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Resounding Eyes, Educating Minds. The Eye as a Musical Object in Wien-Film’s ‘Medical Features’

    Timur Sijaric

VIRUS Band 21, pp. 195-214, 2023/03/22

Schwerpunkt: Musik und Medizin

doi: 10.1553/virus21s195

doi: 10.1553/virus21s195


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doi:10.1553/virus21



doi:10.1553/virus21s195



doi:10.1553/virus21s195

Abstract

Against the background of the scientific and cultural-social interest in the Third Reich for the eyes and their characteristics, this paper conducts an audiovisual examination of Augen (D 1943), a Kulturfilm produced by the Wien-Film production conglomerate. This analysis is preceded by a review of two legacies principal to the paper’s investigation of Augen: the Kulturfilm genre and its ideological instrumentalisation on the one hand and the infamous “research” conducted by Dr. Josef Mengele on the other. Although unlikely that these positions influenced each other at the time, the interpretation of the organ made the inspiration and ultimately the realization of the state-sponsored research and film production, exemplified by “Eye Studies” and selected films respectively, possible. The audiovisual motif of the eyes is therefore (re)presented in an educational context but shrouded in an ideologised means of mediation.

Keywords: Augen (Eyes), Third Reich, Wien-Film, audiovisuality, Kulturfilm, 1938–1945, Vienna