Liesl Frank, Charlotte Dieterle and the European Film Fund. Martin Sauter

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      Liesl Frank, Charlotte Dieterle and the European Film Fund

      By Martin Sauter

      Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

      Warwick University/ German Department

      Supervised by Professor Erica Carter

      February 2010

      Liesl Frank, Charlotte Dieterle and the European Film Fund

      By Martin Sauter

      Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Warwick University/ German Department Supervised by Professor Erica Carter February 2010

      I am profoundly indebted to the many people, archives and institutions who have helped this thesis reach completion: to Warwick University for awarding me a bursary that allowed me to embark on my examination by fully concentrating on my research; to my doctoral supervisor, Professor Dr. Erica Carter who shepherded me through this thesis and who taught me what it requires to be a scholar and historian; to Professor Emeritus Dr. John Spalek, Albany, for letting me have the use of his house while I conducted research at the State University of New York at Albany, and especially for generously making his personal exile archive accessible to me; to Gero Gandert from the Kinemathek, Berlin, who encouraged me to write about the European Film Fund and who shared his knowledge about German-Jewish émigrés with me, and, also, for putting me in touch with a number of descendants of erstwhile émigrés in Hollywood; to Robert Koster, Lupita Tovar-Kohner, Pancho Kohner, Renata Lenart, and John Pommer in Los Angeles for generously giving of their time and providing me with first-hand accounts of the exile experience; to Dr. Jan-Christopher Horak, Los Angeles, who also encouraged me in my decision to make the European Film Fund the topic of my doctoral thesis; to Holly-Jane Rahlens, Berlin, for putting me in touch with Gero Gandert and Renata Lenart; to Dr. Carey Harrison, New York, for sharing his memories of his mother, Lilli Palmer, with me; to Dr. Dr. Helwig Hassenpflug, Berlin, for tirelessly answering all my questions regarding the life in exile of the late Blandine Ebinger, his former wife; to Dr. Virginia Sease, Dornach/ Switzerland, and Dr. Erich Frey, Los Angeles, for talking to me about their encounters with Liesl Frank; to Dr. Thomas Elsaesser, Amsterdam, for providing me with a copy of his interview with the late Walter Reisch.

      Thanks must also go to the many librarians and archivists who have helped and assisted me in my research: to Barbara Hall at the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills; to Caroline Sisneros at the Louis B. Mayer Library at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles; to Marje Schütze-Coburn and Rachelle Balinas Smith at the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles; to Gerrit Thiess at the Kinemathek Berlin; to John Vernon and Robert Ellis at the National Archives at College Park/ Maryland; to Mary Y. Osielski at the Grenander Department of Special Collections at the State University of New York at Albany; to Katrin Kokot and Sylvia Asmus at the Exile Archive of the German National Library at Frankfurt/ Main; to

      Miriam Intrator and Irit G. Pinchovski at the Center for Jewish History in New York; to Carmen Kaspar, Elke Tietz-Allmendinger, Hildegard Dieke and Jan Buerger at the German Literature Archive at Marbach; to Ina Prescher, Synke Vollring, Elgine Helmstädt, Nicky Rittmeyer and Andrea Rolz at the Academy of Arts in Berlin; and to Dr. Stefan Mörz at the Archives of the City of Ludwigshafen. I am also deeply indebted to Barbara Bab-Houlehan, Kentucky, and Marianne Brünn-Kortner, Berlin, for allowing me to photocopy documents pertaining to their fathers, Julius Bab and Fritz Kortner respectively. Furthermore, I would like to thank Dr. Ian Wallace, Bath, Brian Neve, Bath, Dr. Armin Loacker, Vienna, Dr. Helmut G. Asper, Bielefeld, and Werner Sudendorf, Berlin, for their help and advice.

      Last but not least, I should like to thank my former employer, Chanel S. A. in Paris, as well as my friends Martin Wörle, Frank Schott, Tülay and Ceyhan Özbek, Bruno Secchi, Benoit Dufrene, Stefan Fuhrmann and Michael Chambers for their understanding, support, and generosity over the past three years.

      Abstract

      Setting out to provide a definitive history of the European Film Fund (EFF), the purpose of this thesis is as follows: first, to draw attention to the many exile and refugee organisations by examining one of them, the EFF. As a study of a refugee organisation founded as a result of Nazism, my examination of the EFF not only fills an existing gap in film history as far as the EFF itself is concerned. Refugee organisations in general have received scant attention by exile scholars. By making one refugee organisation the focus of my inquiry, I am also highlighting the presence of women in the topic of exile as two women, Liesl Frank, wife of the writer Bruno Frank, and Charlotte Dieterle, wife of the director William Dieterle, were at the centre of the EFF. My investigation of this organisation demonstrates that women played a much larger role in exile and exile communities than history and literature have thus far accorded them. Additionally, I show how the political situation after 1933, including apathy by the international community, led to the founding of the EFF. Lastly, by shifting the focus away from figureheads of the émigré community to below-the-line film artists, technicians, theatre artists and so on, I foreground those refugees whose lives have hitherto been obscured by their more famous fellow émigrés.

      List of Abbreviations

      ASC - American Society of Cinematographers

      EFF - European Film Fund

      ERC - Emergency Rescue Committee

      ERF - European Relief Fund

      HANL - Hollywood Anti-Nazi League

      HICEM - Acronym of the names of three organisations: HIAS (=Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), ICA (Jewish Colonization Agency), and Emigdirect.

      HUAC - House Un-American Activities Committee

      IATSE - International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Moving Picture Machine Operators of the United States and Canada

      IRA - International Relief Association

      MPRF - Motion Picture Relief Fund

      Chapter One

      Introduction

      Until 1989, when the Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin, now the Deutsche Kinemathek, acquired the Paul Kohner Archive, the story of the European Film Fund was shrouded in mystery. Though references to the EFF in the then nascent field of exile research were numerous, researchers were confronted with a lack of empirical data and thus had to rely on secondary sources to research what this thesis will argue was a highly significant organisation in the history of film exile. These sources - biographies and autobiographies - tended to be vague or anecdotal in their allusions to the EFF. Referring to the sketchy picture that existed of the EFF, E. Bond Johnson, one of the first scholars to conduct research on the EFF in 1976, quoted Paul Kohner’s brother, Frederick, as commenting that, ‘the only way to write about the Fund is in a sort of Rashomon¹ - that’s how multifarious the accounts and opinions were when he began his research on this part of his brother’s activity’ (Bond Johnson in Spalek & Strelka 1976: 136). In 1975, Marta Feuchtwanger, in her oral history with Lawrence Weschler,² had already said that ‘... there was this foundation which is called European Film Fund, which was founded by Lisl [sic] Frank [...] and Charlotte Dieterle [...].What I should stress also was that the whole film people did so much for it [......]. Nobody ever speaks about it; I’m always upset that they have no more recognition’.³ The relative wealth of archival data now available on the EFF, has spawned surprisingly few investigations of this particular organisation, or indeed of similar organisations that sprang up as a result of the exile experience. To date, the most coherent account of the EFF can be found in H.G. Asper’s seminal Etwas besseres als den Tod ..., but since Asper’s intention was not to furnish a scholarly study of the organisation, his chapter on the EFF is factual and anecdotal rather than analytical. However, Asper’s pioneering account served as an inspiration for me to embark on my own investigation of this organisation.

      My thesis sets out, by contrast, to breathe new