¹ Andreas Maislinger, Coming to Terms with the Past: An International Comparison 170 (2004).Google Scholar

² Heidi Fahrenbach, Cinema in Democratizing Germany 8 (1995).Google Scholar

³ See generally Bundesverfassungsgericht [BVerfG] [Federal Constitutional Court] 9 Feb. 2010 (Hartz IV), 125 Entscheidungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts [BVerfGE] 175, 1 BvL 1/09 of 9 Feb. 2010, 2010 (Ger.), available at http://www.bverfg.de/entscheidungen/ls20100209_1bvl000109.html (last visited 3 Nov. 2011). The Hartz IV case is discussed in Section C. This commitment consists of certain provisions for housing, healthcare, food, education and cultural learning, as well as other necessities. Christian Bommarius, Directing Editor, Berliner Zeitung, Address at the German Law Journal Symposium in Washington, D.C.: German Law in Context (3 Dec. 2010).Google Scholar

⁴ See Bommarius, supra note 3.Google Scholar

⁵ Id. Google Scholar

⁶ These films highlight the hunger and housing problems, and emphasize how the nation needed a communal approach to providing these necessities so no German ever experienced such suffering again.Google Scholar

⁷ Hartz IV, 125 BVerfGE 175, 1 BvL 1/09 of 9 Feb. 2010 (Ger.).Google Scholar

⁸ Symposium, Popular Culture, Legal Films, and Legal Film Critics, 40 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 745, 745 (2007).Google Scholar

⁹ Id. Google Scholar

¹⁰ Laura Nader, Law in Culture and Society vi (1997).Google Scholar

¹¹ Id. Google Scholar

¹² Id. Google Scholar

¹³ Renndard Strickland, Teree Foster & Taunya Banks, Screening-Justice—The Cinema of Law: Significant Films of Law, Order and Social Justice xxii (2006).Google Scholar

¹⁴ Steve Greenfield, Guy Osborn & Peter Robson, Film and the Law 3 (2001).Google Scholar

¹⁵ Id. at 3–4.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Id. at 11.Google Scholar

¹⁷ For our study, the films portray postwar Germany between 1946 and 1949.Google Scholar

¹⁸ See Greenfield et. al, supra note 14, at 12.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Robert Shandley, Rubble Films: German Cinema in the Shadow of the Third Reich 2 (2001).Google Scholar

²⁰ Sabine Hake, German National Cinema 98 (2002).Google Scholar

²¹ Rentschler, Eric, The Place of Rubble in the Trümmerfilm, 37 New German Critique 9, 9 (2010).Google Scholar

²² Heidi Fehrenbach, Cinema in Democratizing Germany 149 (1995).Google Scholar

²³ See Shandley, supra note 19, at 9.Google Scholar

²⁴ See id. at 1 (explaining that the Allies “began a thorough and deliberate process of filtering the voices that were allowed to speak.”). The Allies purposely delayed the reentry of film into the public sphere because they appreciated the special influence film had as a propaganda tool. Id. at 2.Google Scholar

²⁵ Id. at 11.Google Scholar

²⁶ Id. Google Scholar

²⁷ See id. (summarizing many scholars who comment that “even before the Allied victory, tensions between the Western Allies and the Soviets were manifesting themselves, leading to even less cooperation between the Soviet zone and its Western counterparts”).Google Scholar

²⁸ Id. at 2. These films also tell us—as historians, scholars, and the public—how the transformation occurred from Nazism to Allied occupation to a new German state dedicated to social welfare.Google Scholar

²⁹ See Norbert Grob, Das Jahr 1945 und das Kino 86 (1995) (explaining how the Allies, following the American lead, adopted strict censorship rules regarding the flow of information and films); see also Shandley, supra note 19, at 17.Google Scholar

³⁰ Peter Pleyer, Deutscher Nachtkriegsfilm 1946–1948, at 26 (1965).Google Scholar

³¹ Id. Google Scholar

³² See Shandley, supra note 19, at 17 (discussing how, in early 1946, a committee of Soviet officers and German filmmakers came together to start the first German film company, DEFA (Deutsche Film AG)).Google Scholar

³³ See Thomas Heimann, DEFA, Künstler und SED-Kulturpolitik: Zum Verbältnis von Kulturpolitik und Filmproduktion in der SBZ/DDR 1945 bis 1959 (1994).Google Scholar

³⁴ See Shandley, supra note 19, at 17.Google Scholar

³⁵ See Heimann, supra note 33.Google Scholar

³⁶ See Shandley, supra note 19, at 18. The Soviet approach ensured that the East German films promoted contrasting messages for rebirth and growth of the new nation. The eastern filmmakers had different theses which aligned more with the Soviet communists. These films played an important role in binding war experiences into transformative postwar narratives. See Anke Pinkert, Film and Memory in East Germany 14 (2008).Google Scholar

³⁷ See Pinkert, supra note 37, at 120.Google Scholar

³⁸ Birgel, Frank A., Rubble Films: German Cinema in the Shadow of the Third Reich, 56 Film Q. 61, 61–63 (2003) (reviewing Robert Shandley, Rubble Films: German Cinema in the Shadow of the Third Reich (2001)).Google Scholar

³⁹ See Hake, supra note 21, at 98.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Julia Hell and Andreas Schonie, Ruins of Modernity i (2009). Sometimes hard to bear for their raw portrayal of suffering, these films provide a valuable, albeit distinct, version of the period's reality. See Shandley, supra note 20, at 5.Google Scholar

⁴¹ See Hake, supra note 20, at 112.Google Scholar

⁴² Letter from Frank Schorkopf, Professor, Institute for International and European Law, Georg-August-University in Göttingen, to author (19 Nov. 2010) (on file with author).Google Scholar

⁴³ See Shandley, supra note 19, at 9. Similarly, the films “rarely confront the institutions, traditions, and assumptions that led to the catastrophe that was postwar Europe.” Id. at 4. In fact, these films are often characterized as simply “films with [continuous] scenes of bombed out ruins in German cities”—nothing more. The Spanish Prisoner (Austin Fields), The Murderers Are Among Us, The Spanish Prisoner (11 Apr. 2009, 9:18 AM), http://thespanishprisoner.wordpress.com/2009/04/11/the-murderers-are-among-us/ (last visited 5 Nov. 2011). Further, these films are characterized as diverging from history, and their only success is as a “popular genre.” Angelica Fenner, Review: Thomas Elasser, ed., with Michael Wedel. The BFI Companion to German Cinema, 25 German Stud. Rev. 382, 383 (2002).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ See Heidi Fehrenbach, Cinema in Democratizing Germany 149 (1995) (explaining why some argue that these criticisms contributed to the genre becoming a “bust” by 1948).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Germany: Year Zero (Germania: Anno Zero) (G.D.B. Film 1948).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Chris Wiegand, Germany: Year Zero, BBC Online (Dec. 2009), http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/cinema/features/germany-year-zero.shtml (last visited 4 Nov. 2011).Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Id. Google Scholar

⁴⁸ James Travers, Germania anno zero (1948), Films De France (2003), http://filmsdefrance.com/FDF_Germania_anno_zero_rev.html. The film emphasizes a “concentration on the inner character”—a realism of the individual (last visited 4 Nov. 2011); see also David Forgacs et. al, Roberto Rossellini: Magician of the Real 3 (2000).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ See Travers, supra note 49.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Id.; see also Camilleri, Tina, Roberto Rossellini's Germany, Year Zero: A Child's Journey Through the Crumbling Skeleton of War-Torn Germany, Senses of Cinema, http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/11/germany.html (last visited 4 Nov. 2011). For Rossellini, fantasy did not stand in an antithetical relationship to realism and the introduction of fantasy elements into a film remained perfectly consistent with a broadly realist project. See Forgacs, supra note 48, at 10.Google Scholar

⁵¹ See Travers, supra note 48.Google Scholar

⁵² See Peter Bondanella, Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to Present 31, 74, 103 (2007) (describing Italian neo-realism as a style of film characterized by stories set amongst the poor and working class, filmed on location, frequently using nonprofessional actors). Italian neorealist films mostly contend with the difficult economic and moral conditions of postwar Italy, reflecting the changes in the Italian psyche and the conditions of everyday life: poverty and desperation.Google Scholar

⁵³ See Wiegand, supra note 46.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ See Rossellini, & Apra, , supra note 51, at 22 (“The people of Berlin, it seemed to be, were interested in only one thing: to eat and survive. This, I believe, is the fruit of a defeat unparalleled in history, which has annihilated the conscience of an entire people.”).Google Scholar

⁵⁵ See Forgacs, supra note 48, at 13.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ See Camilleri, supra note 50.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ See Shandley, supra note 19, at 117, 124.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ See generally Hartz IV, 125 BVerfGE 175, 1 BvL 1/09 of 9 Feb. 2010 (Ger.); Bommarius, supra note 3. However, I must note that this is the author's interpretation of this point.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ See Rossellini, & Apra, , supra note 52, at 21 (“Although the story of Edmund and his family was invented by me, it nevertheless resembled that of most German families. Thus it is a mixture of reality and fiction …. There is no doubt that [everyone] in Germany would see in my film at least some phase of their own experience.”).Google Scholar

⁶⁰ See Forgacs, supra note 48, at 55.Google Scholar

⁶¹ See Shandley, supra note 19, at 2.Google Scholar

⁶² See Wiegand, supra note 46.Google Scholar

⁶³ Id. Google Scholar

⁶⁴ See Camilleri, supra note 50.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Id. Google Scholar

⁶⁶ See Germany: Year Zero, supra note 45.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ See Shandley, supra note 19, at 124; In fact, “Edmund, after that long strain of the difficult role, became ill and had to go to the hospital for a couple of weeks.” (after the real person who played Edmund viewed the film). See also Rossellini & Apra, supra note 52, at 23.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ See Shandley, supra note 19, at 119.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Id. Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Id. at 120.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Id. These films cast the psychic impairment of returnees in ways that contribute to the larger discursive efforts in the 1940s to render the experience of losses incurred by the war and, more specifically, war trauma and depression in terms of psychic abnormality and social failure. See Pinkert, supra note 36, at 14.Google Scholar

⁷² See Shandley, supra note 19, at 118–19.Google Scholar

⁷³ Id. at 120.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Id. Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Id. at 125.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Id. at 124.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ See Pinkert, supra note 36, at 43 (explaining that the film engaged economic crisis, psychological struggle, and political transformation by intertwining the story of children roaming in the ruins of Berlin with the exemplary narrative of a returning soldier who successfully recuperates his position in the paternal order and is reintegrated into postwar society).Google Scholar

⁷⁸ See id. at 44–45 (portraying the father after he is reinserted into the postwar panorama). The father returns from war imprisonment to the destroyed city of Berlin. Id. The film tracks his somewhat difficult, yet ultimately successful, reinsertion into postwar society and affirms the narrative and ideological values of domestic love, will power, and reconstructive work to fantastically cure his experience of past trauma. Id. Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Irgendwo in Berlin (Somewhere in Berlin), DEFA Film Library UMASS Amherst, http://www.umass.edu/defa/films/irgendwo.shtml (last visited 4 Nov. 2011).Google Scholar

⁸⁰ See Pinkert, supra note 36, at 50 (noting that the boy climbs up onto the ruins of a bombed-out house to disprove that he is a coward, and was willing to sacrifice his life for some higher cause).Google Scholar

⁸¹ Somewhere in Berlin, TimeOut London, http://www.timeout.com/film/reviews/74977/somewhere-in-berlin.html (last visited 4 Nov. 2011).Google Scholar

⁸² Somewhere in Berlin (DEFA 1946).Google Scholar

⁸³ Id. Google Scholar

⁸⁴ See Pinkert, supra note 36, at 210 (noting the use of recurring urban scenes of young people, stranded and roaming around in deserted buildings, echoing other postwar rubble films).Google Scholar

⁸⁵ See Ingelore König et al., Vergangen Zeiten: Arbeiten mit DEFA-Kinderfilmen 21 (1994); see also Walter Lenning, Irgendwo in Berlin: Uraufführung des neuen DEFA-Films in der Staatsoper, Berlinger Zeitung, 20 Dec. 1946.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ See Pinkert, supra note 36, at 42 (explaining that Lamprecht's film defines “how [the postwar] suffering needed to be understood”).Google Scholar

⁸⁷ See Bommarius, supra note 3.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ The other scenes involve potatoes falling down stairs and swindling meals.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ See Shandley, supra note 19, at 186–87.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Id. at 51.Google Scholar

⁹¹ See Tag Gallagher, The Adventures of Robert Rossellini 246 (1999) (describing how Rossellini focused on the “possibility of individual revelation or redemption”). “As he shot … his focus … [was] the individual.” Id. at 176.Google Scholar

⁹² See Forgacs, supra note 48, at 152 (“As a matter of fact every film I make interests me for a particular scene … such as the first part of [Germany: Year Zero] … Germany: Year Zero, to tell the truth, was conceived specifically for the scene with the boy wandering on his own through the ruins.”). Thus, Rossellini, himself, explicitly confirms that his thesis argues rebirth through the individual.Google Scholar

⁹³ See supra Part C.I.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ See Rossellini, supra note 51, at 116. In order to solve the problem of hunger, the boy thinks it is normal, indeed quite heroic, to kill the father, who has become useless, so as to save the life of the brother, who, at least, has fought. This boy finds no support around him, everybody is against him. This social cost was actually two deaths because during the film's climax, Edmund jumps from a window and plunges to his death.Google Scholar

⁹⁵ See id. at 199 (“The child … kills himself in a moment of despair.”).Google Scholar

⁹⁶ See Bommarius, supra note 3. Twenty-seven belonged to the CDU and its sister party the CSU. Another twenty-seven to the SPD. Two seats belonged to both the extremely conservative Deutsche Partei (DP), the Catholic Zentrum, which in economic and social policy was close to the SPD, while in its Christian orientation it stood close to the CDU and CSU, and the German Communist party, whose representatives were fanatical opponents of the founding of a West German state and which can definitely be called a representative of the Communist regime in East Berlin. The Free Democratic Party (FDP) held a key position with five seats.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ See König et al., supra note 86; Lenning, supra note 86; see also Gallagher, supra note 92, at 280.Google Scholar

⁹⁸ See Gallagher, supra note 91, at 247 (“Edmund's … suicide—is an impulse for freedom.”). Thus, Edmund's independent act leads to freedom.Google Scholar

⁹⁹ See Letter from Frank Schorkopf, supra note 42.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁰ See Pinkert, supra note 36, at 54 (explaining that while Rosselini focuses on the Individual, Lamprecht “indicates … the level of collective”). “In fact, Lamprecht's specific articulation of an integrationist narrative requires the death of the boy ….” Id. at 50.Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ See id. at 52 (“When the body cuts through the frame, dropping into the inner crater of ruin (viscerally marked by the eerie absence of the otherwise predominant music score), the film's integrationist postwar project comes to a halt ….”).Google Scholar

¹⁰² See Shandley, supra note 19, at 124–25. The “Boy” attempted to climb to the top of the destroyed building. He fell but did not immediately die. In fact, he did not die until his father, who throughout the film had been unable to do anything but simply stare at the war's destruction, promised to rebuild his former auto garage. This scene symbolized the elders’ commitment to rebuilding the nation and providing for the suffering youth. Shortly after this scene, the young boy passes away.Google Scholar

¹⁰³ Id. Google Scholar

¹⁰⁴ See Pinkert, supra note 36, at 50 (“The film's message lies precisely in conveying that this kind of misunderstood heroism [the individualism] is not only futile but harmful.”). Similarly, rebirth requires the “symbolic entwinement of the two figures”—two (or more) working together. Id. at 53.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁵ See Hartz IV, 125 BVerfGE 175, 1 BvL 1/09 of 9 Feb. 2010, para. 4 (Ger.).Google Scholar

¹⁰⁶ See Pinkert, supra note 36, at 50.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁷ Id. at 51.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁸ Id. at 7.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁹ Id. at 58.Google Scholar

¹¹⁰ Id. Google Scholar

¹¹¹ Id. at 24, 29.Google Scholar

¹¹² Id. at 42.Google Scholar

¹¹³ Id. at 43.Google Scholar