Just three weeks before the start of one of the largest film festivals in the world, the Berlinale make previously unknown allegations: How the German weekly “Die Zeit” found out when doing research in the Berlin State Archives Alfred Bauer, who headed the festival for the first time from 1951 to 1976, apparently was a high-ranking official in the Nazi Reich Film Directorate. From 1942, Bauer is said to have monitored the use of actors, directors and other filmmakers and even had a say in which filmmakers were released from the front and who had to go to the armaments industry.
In addition, he is said to have been a member of numerous National Socialist organizations, such as the NSDAP, the SA and the National Socialist German Student Union. The newspaper also quotes the GAU management in Mainfranken, which Bauer rates as an “eager SA man”. Bauer himself tried to systematically cover up his traces after the war and claimed to have left the organizations before the war – but no evidence was found.
Confronted with the publications, the festival management reacted quickly: The article cited “sources that play the role of Alfred Bauer, the first director of the International Film Festival Berlin“re-illuminate in National Socialist film politics,” said the International Film Festival. The prominent position Alfred Bauers in the National Socialism was not known to the festival so far. And: “We welcome the research and publication in the ‘Zeit’ and take up the new information situation in order to process the festival history with external scientific support.”
As a first step, the awarding of the Alfred Bauer Prize will be suspended: it has been awarded to works that open up new perspectives in film art. The winners include: Baz Luhrmann. Zhang Yimou. Andres Veiel and Nora Fingscheidt.
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