DEFA’s Depiction of Native Americans in its Indianerfilme [Part 1 of 3]

 By Jennifer Michaels

Many Europeans, especially Germans, have long been fascinated with Native Americans whose imagined culture they have appropriated for a variety of different agendas and by so doing have essentialized “the Indian”. Lischke and McNab observe that non-Aboriginal peoples “often fail to understand the sheer diversity and multiplicity and the shifting identities of Aboriginal people” and have represented “‘Indians’ as European categories of thought rather than as human beings”. Reflecting on such imaginaries the Anishinabe cultural critic Gerald Vizenor notes in his book Fugitive Poses: Native American Indian Scenes of Absence and Presence (1998) that before colonial times the term “Indian” did not exist. It was invented by Euro-Americans. In his view, “the Indian” is “a simulation without a referent”. DEFA’s Indianerfilme were shaped both by ideological intents and by what Hartmut Lutz terms “Indianthusiasm”. Die Söhne der großen Bärin (1966, The Sons of the Great Mother Bear) was so successful – around ten million GDR citizens saw the film – that it led to other popular Indianerfilme throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s. Unlike the enormously popular West German westerns of the 1960s, based loosely on Karl May’s Winnetou and sometimes called “Sauerkraut” or “Spätzle” westerns, DEFA’s Indianerfilme do not depict Native Americans as a homogenous group, but instead attempt to present different tribes and time periods. Yet with their focus on imperialism, colonialism and genocide the films consciously appropriated Native Americans for the Cold War struggle. Although DEFA prided itself on its historical portrayal of Native Americans, it nevertheless borrowed them for GDR politics of anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism and perpetuated such romanticized stereotypes of Native Americans as “noble savages”, popularized by May. In these films, “the Indian” with his perceived stoicism and struggle for freedom was utilized as a potent, yet also defeated symbol of resistance.

To appreciate depictions of Native Americans in the East German westerns, it is useful to consider briefly their previous images in American westerns. Early American silent westerns frequently showed Native Americans positively and often included friendships between them and whites. Some were set “entirely within tribal communities or feature a ‘noble redskin’ as guide or savior to the white hero”. As in the Indianerfilme there is a tone of nostalgia about “civilization’s advance and the native’s demise”. Later, however, many westerns depicted Native Americans as savage and degraded, as “one more roadblock thrown by nature against the advance of pioneers”. Gerald Vizenor observes that westerns “are not cultural visions, but the vicious encounters with the antiselves of civilization, the invented savage”. In pro-progress westerns, Native Americans are stereotyped as violent and treacherous to justify their defeat. John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), for example, is “one of the most viciously anti-Indian films ever made” because “the entire film is in effect an argument in favor of killing Indians as the only solution to the ‘Indian Problem’”.  In contrast, many anti-progress American westerns create different stereotypes of Native Americans as noble and virtuous and often treat them patronizingly.

DEFA, the state-owned film studios in the GDR, was not blind to the success of the West German westerns of the early 1960s. Because they were banned in the GDR citizens travelled to Czechoslovakia to see them. The GDR government dismissed May as a bourgeois author of trivial literature and banned his works. That Hitler had enjoyed his stories further harmed his reputation in the post-World War II era. When DEFA proposed making a western or Indianerfilm, their preferred name that highlights their focus on “the Indian”, the studio had to conform to GDR cultural policy that literature and film “educate” the public. DEFA used a Marxist-Leninist perspective to depict Native Americans in the struggle against U.S. imperialism. Through their attention to history “the producers and filmmakers were hoping to infuse what state officials considered a sensationalist and escapist genre with an enlightening and educative purpose”. Through telling the story of the “Indians” the producers wanted to teach young people about the evils of capitalism. In an article in the Berliner Zeitung in 1971 Günter Karl, the chief dramaturge of the DEFA group “Roter Kreis” (red circle), which produced many of the Indianerfilme and included such prominent directors as Josef Mach, Gottfried Kolditz and Konrad Petzold, emphasized the group’s historical-materialist perspective, but also pointed out that to be effective they had to use successful aspects of the western genre, including a “gewisse Romantik” (a certain romanticism) in their treatment of Native Americans. In contrast to the West German westerns’ lack of concern with historical accuracy (for example totem poles, clearly modeled on those from the Pacific Northwest, appear in some scenes of Mescalero Apache villages), DEFA stressed that its films were based on historical documents, and the studio worked with Dr. Lothar Dräger from the Leipzig ethnographic museum to achieve historical authenticity. Günter Karl, who wrote the script for Spur des Falken (Trail of the Falcon), for example, not only conducted extensive historical research, but also used support from the Leipzig Ethnographic Museum. As Torner has observed about the film Osceola, however, Dräger idealized Seminole culture “via a hybrid of Völkerkunde (ethnography) and Marxist-Leninism”, an idealization that also informed his perceptions of Native American tribes in the other DEFA films. The supposed anthropological authenticity was, therefore, filtered through romanticized versions of Native Americans that perpetuated stereotypes. Thus, like American and West German westerns “the Indian” becomes in the DEFA films an ideological construct.

DEFA used this “quintessentially” American genre to sharply criticize the United States. It did little, however, “to question established genre conventions” and accepted “a certain degree of Americanization” in order to “gain favor with home audiences”, tired of “DEFA’s political fables”. The films closely follow the conventions of the western genre, including, for example, tavern scenes, action shots of “Indian” attacks, ambushes of stagecoaches and railroads, and shootouts. Where they differ is in their positive depictions of Native Americans. By adhering closely to these conventions DEFA undermined, however, its attempts at differentiation and authenticity in its portrayal of Native Americans. In particular these attempts collided with the studio’s decision to adopt the star system. Following the western genre’s use of white actors playing their Native American roles in what Katrin Sieg terms “ethnic drag” and noting the success of Pierre Brice as Winnetou in the West German westerns, DEFA chose the Yugoslav actor Gojko Mitić to impersonate all its Native American protagonists. As a result, Mitic came to represent “the Indian”, thereby working against DEFA’s goal to differentiate the various tribes: “The faces of all tribes (. . .) were collapsed into Mitic’s strong jaw, exaggerated red make-up, a long black-haired wig and muscular torso”. Mitic had already played parts in some West German Winnetou films, for example, in Unter Geiern (1964, Frontier Hellcat) where he was the chief’s son Wokadeh. Through his various Native American roles for DEFA Mitic became a superstar with a large following of enthusiastic fans in East Germany and other Eastern European countries and later, after the demise of the GDR, also in the West. Whenever Mitic appeared, there were spontaneous mass rallies that the GDR government had not even ordered. He became “a role model for children, the dream of teenage girls, and an ideal son-in-law – a particularly Teutonic form of model Indian and model citizen”. The athletic Mitic, who had studied sport, performed all his own stunts, once being bitten by a horse, and during the filming of Chingachkook in the Tatra Mountains his canoe capsized several times in the cold lake. Ironically, Mitic, who played the Indian “Other”, was for East Germans also an “Other” since he was from Yugoslavia, and in the films his voice was always dubbed by a native German speaker. Although Mitic spoke German fluently, he did so with an accent. The director Konrad Petzold justified such dubbing by saying that in American westerns “Indians” often speak incorrect English, which he saw as discrimination, hence the East German “Indian” hero had to speak correct German, since it would have been “happig”, a colloquial phrase meaning “a bit much”, if an “Indian” spoke with a Slavic accent.

 

[To be continued]