Dr. Lee Holt

This seminar explores the genre of the Bergfilm at multiple analytical levels. The Bergfilme were screened in the cinemas of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich at an unusually turbulent historical moment in which debates raged about class (the bourgeois Alpenverein vs. the socialist Naturfreunde), race (the exclusion of Jews from alpine organizations), environment (how much tourism was too much?), gender (the representation of masculinity and femininity), militarism (the Alps were often lauded as an ideal training ground for soldiers), the body (new consciousness of health, strength and endurance), modernity (technological encroachment in the Alps) and nationalism (both in domestic alpine policy and international expeditions). As a product of its time, the Bergfilm therefore grappled with these issues in ways that reflected on and shaped debates that were current at the time. Yet the Bergfilm also had deep historical roots in alpine literature – a genre strongly influenced by the Romantic fascination with altered states, irrationalism, emotionalism and dreams – and in alpine photography. The Bergfilm therefore offers a vehicle for the assessment of the crucial cultural transition from literary to visual modes of representation. Films to be screened include Der heilige Berg (1926), Die weiße Hölle vom Piz Palü (1929), Stürme über dem Mont Blanc (1930), Das blaue Licht (1932), Der verlorene Sohn (1934), Into Thin Air: Death on Everest (1997), and Nordwand (2008).