The Broken Jug and Nazi Ideology

Imagine you were writing a paper on the Broken Jug. How would you address its position as a Nazi film? Some helpful ways of thinking of this question (you do not need to use all of them or any of them!) What categories would you use to answer this question? How does the film associate with Nazi culture? How might you organize your argument?

If I were to write a paper on The Broken Jug and its function as a Nazi film, I believe I would begin by focusing on the connection the film has with the ideology of a perfect order and the way the audience is aware of the one who is guilty of disrupting this order. As we discussed in class, in its original conception in the play by Kleist, the jug represented an ordered world which, after it is broken, can not be fixed. However, the film version does not present this as the case. Instead, the one who has disturbed the order of righteousness and justice, Judge Adam, is cast out of society by the very order he disturbed. This, then, is clearly in line with Nazi ideology as it expressed its obvious wish for a perfect order. This order, they felt, was threatened by a very clear and obvious enemy, the Jew, who was the cause of disorder in society. This is why I feel the audiences awareness of the guilty party in the film is so crucial. Just as the audience member knew, near the outset, that Judge Adam was the guilty party, so to did the German people know that it was the Jew who was causing the disorder and chaos in Germany and the world. At the same time, those who are guilty, Judge Adam and the Jews, never admit their guilt and it will not be until the just order has cast them out that absolute order can be fully restored. To keep them around would be a constant threat to the purity of that order. Lastly, I think it is important to note that in this film, one man is the cause of an incredible amount of disorder. If one man can cause all of this chaos, consider how ten, or twenty, or millions could cause disorder. If there is a threat to order, then the order must, and will, rid itself of that which disrupts it.