Scripting Genocide : The Wannsee Conference on Television, 1960-2022 / Nicholas K. Johnson, University of Luxembourg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Johnson, Nicholas K., Author.

Contributor:

funder.

Series:

Public History in European Perspectives , 2629-4702 ; 3

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (XIII, 404 p.)

Place of Publication:

München Wien De Gruyter Oldenbourg, [2025]

Language Note:

In English.

Biography/History:

Nicholas K. Johnson, University of Münster, Germany.

Summary:

Scripting Genocide traces the history of how and why the Wannsee Conference has repeatedly attracted the attention of American, British, and German artists, writers, and filmmakers since 1960. Almost all of their televisual depictions of the conference itself are sparse, minimalist, dialogue-driven productions. Their subtle, almost scholarly projection of the conference stands in stark contrast to the large-scale and often critically acclaimed attention devoted to other aspects of the Holocaust in both big-budget theatrical films and European art cinema. Scripting Genocide investigates how the dramatic, fictionalized depictions of the Wannsee Conference offered filmmakers, and especially screenwriters, opportunities to be public historians. This book also contains the final interviews with screenwriters Paul Mommertz and Loring Mandel. Following the methods of the New Film History, which is grounded in archival production material, oral history interviews, and screenplay analysis, this book asks why and how filmmakers have grappled with portraying Wannsee in dramatic form since the 1960s. Each of these docudramas contributed to a diffuse body of work the author conceptualizes as "antifascist television." In the end, all of these productions argue that words prefigure deeds.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Dedication

Contents

1People on Tuesday: An Introduction

Early Portrayals of the Wannsee Conference on American Television, 1960-1994

Psychoanalyzing Nazi Perpetrators on Television - Reinhard Heydrich - Manager of Terror (1977)

A Production History of The Wannsee Conference (1984)

The Wannsee Conference (1984) and its West German Reception

The Origins of HBO's Conspiracy and its Unproduced Sequel, Complicity, 1995-1997

Writing and Filming Conspiracy, 1998-2000

Wannsee as Prestige Television Drama and the fate of Complicity: 2001-2003

The Conference and Portraying Holocaust Perpetrators in the 2020s

372Conclusion

Notes:

This eBook is made available Open Access under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed December 19 2025)

ISBN:

3-11-157959-X

3-11-157945-X