Anders als die Andern: The Preservation of Loss
Neha Shaji, University of Exeter
Austrian director Richard Oswald and German–Jewish sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld’s collaboration Anders als die Andern remains, both technically and narratively, a preservation of loss. Premiering on May 24 1919, the film garnered negative attention due to its openness and acceptance of male homosexuality. It was banned a year later in 1920 by the Weimar Republic’s censor and prints of the film were amongst works burned by the Nazis when Hitler came to power. Hirschfeld and other contemporary directors later subjected the film to revisions and reconstruction. The copy I am using for this review is the Goethe-Institut’s Stefan Drößler restoration, which uses archival footage of Hirschfeld’s lectures, intertitles, and censorship documents in an attempt to reconstruct the film’s complicated flashback structure. Anders als die Andern was one of Oswald’s specialties - the Aufklärungsfilme (‘enlightenment films’) - which depicted ‘societal ills’ in order to better understand them. Other topics covered include prostitution, abortion and venereal diseases. The film was also regarded as part of Hirschfeld’s campaigns against Paragraph 175 of the German Constitution that had criminalised male homosexuality in Germany since 1871. Hirschfeld, expecting the film to be banned, preserved a written outline of Anders als die Andern in one of his yearbooks, from which the reconstructions were crafted.
Anders als die Andern follows violinist Paul Körner (played by Conrad Veidt, later of Caligari and Casabalancafame) and his burgeoning love affair with his student Kurt Sivers (Fritz Schulz). However, their illicit happiness is marred by the blackmailer Franz Bollek (Reinhold Schünzel) who requires 1000 Marks for his silence on Körner’s homosexuality. Bollek’s demands increase until Körner takes his own life through an overdose of barbiturates. As Körner comes to terms with Bollek’s extortion, the film jaggedly transitions between his memories, which include a Hirschfeld lecture and a visit to a hypnotist in an attempt to ‘cure’ himself of his homosexuality. His memories oscillate between misery and joy. For a film often referred to as the ‘first gay film’ and thus carrying the consequent historical responsibility on its shoulders, Anders als die Andern’s narrative is comparatively straightforward. It is bookended by holes, beginning and ending with the tragedy of queer suicide: the unnamed man in the newspaper headline, and then Körner himself. The largest loss, however, is situated in the middle of the film – the loss of Hirschfeld's presence and lecture, which reconstructors attempted to fill with title cards, scientific documents and archival footage. This discordance in the reconstruction serves as a marker indicating that something there too was lost. As such, the film is less of an ode to loss but rather a reminder of what was taken away, and what was subsequently recreated.
Whilst Veidt was not necessarily a household name by the time he starred in Anders als die Andern, a retrospective reading of the film casts him alongside the other heroes he played: vampiric, somewhat exotic, and androgynous. For those familiar with Hirschfeld’s work, this is unsurprising - Körner cuts neither a masculine nor feminine figure but a supernatural, tragic one. He later went on to star in the horror Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, one of Weimar Germany’s most famous films, where his character, Cesare, is incited to murder by the eponymous figure. Physically, there was nothing that set Körner out to be Anders als die Andern- he trod the in-between without resorting to crude stereotype or medical caricature, but a contemporary post mortem of the film connects him to his famous portrayals of death, loss, and tragedy. It is this tragedy that Veidt portrays spectacularly throughout the narrative, illustrating the progressive potential of loss, but also the preservation of an act of Selbstmörder (self-murder) and the reasons it happened. The lost ending of the film uses Körner’s suicide as a catalyst to outline that potential, and the advice given to Sivers is also applicable to the audience – don’t let this happen again.
But it would. Here, Oswald’s theatrical techniques hit the hardest: the majority of scenes in Anders als die Andern are shot perpendicular to the actors’ faces, often intercutting with close-ups from the same angle. Each time Körner is exposed to the letter, Bollek, or negative reactions to his sexuality, the camera first frames Veidt’s face and expression tightly from the front. It then switches to the Öffentlichkeit, the public sphere that Hirschfeld was attempting to influence in his campaign for gay rights. The shifting between the personal and the public was typical of the Aufklärungsfilm, insisting through both narrative and camerawork that Körner was one of many, quite literally part of a parade. This parade, whilst certainly steeped in respectability politics and early twentieth century figurations of ‘the noble queer’, also serves as a temporal link to the public sphere. It disconnects queerness from modernity and links it to tradition and nobility – a uniform representation of queer figures in positions of pride. Respectability politics aside, this method of normalising queer sexuality was both typical of Hirschfeld whilst also being a rare occurrence in cinema of the time. Indeed, as Körner spends half the narrative driven to a metaphorical corner: a parade of “respectable” queer figures offsets and counters the loss of dignity in Körner’s present. Additionally, Oswald’s simultaneous centering and contextualising of Körner makes the film’s ending a successful Verfremdungseffekt (the result of alienating an action from the audience theough artificiality). With Oswald’s constant intercutting between Veidt’s anguished expressions and the wider spaces (including gay spaces) that he inhabits, Körner’s suicide is no longer an individual tragedy to which an audience is passive. It becomes a deliberate act of self-murder, impacting and impacted by the general public and their attitudes.
This is where the loss of Hirschfeld’s uncut lecture is felt most keenly, as it serves as another link between the public and private narratives. The lecture was filmed with a wide angle shot, with Hirschfeld either side-on or facing the on-screen audience, once again linking the impacting and impacted by. But the film is not without queer joy, which is tremendous for a narrative so consumed by loss. Körner and Kurt are happy in their relationship, and the tragedy was caused by those around them instead of themselves. The reconstructions and restorations of the film manages to keep that momentary joy, even as they showcased loss. Whilst it is near impossible to give a reading of Anders als die Andern as it was first shown, even with Hirschfeld’s copious notes on the film, its atemporality endures even through numerous dustings of fingerprint powder.
Works Consulted
Linge, Ina, ‘Sexology, Popular Science and Queer History in Anders als die Andern’, Gender and History, 30.3 (2018), 595-610
Weber, Matthias, and Wolfgang Burgmair, '”Anders Als Die Andern” Kraepelins Gutachten Über Hirschfelds Aufklärungsfilm: Ein Beitrag Zur Psychiatriegeschichte Der Weimarer Republik', Sudhoffs Archiv, 81.1 (1997), 1-20