%0 Journal Article
%T Martin Luther in Primetime. Television Fiction and Cultural Memory Construction in Cold War Germany
%A Stewart Anderson
%J View : Journal of European Television History and Culture
%D 2013
%I Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
%X In 1983, both East and West Germany celebrated Martin Luther¡¯s 500th birthday with great fanfare.  Nowhere was this competition more provocative and visually arresting, however, than in two multi-part television plays which depicted Luther¡¯s life: the West German Martin Luther, broadcast by the public station ZDF in April, and the East German title of the same name, aired in October.  In this essay, I argue that the East German version constituted an appropriative strategy of memory formation ¨C one which depicted Luther¡¯s positive qualities and grafted them into the Marxist canon of heroes.  In contrast, the ZDF Martin Luther, which featured a highly rational Luther, projected what Jan Assmann has termed a normative strategy of harnessing Luther¡¯s memory, focusing on Luther¡¯s intellectual arguments and anti-radicalism.
%K Martin Luther
%K ZDF
%K DFF
%K Cold War
%K Collective Memory
%U http://rdbg.tuxic.nl/euscreen-ojs/index.php/view/article/view/58