelled to respond to them in the strongest possible terms? The I. G. Farben building and surrounding grounds in Frankfurt offer one such instance of a place I myself came to love wholeheartedly when I went there to work each day during the academic year 2008–2009. The filmmaker Eva Heldmann and her friend, who is mentioned in the film’s title, the Film Studies professor, Annette Brauerhoch similarly reveal a love for it in their 1999 film fremd gehen. Gespräche mit meiner Freundin, where it evokes memories of a private utopia experienced there during the late 1980s. Of the building’s history, the historian and founding director of the Fritz Bauer Institute Hanno Loewy reminisces:

Once again the castle on the Affenstein has become a site of legends: where Father Goethe once harvested his apples, where Heinrich Hoffmann wrote the Struwwelpeter, where Dr. Alzheimer first discovered the secret of oblivion, where plans for Auschwitz as an industrial base were forged, where the Basic Law of democratic postwar West Germany was approved, and where, finally, terrorists threw bombs to express their opposition to the American occupation. In 1995, the doors to this haunted castle were opened, and the Frankfurters came in flocks. What might they have been looking for? It does not matter, they found something else. This is supposed to be a story about images anyway.

The legend captured in Heldmann’s film in and around Frankfurt’s “haunted castle” offers insights into the afterlife of the sexual revolution of 1968. It affirms what psychoanalyst and former president of the Socialist German Student Union (SDS) Reimut Reiche maintains was that movement’s unwavering belief in the possibility of an autonomous and uninhibited sexuality, one free of consequences. This dream of a “free” sexuality, it was thought, would offer both a viable response to, as well as redemption from, the deeds of the parental generation.

Type
Chapter

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×