The book claims to explore the place of politics in German film might appear, in the eyes of the expert, naïve or, at best, overly ambitious given the sheer complexity and intricacy of the topic-assuming that indeed one agrees to speak of "one" topic. These plausible concerns appear even more valid if one considers that the essays in this volume do, in fact, explore overtly political questions addressed in seminal films ranging from the Wilhelmine era through the Weimar years and the Nazi period, the postwar years, East German cinema and West German. cinema, and finally postunification Germany.

Acknowledgments Martin Blumenthal-Barby Topologies of Film and Politics: Introduction Nicholas Baer Messianic Musclemen: Homunculus (1916) and Der Golem (1920) as Zionist Allegories Kata Gellen Real Estate, Residency, and Mobility: Circulation in Nosferatu Anton Kaes Urban Vision and Surveillance: Notes on a Moment in Karl Grune’s Die Straße Valerie A. Weinstein Third Reich Film Comedy as a Place of Politics: Masculinity, Marriage, and Mayhem in Karl Ritter’s Capriccio (1938) Jaimey Fisher The Scales of War (Films): The Sounds of Combat and Politics of Genre in Frank Wisbar’s Dogs, Do You Want to Live Forever? (1959) Thomas Elsaesser Antigone Agonistes: Urban Guerilla or Guerilla Urbanism? The Red Army Faction, Germany in Autumn and Death Game Christina Gerhardt The RAF as German and Family History: Von Trotta’s Marianne and Juliane and Petzold’s The State I Am In Larson Powell The Spectral Politics of DEFA Jennifer Ruth Hosek Geographies of Power and Surveillance: Christian Petzold’s Gespenster Trilogy Carsten Strathausen The Space of Subjectivity in Berlin School Cinema Angelica Fenner The Gen(t)rification of Heimat: Framing Hamburg’s Creative Class in Fatih Akin’s Soul Kitchen (2009) Brad Prager Lars Kraume’s The Coming Days (2010) and the History of Tomorrow: Apocalypse Not Yet Notes on Contributors Index