From Print to Film: political Censorship and Nationalism in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Central Europe

Authors

• Kartik Joshi, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Keywords

Political Censorship, Nationalism, Modern Central Europe, Film, Media

Abstract

From Print to Film: Political Censorship and Nationalism in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Central Europe examines the relationship between emerging media technologies, state censorship, and nationalist political movements in Central Europe. Focusing primarily on Austria, the German states, and Hungary, this article traces how governments employed increasingly sophisticated systems of press regulation to suppress nationalist and subversive political discourse while political actors developed their own methods for circumventing those restrictions. The article considers censorship of newspapers, satire, lithographs, and other printed materials before examining the transformative effects of cinema in the twentieth century. As film became increasingly difficult to regulate through traditional censorship mechanisms, it simultaneously emerged as a powerful medium for political persuasion and propaganda. The evidence of this transformation emerges through two contrasting examples, Nazi Germany's use of film to promote antisemitic nationalism and the Hungarian film The Red Hussars as an indirect critique of foreign political domination. In particular, the discussion of Jud Süß illustrates how historical fiction could be manipulated to legitimize antisemitic ideology, while The Red Hussars demonstrates how historical narratives could encode resistance to contemporary political authority under conditions of censorship. Technological changes in media did not diminish the political struggle over information and representation; instead, they transformed the means through which states and political movements could suppress, shape, and disseminate nationalist ideas.

Recommended Citation

Joshi, Kartik () "From Print to Film: political Censorship and Nationalism in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Central Europe," The Ozark Historical Review: Vol. 53, Article 5.

Available at: https://scholarworks.uark.edu/ohr/vol53/iss1/5