Snapshots in Time

Peter Kraemer ’94 mirrors German filmmaker’s project

By Sherri Kimmel

A decade ago, when Peter Kraemer ’94 saw a documentary film in Wolfgang Müller’s German class, he grabbed a video camera and set out to create a time capsule on film, like the one he’d seen in class, only using his fellow students as subjects.

The film that so moved Kraemer was In the Middle of Life. Director Heinz Blumensath was on hand that May day in 1994 when Kraemer encountered the film, the third in what is now a series of four films that Blumensath and co-director Klaus Sage began shooting in 1972.

Now in his 60s, Blumensath was, in 1972, a high-school German and social-science teacher who wanted to try his hand at film creation. The early ’70s was the heyday of rebellious youth in Germany, as in many other nations, and Blumensath thought the opinions of eight high-school seniors from his Berlin school would make a provocative subject.

Peter Kraemer ’94 at the time he began his project (top) and now, 10 years later.

After making the first film, the directors decided to do follow-up interviews every 10 years. These updates on the lives of their subjects have appeared on German TV. The latest, 50—50, is a contribution to the Berlin Film Festival in February and thereafter may be released in theatres internationally or on television.

Kraemer began his project a decade ago by toting his camera to a German majors’ graduation party in what was then the German House.

“I did 12- to 15-minute interviews with whom-ever came to the party. I asked questions similar to those being used in the documentary, really simple questions but ones that might not change over time. ‘What is important to you? What do you see yourself doing in 10 years?’ These were questions that placed people where they were at the moment, like snapshots in time.”

Like his movie-making mentor, Kraemer determined to do follow-up interviews every 10 years. As of late fall, he had completed three of 10 interviews, in Germany, where Melanie Schauf Herms ’95, Sharon Valentine ’94 and Zoe Singer Rouwen ’94 now live.

“Their situations had changed,” says Kraemer. “They were living farther from their families [of origin], and all have children. But they have not changed in the sense of who they truly are. They are all still curious and very smart people. We joked, though, that in 10 years, we may have to do the interviews in German as they become more acculturated.

“It was particularly nice to interview Melanie,” Kraemer continues. “She is very much a mother but is very much the friend I had then. It’s not as though we haven’t talked for 10 years, but it was the first time we were able to talk, without distractions, about personal things in our lives. From my training in oral history at Dickinson, I find that things don’t change entirely in life. The values orientation remains the same.”

His plan is to show each subject his or her vignette from a decade earlier. He expects that each new installation will be like the second one, at 40 minutes, longer and more in depth. Right now he’s pondering how he’ll travel to all the locations.

“Bernadette [Guckin ’94] lives in Los Angeles. I will be chasing Dickinsonians from New York to Los Angeles and in between.”

He’s also concerned with preservation of the original videotapes.

“I have lots of time to think about how to use the project, but it’s important to get the interviews and get them in a safe place. I’ve moved every year since I left Dickinson, and I would like to get the tapes to somewhere where they are not moving as well.” The place he intends is Dickinson’s Community Studies Center.

The documentary project is the perfect melding of Kraemer’s two majors—history and German. “It’s not just the German work that inspired me to do this. My adviser for history was Kim Lacy Rogers, and I learned everything I know about oral history from her.”

Rogers’ tutelage here led to Kraemer’s work, after graduation, for the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s oral-history program. In 1995, he started graduate school at Indiana University, spending his first two years working on an oral-history project.

He lived the last two years in Germany, doing research for his dissertation on philanthropic foundations and their work building democratic institutions in postwar West Germany and teaching at Humboldt University in Berlin. Now, having finished his Ph.D. in 20th-century U.S. and German history, Kraemer is back in the states hunting for a college teaching job.

Of his life direction, he says, “I attribute it entirely to the teachers I had in German and history at Dickinson.”

As for that filmmaking mentor, Blumensath was back on campus in November showing the sequel to the film that inspired Kraemer. In the three decades since he began the series, this is the first time Blumensath has learned that a viewer is replicating his project.

“We call it mirroring. It’s the nicest response one can have—encouraging others to be creative,” he says. “We, as filmmakers, like film to be a function for people to think over things, to do self-analysis: ‘What is my life like? What should I change?’ ”

Sitting quietly as his friend talks, Wolfgang Müller chimes in with a phrase that sums up Kraemer’s relationship to Blumensath—and to himself and Kim Lacy Rogers as well.

“He’s the intellectual offspring.” •

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