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BERLIN (AP) — A study has concluded that the founding director of the Berlin International Film Festival made a “not insignificant” contribution to the German film system under Nazi rule and later covered up his role, festival organizers said Wednesday.
Alfred Bauer led the “Berlinale” from 1951 to 1976, building the festival into a major draw for then-West Berlin. It is now one of the major European film festivals, along with Cannes and Venice.
In January, the festival suspended a prize named for Bauer after German newspaper Die Zeit reported that he was a senior figure in the Nazis’ moviemaking bureaucracy. It said it hadn’t previously been aware of Bauer having held an important position during the Nazi era and commissioned a study from Germany’s Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History.
The study’s editor concluded that “Alfred Bauer made a not insignificant contribution to the functioning of the German film system during the Nazi dictatorship and thus to the stabilization and legitimation of Nazi rule” with his work starting in 1942 at the Reichsfilmintendanz, a body that steered Nazi film policy, a summary released by the festival said Wednesday.
“Bauer systematically shrouded this role after 1945,” it added. Files that have been viewed so far allow only “limited statements about Bauer’s personal decision-making authority and his creative leeway,” it said.
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