Stereotypes and Jewish Musical Topics in East German Film: Ambiguities and Allosemitism in Hotel Polan und seine Gäste

Abstract

The miniseries Hotel Polan und seine Gäste tells the story of three generations of a Jewish family of hoteliers in Bohemia from 1908 to National Socialist persecution. Produced by GDR television in the early 1980s, the series was subsequently broadcast in other European countries and met with a mixed reception. Later on, scholars evaluated it as blatantly antisemitic and anti-Zionist. This essay seeks to re-evaluate these prerogatives by centring the analysis of the miniseries on a close reading of its music—a method not often used in Jewish studies, but a suitable lens through which to interrogate the employment of stereotypes, especially in film, and in light of textual sources from the Cold War era often being reflective of ideologies rather than facts. Employing critical theories of cultural studies and film music, it seeks to identify stereotypes and their dramatic placement and to analyse their operation. It asserts that story, image, and sound constitute both synchronous and asynchronous agents that perpetuate various stereotypes associated with Jews, thereby placing Hotel Polan in the liminal space of allosemitism. Constructed through difference from a perceived norm, Hotel Polan ultimately represents a space in which the egregious stereotype and the strategic employment of types meet. Its deployment of Jewish musical topics specifically shows that it is less their dramatic function that is of relevance, but the discourse that they have the power to enable.