Jan Uelzmann is Assistant Professor of German at the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.
Uelzmann’s exciting new study invites us to rethink the terms of West German democratization through an incisive analysis of government-sponsored public relations films. Focusing on how state-made PR films contributed to the project of postwar nation-building, this book poses broader questions about the role of cinema in shaping the collective imaginary and contributing to political change. * Jennifer Kapczynski, Honorary Associate Professor of German, Washington University in St. Louis, USA, and author of The German Patient: Crisis and Recovery in Postwar Culture (2008) * Staging West German Democracy is a book for all those who are part of the framework of contemporary history and/or film history ... [it is] a book to be used within television research. * MEDIENwissenschaft (Bloomsbury Translation) * Staging West German Democracy is a major new addition to the scholarly literature of media and history. Jan Uelzmann draws upon extensive archival research to document the role of the Deutsche Wochenschau in promoting and shaping the popular image of Adenauer’s modern German state. This is an important work not just for media historians but for all scholars working on the history of post-war Germany. * James Chapman, Professor of Film Studies, University of Leicester, UK, and editor of Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television *