Male Conquest of the Female Continent in Veit Harlan's "Opfergang" (1944)

The article analyzes the formation and legitimization of decidely fascist gender constructs in Veit Harlan's Opfergang (1944). The film articulates a dual vision of femininity characterized in the opposing terms of passion and sacrifice, personified, respectively, in the erotic, foreign adultress and the angelic, nearly asexual wife. Masculinity, embodied in the male explorer, is associated with mobility and territorial conquest. The explorer's attempt to master both women, thematized as a type of colonization, results in the elimination of the erotic woman, the transference of her sensuality in a modified form to the formerly effete wife, and the taming of unproductive male desire. The culminating aestheticizing of female death exemplifies how any threat to the stability of the nuclear family is neutralized. Cloaked thus in the guise of entertainment, Opfergang advances Nazi ideology regarding racial purity, marriage, sacrifice, and dominance.