Starting all over again

New music in post-war Germany

Immediately after World War II, in the so-called "Stunde Null" ("Zero Hour"), the occupying powers in East and West Germany were in agreement: Germans should see and hear what the Nazis had defamed and banned as "degenerate art" and "degenerate music" - music from America and the Soviet Union, works by Jewish composers, and the European avant-garde of Schönberg, Berg, Eisler and Webern. But soon, like Germany itself, musical modernism split in two: serial music in the West, Socialist Realism in the East. Cultural policy became a mirror of the division. The film asks why, for a short time, the avant-garde could almost become popular - and how the ideologies of the two emerging German states inscribed themselves in their music.

Cast

Maren Köster

Pierre Boulez

Ian Pace

Olga Neuwirth

Katja Blomberg

Frank Schneider

Klaus Schultze

Björn Gottstein

Ulrich Mosch

Joern Peter Hiekel

Nuria Schoenberg Nono

Daniel Pozner

Roman Trekel

Fabrizio Chiovetta

Friederike Wißmann

Helmut Lachenmann

Markus Stockhausen

Christoph Caskel

Robyn Schulkowsky

Igor Levit

Gisela Nauck

Daniela Reinhold

Gerhard Steinke

Credits

Camera

Volker Becker-Battaglia

Hans Albrecht Lusznat

Hans Schauerte

Alberto Herskovits

Christian Offenberg

Sound

Adrian von Ripka

Roman Trekel

Editing

Volker Becker-Battaglia

Carolle Alain

Sound Mix

Nico Krebs

Christoph Merkele

Research and editorial Collaboration

Ian Pace

Dagmar Henn

Thomas Neumann / Neumgraf

Julia Basler

Johannes Sommerhäuser

Graphics and Animations

Michael Wende

Peter Otto Dittmann

Jamie Goodenough

Commissioning Editor

Christopher Janssen

Narrator

August Zirner

Andreas Neumann