Improbable twins: The bifurcating heritage of Weimar culture in Helmar Lerski and Walter Frentz's kulturflms

Premiered in the spring of 1935, the flms Hände am Werk (Walter Frentz) and Avodah (Helmar Lerski) sought to propagate Nazism and Labor Zionism, respectively. The different ideological contexts notwithstanding, the structure and imagery of these flms are remarkably similar. In analyzing the similarities, this article reads these flms as commentaries on Weimar culture and its heritage. Both Lerski and Frentz utilized late Weimar aesthetics in order to envisage Zionism and Nazism, respectively, as solutions for the experience of crisis in pre-1933 Germany. Yet certain differences-in particular, their contrasting treatments of the flmed landscapes-disclose the flmmakers' disagreement on the nature of the "solution" and its implications.