Invisible Sculpture, Latent Violence, and Monumental Parody in Mädchen in Uniform

Abstract

According to Robert Musil, the modern monument is characterized by invisibility. Remediated in film, monuments have tended to recede still further from critics’ and viewers’ attention. A similar vanishing act appears to have happened to the sculptural opening sequence of Leontine Sagan’s Mädchen in Uniform, whose audiences and critics have been primarily focused on the film’s groundbreaking lesbian theme. This article looks at, rather than past, the Prussian monuments that populate German film from the 1920s onwards and that are a pervasive presence in Sagan’s film. As a counterpoint to these hyper-virile sculptures, it also considers the counter-monumentality of sculpture by women during the Weimar Republic, notably by the film’s screenplay author, Christa Winsloe, and the parodic deployment of statues as they enter interior spaces in the film.