Alienated Entertainment: Ludwig Berger’s Meistersinger Film Der Meister von Nürnberg (1927)

TY - JOUR

T1 - Alienated Entertainment

T2 - Ludwig Berger’s Meistersinger Film Der Meister von Nürnberg (1927)

AU - Sheil, Áine

N1 - © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal Musical Association. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.

PY - 2021/11/1

Y1 - 2021/11/1

N2 - Der Meister von Nürnberg is a silent film adaptation of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg remembered chiefly for the protests it generated on its release in 1927. Several authors refer to it briefly in reception histories of Die Meistersinger, but the film has not yet attracted sustained attention either within Wagner scholarship or within literature on opera and film. Der Meister von Nürnberg is, however, an effective lens through which to examine sensitivities in opera’s relationship with film in 1920s Germany, as well as various ambiguities in Weimar-era film making and consumption. The film constitutes fascinating proof of the historically conditioned reverence for Wagner’s Die Meistersinger that existed within conservative opera criticism in 1920s Germany, while its ephemerality serves as a key to understanding several wider features of the Weimar cultural landscape. In this sense, the film exceeds curiosity status and emerges as a multivalent artefact of a complex, contradiction-ridden time.

AB - Der Meister von Nürnberg is a silent film adaptation of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg remembered chiefly for the protests it generated on its release in 1927. Several authors refer to it briefly in reception histories of Die Meistersinger, but the film has not yet attracted sustained attention either within Wagner scholarship or within literature on opera and film. Der Meister von Nürnberg is, however, an effective lens through which to examine sensitivities in opera’s relationship with film in 1920s Germany, as well as various ambiguities in Weimar-era film making and consumption. The film constitutes fascinating proof of the historically conditioned reverence for Wagner’s Die Meistersinger that existed within conservative opera criticism in 1920s Germany, while its ephemerality serves as a key to understanding several wider features of the Weimar cultural landscape. In this sense, the film exceeds curiosity status and emerges as a multivalent artefact of a complex, contradiction-ridden time.

U2 - 10.1017/rma.2021.13

DO - 10.1017/rma.2021.13

M3 - Article

SN - 0269-0403

VL - 146

SP - 1

EP - 29

JO - Journal of the Royal Musical Association

JF - Journal of the Royal Musical Association

IS - 1

ER -