Dr. Grit Wesser

S. Interdisziplinär II: Screening Socialist Sexualities: East German Social Life on DEFA Celluloid Film

Instructors: Dr. Grit Wesser
Shortname: 05.FTMK.24_110
Course No.: 05.FTMK.24_110
Course Type: Seminar

Anwesenheitspflicht

This block seminar requires attendance.

Recommended reading list

Selected Readings:

Frackman, Kyle and Fay Stewart (eds.) 2018. Gender and Sexuality in East German Film: Intimacy and Alienation. Martlesham: Boydell & Brewer.

Frackman, Kyle. 2022. Coming Out. Martlesham: Boydell & Brewer.

Heiduschke, Sebastian. 2013. East German Cinema: DEFA and Film History. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.

McLellan, Josie. 2011. Love in the Times of Communism: Intimacy and Sexuality in the GDR. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schicker, Juliane. 2022. ‘Gender, Sex, and the Socialist Personality in Herrmann Zschoche's Sieben Sommersprossen (1978).’ Feminist German Studies. 38 (2): 26-49.

Stewart, Fay. 2017. ‘“Nicht so schnell!”: Female Sexuality and Socialism in DEFA Youth Films’. Colloquia Germanica. 50 (1): 35-54

Contents

Screening Socialist Sexualities: East German Social Life on DEFA Celluloid Film
 
This block seminar examines social life in late socialist East Germany through cinema films produced by the GDR state-owned film studio DEFA. It explores the depictions of intimacies, desires, sexualities and gender relations in four popular DEFA films of the 1970s and 1980s that are today considered to have gained cult status. Over two weekends students will explore these films ethnographically to gain an understanding of the aspirational and pragmatic approaches to sexual politics and their (un)intended consequences in the ‘dictatorship of love’ (Stefan Wolle). We will contextualise and critically analyse these cinematic representations and their reception in the GDR caught between the ideals of the state’s promoted socialist morality and the reality of people’s everyday life in ‘actually existing socialism’.

This seminar comprises four parts:
Day 1: Youth and First Love.
Sieben Sommersprossen. Directed by Hermann Zschoche. DEFA, 1978.
 
Day 2: Marriage and Divorce.
Die Legende von Paul und Paula. Directed by Heiner Carow. DEFA, 1973.
 
Day 3: Uncensored Desires.
Solo Sunny. Directed by Konrad Wolf and Wolfgang Kohlhaase. DEFA, 1980.
 
Day 4: Non-Heteronormativity. 
Coming Out. Directed by Heiner Carow. DEFA, 1989.
 

Additional information

Please note: This course is taught in English, but films shown are in German.

Dates

Date (Day of the week)	Time	Location
12/06/2024 (Friday)	12:00 - 14:00	Online Sitzung
01/18/2025 (Saturday)	10:15 - 15:45	01 411 P101 1141 - Philosophisches Seminargebäude
01/19/2025 (Sunday)	10:15 - 15:45	01 411 P101 1141 - Philosophisches Seminargebäude
01/25/2025 (Saturday)	10:15 - 15:45	01 411 P101 1141 - Philosophisches Seminargebäude
01/26/2025 (Sunday)	10:15 - 15:45	01 411 P101 1141 - Philosophisches Seminargebäude