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Released in 1919, Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others) stunned audiences with its straightforward depiction of queer love. Supporters celebrated the film’s moving storyline, while conservative detractors succeeded in prohibiting public screenings. Banned and partially destroyed after the rise of Nazism, the film was lost until the 1970s and only about one-third of its original footage is preserved today.
Directed by Richard Oswald and co-written by Oswald and the renowned sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, Anders als die Andern is a remarkable artifact of cinema culture connected to the vibrant pre-Stonewall homosexual rights movement of early-twentieth-century Germany. The film makes a strong case for the normalization of homosexuality and for its decriminalization, but the central melodrama still finds its characters undone by their public outing. Ervin Malakaj sees the film’s portrayal of the pain of living life queerly as generating a complex emotional identification in modern spectators, even those living in apparently friendlier circumstances. There is a strange comfort in knowing that we are not alone in our struggles, and Malakaj recuperates Anders als die Andern’s mournful cinema as an essential element of its endurance, treating the film’s melancholia both as a valuable feeling in and of itself and as a springboard to engage in an intergenerational queer struggle.
Over a century after the film’s release, Anders als die Andern serves as a stark reminder of how hostile the world can be to queer people, but also as an object lesson in how to find sustenance and social connection in tragic narratives.
“Ervin Malakaj’s Anders als die Andern is not only the first comprehensive, full-length study of this Weimar classic, but one that presents the film in a completely new light, urging its viewers to appreciate not only its historical and cultural significance as an early emancipatory cinematic work but also its all-encompassing negativity. The book is particularly relevant considering the continuing debates around political and cultural homonormativity as well as in the context of the relentless interest in the study of affect in various disciplines, including film and cultural studies. Informed by modern queer and classical film theory it is, additionally, a treat and a must-read for every cinephile.” Journal of Homosexuality
“As viewers, we can identify with Körner’s struggle because it reminds us that our own experience is ‘linked to a history of struggle that reaches from the past and into [our] present and will pattern the future.’ Malakaj is a most effective guide in taking us on that journey, thanks to this fascinating and highly readable take on a ground-breaking film from the silent era.” The BC Review
“In his definitive and scrupulously researched study of Anders als die Andern, Ervin Malakaj provides an array of illuminating critical insights, paying due attention to the scholars and popular commentators who have come before him, and offering fresh ideas of his own.“ Noah Isenberg, University of Texas at Austin
“Malakaj's analysis of Anders als die Andern through the lens of negative feelings, loss and mourning, or Malakaj ‘feeling backward,’ in Love's terminology, proposes instead not only that there can be some solace for queer individuals in reckoning with loss, but that queer politics and solidarities can be founded upon it, alongside more utopian projections.” CEU Review of Books
“For Malakaj, Anders als die Andern recalls for viewers today the struggles of past queer lives and speak to their own in the present. Malakaj's reading that encourages emotive identification with queer suffering is one that would appeal to students for affirmation of their feelings that the world is hostile to them.” German Studies Review
“I would recommend [Anders als die Andern] for anyone interested in film history, the Weimar era, and queer studies. The monograph would also function well as a seminar reading for graduate students, who would be able to dive deeper into theoretical texts cited. Malakaj’s book proves an essential contribution to the literature on director Richard Oswald’s film.” Feminist German Studies