Barndt & von Moltke: Filmfans und Fotoamateure. Die Filmwelt 1929 – 1943

Abstract: This article analyzes the Scherl Verlag’s popular magazine Filmwelt (1929 – 1943) against the backdrop of the shift from democracy to fascism. Tracing the mix of popular film fandom and amateur photography that characterizes this »Film- und Foto-Magazin«, the authors note a gradual shift from dialogic, interactive (but also normative and didactic) modes of popular address prior to 1933 to a more unidirectional form of top-down communication during the late 1930s and into the early war years. Their reading of Filmwelt contributes to an understanding of the politics of popular culture and media in the transition towards authoritarianism. Drawing on scholarship on amateur photography, film stardom, and the German history of associations (»Vereinswesen«), the article maps both the continuity of popular discourses on photographic media across the cesura represented by the advent of National Socialism, and visible as well as invisible changes that index the increasing fascization of the magazine’s themes, rubrics, and modes of address over its fourteen-year run, as well as the instant ›aryanization‹ of its personnel in the wake of Hitler’s ascent to power in 1933.