Associate Professor of German Graduate Coordinator Study Abroad in Berlin Co-director Jan Uelzmann teaches courses on all aspects of German studies, with a particular emphasis on 20th century culture, literature, and media. Before coming to UGA, he served as Associate Professor of German and Associate Chair of the School of Modern Languages at Georgia Tech. He has directed study abroad programs in Germany for over ten years and serves as the co-director (with Berna Gueneli) for the new Film, Art, and Cultural History in Berlin study abroad program in Berlin, which had its first run in summer 2024. His research merges approaches from cultural history, cultural studies, film studies, and literary studies to explore questions related to post-WWII democratization, governmental media policies of the Adenauer period, Cold War politics, early images and conceptions of Europe, and the provisional capital Bonn. His book Staging West German Democracy: Governmental PR Films and the Democratic Imaginary, 1953-1963 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) examines how political “founding discourses” of the nascent FRG were reflected, reinforced, and actively manufactured by the Federal government through PR films produced in conjunction with the West German newsreel system Deutsche Wochenschau. His current book project Deutschlandspiegel: West Germany's Filmic Calling Card During the Cold War, examines the FRG's self-representation to Cold War allies and opponents though the government-produced, monthly filmic magazine of the same name during the 1950s and 60s. He has published widely on West German postwar cultural history, film and literature, and his articles have appeared in German Studies Review, The German Quarterly, Monatshefte, Seminar, Colloquia Germanica, and Journal of Cold War Studies. Research Research Interests: Current Book Project: Deutschlandspiegel: West Germany's Filmic Calling Card During the Cold War, 1954-1964 (in progress) The Deutschlandspiegel newsreel, produced through the Federal Press Office for international release between 1954 and 2004, represented the Federal Republic to the world. Especially during the Cold War, when it was distributed to the FRG’s diplomatic missions and cultural centers abroad in 10 languages, Deutschlandspiegel provided a state-distributed narrative about the West German democracy. In this regard, it represented a communication to both allies and foes during the global struggle for military and economic influence. In the German-German Cold War dynamic, Deutschlandspiegel countered the anti-West German narratives of the GDR as in the East German newsreel Der Augenzeuge, or the Auslandsinformationsfilme. After reconstructing the rationale, production, and distribution practices behind Deutschlandspiegel, the study analyzes Deutschlandspiegel segments of the 1950s and 60s that focus on Cold War politics (particularly Berlin), economic and developmental aid, and the gendered "economic miracle" and consumer society. During the conflict of the systems and at an escalating moment in the Cold War, driven by realigned and recalibrated notions of a post-fascist “German identity,” Deutschlandspiegel argues that the FRG has the upper hand in the conflict as a thriving and internationally-connected Western democracy, which sets it apart from the ostensibly failing states under Soviet influence, such as the GDR. It arrives at this message by juxtaposing kaleidoscopic impressions from all walks of German life that document the processes of a working democracy, Cold War economic and military partnerships, as well as forward-oriented narratives of West German culture and technology. These images and commentary were cleansed from their associations with Nazism and carefully aligned to create the image of a Western-oriented democracy and respected partner in the Western Cold War and European project. Book: Staging West German Democracy: Governmental PR Films and the Democratic Imaginary, 1953-1963 (2019) My book examines how political “founding discourses” of the nascent Federal Republic were reflected, reinforced, and actively manufactured by the West German, state-owned newsreel system, the Deutsche Wochenschau (DW). This study reconstructs the DW’s integral role in providing pro-government propaganda in a democratic media system through documentary films that the DW produced for the federal government. Dubbed Kanzlerfilme (chancellor-films), these films report on Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s political achievements, the provisional capital Bonn, or on foreign policy events, such as Adenauer’s state visits to the US, France or the Soviet Union, and on visits to the FRG by US Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. The films unabashedly celebrate Adenauer and his political achievements for the FRG. By looking at the institutional history of the DW and its close relationship to the Government Press Office (Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung), I trace the Adenauer administration’s project of maintaining a “government channel” in an increasingly diverse, de-centralized and democratic West German media landscape. In my analysis of the films, I argue that apart from providing election propaganda for Adenauer’s CDU party, these films provided an important stabilizing factor for the FRG’s project of explaining and promoting democracy to its citizens, and of defining its public image and its new capital Bonn against the Nazi past and the GDR. Combining approaches from cultural history, film studies, history, and sociology, this project will help close an evident research gap on West German newsreels and add in important ways to our understanding of the media’s role, particularly the role of propaganda, in the West German nation building process. Education Ph.D. Germanic Studies, The University of Texas at Austin Selected Publications Books Staging West German Democracy: Governmental PR Films and the Democratic Imaginary, 1953-1963. New York: Bloomsbury, 2019. Journal Articles and book chapters "Ending the Erbfeindschaft: Neighbors, a West German Governmental PR Film, and the Manipulation of Collective Memory in the Context of the Elysée Treaty (1963)," The Moving Image (2025). Forthcoming. "Towards Prosperity and Peace: The Beginnings of the European Project in the West German Governmental PR Film Der erste Schritt," Seminar: A Journal of German Studies 60.3 (2024): 235-256. “German Technology and Education for ‘Young Nations:’ The Cold War Politics and Aesthetics of Development Aid in two West German Government PR Films of 1961.” In Science on Screen and Paper: Media Cultures of Knowledge Production in Cold War Europe, edited by Mariana Ivanova and Juliane Scholz, 230-251. New York: Berghahn Press, 2024. "The Wall in People's Heads: Teaching About the Long-Lingering Aftermath of the Fall of the Berlin Wall." Hiram Maxim and Katherine Arens (eds.) Celebrating Janet Swaffar: A Festschrift. Austin: Agarita Press, 2023. 111-146. "Backlash Against Bonn: The Building Freeze in the Bonn Federal District and the 'Berlin Initiatives" of 1956", German Studies Review 46.1 (2023): 35-56. “Foundational Narratives: West German Nation-Building through State-Sponsored PR Films, 1953-1963.” Jennifer Kapczynski and Caroline Kita (eds). The Arts of Democratization: Styling Political Sensibilities in Postwar West Germany. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2022. 209-229. “Building Domestic Support for West Germany's Integration into NATO, 1953-1955", Journal of Cold War Studies 22.2 (2020): 133-162. "Symbolic Homecoming of the 'Hero-Father': Realignment of National Memory in the Neue Deutsche Wochenschau Special Feature on Konrad Adenauer's 1955 State Visit to Moscow", Colloquia Germanica 45.1 (2012/15): 41-68. "Bonn, Divided City: City Scape as Political Critique in Wolfgang Koeppen's Das Treibhaus and Günther Weisenborn's Auf Sand gebaut", Seminar: A Journal of German Studies 50.4 (2014): 436-460. Other Relevant Academic Information Provost Fellow for Faculty Development, Georgia Tech, 2022 Texas Foreign Language Teaching Excellence Award, College of Liberal Arts, The University of Texas at Austin, 2011
