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The Stasi goes Hollywood
by Marek Dutschke
And the foreign film Oscar goes to… Das Leben der Anderen! For the third time in Oscar history a German movie received the best foreign film award, after the “The Tin Drum” in 1980, “Nowhere in Africa” in 2003, and now the “The Lives of Others”, as it is known in the English language translated title.
This movie takes place in the 1980ties, at a time when Germany was still separated by a wall and as we see in the movie the cultural scene of East Berlin was under quite a large amount of scrutiny by the East German secret police known as the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit.
The Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, which in the common tongue is referred to as the “Stasi”, was the secret police of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) from 1950-1990. The leadership of the GDR, which only consisted of the members of the Socialist Unity Party (SED), viewed the “Stasi” as “the sword and shield of the party”. These so called spies infiltrated every level of East German society, from the village church, to the highest echelons of the government and even West Germany’s chancellery, where former Chancellor Willy Brandt was forced to resign, because he had a “Stasi” named Günter Guillaume working as his personal assistant.
One of the main themes of “The Lives of Other” is the depiction of the life and work of a “Stasi” officer. The “Stasi” activities and the nature of collaboration by ordinary citizens in the former GDR are still a hot button topic in Germany, even 17 years after the “Stasi” was dismantled. The “Stasi” had 103,000 “official” employees in 1989 and to this day there is controversial discussion about how many “unofficial” employees or informants the “Stasi” used to make reports or gain information. “The Lives of Others” is a fictional account of an “official” Stasi (Ulrich Mühe), who is ordered to spy on a prominent East German playwright (Sebastian Koch). The premise is that a Stasi leadership figure is intrigued by the playwright's wife (Martina Gedeck) and therefore wishes to find incriminating evidence of oppositional activities by the playwright. The Stasi officer charged with supervising the observation realizes during the course of the movie that what he is doing is wrong and thus begins to protect the playwright by not reporting his oppositional activities. In the end the playwright's wife is used as an “unofficial” informant and after she gives up incriminating evidence on her husband, she is accidentally run over by a car.
It would have been of no surprise had the German media used the Oscar victory as a means to start a discussion reflecting on the role of the Stasi during the GDR times. Instead there was an immense hype concerning the director of the movie, Florian von Donnersmark, which had not been the case with the other two German Oscar winners. It all started with von Donnersmark's speech at the Oscars, where he not only thanked Germany, Bavaria (it was filmed at the University of Television and Film in Munich) and Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he went on to say that we, the Germans, “are world champions” now that his film won an Oscar. He went on to say that “it is something special to win for your country... in times of peace that can only be accomplished by athletes or the pope”.
Promptly, all of Germany was not discussing the “Stasi”, but rather how nationalistic can a German Oscar winner act and why did he invite his wife to the Oscars instead of the female lead, Martina Gedeck. The conservative boulevard newspaper “Bild” found words of great praise by saying that Von Donnersmark “is a German living his dream, because he was never led astray by not believing in himself, those are the kind of people Germany needs”. While others were dissapointed that someone could thank Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnie is not really known for films with strong narratives and demanding story lines. Nonetheless, most of the media voices very positive, but Germany’s need to deal with the past activities of the “Stasi” was kind of forgotten.
Yet, there was a lone voice of warning from a former GDR dissident and Green Party politician, Werner Schulz. He offered some words of critique meant to get the discussion back on track. He said that “the biggest mistake of the film is that there was no Stasi officer who risked his life for a dissident... Steven Spielberg would have been taken apart if he had made up a fictional Oskar Schindler and his list. Apparently, one can use fantasy for GDR history totally independent of historical authenticity”. It is important to take Schulz's words to heart, because in recent years German films, like “Sonnenallee” and “Good Bye Lenin”, have tended to depict life in the GDR nostalgically or as others have put with a sense a ostalgie. Contrary to Schulz's statement “The Lives of Others” does contain a great deal of realism on the activities of the “Stasi” and their negative effects, thus it is a step in the right direction. And these steps are needed as Germans are still confronted with former “Stasi” officers claiming innocence, asking for higher pensions and victims not being granted a small pension for the time that were forced to spend in prison.
Florian von Donnersmark, who is of Austro-German noble descent, is currently travelling all over the US, in order to explain his movie to American audiences. Thus he will not have time to reflect on the historical and political dimension of his film. He is even planning an English remake of the film with some Hollywood big hitters. We will have to do the reflecting for him and maybe some other other media outlets should begin with this necessary reflection, instead of hyping and obsessing over statements made by an enthusiastic and euphoric young film maker, after he won an Oscar.
My name is Marek Dutschke. I was born April 16th, 1980 in Arhus, Denmark. I grew up in Boston and Hamburg and attended the University of Massachusetts from 1999-2003. After graduating from college, I received a Fulbright Scholarship to research right wing radicalism in rural Eastern Germany. Upon the completion of my research, I worked in the German Bundestag, the Federal Foreign Office, and the European Union Parliament. I am currently working as a programme officer in the Dean's Office of the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.
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