Flight, Return and Home in Postwar German Newsreel and Film

Abstract In the 1950s, before the advent of television, the cinema newsreel was the only medium to convey news through moving images. One important issue for newsreels was the westwards movement of Germans, from former German territories in the East and from East Germany to West Germany. Newsreel accounts of ‘refugees’, ‘resettlers’ and ‘returnees’ were used for political purposes. Thus newsreels made in the Soviet zone of occupation or the German Democratic Republic reported on the ‘good life in socialism’ for ‘resettlers’ (Umsiedler) while portraying working conditions in West Germany as exploitative; newsreels made under the Americans and British and in the German Federal Republic showed an improving standard of living in West Germany, but highlighted the challenges of life in East Germany. All German newsreels initially reported on the return of prisoners of war, although with differing emphases, but the return of the final prisoners of war from the Soviet Union in 1955 was covered only by West German newsreels. Refugees were also portrayed in German feature films of the 1950s, where their stories were sometimes romanticized, particularly in the case of Heimat films.