The woman from Checkpoint Charlie

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Movie
Original title The woman from Checkpoint Charlie
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2007
length 2 × 90 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Miguel Alexandre
script Annette Hess
production Norbert Sauer , Cornelia Wecker
camera Jörg Widmer
occupation

Die Frau vom Checkpoint Charlie is a two-part television film by UFA television production about Jutta Gallus , who offered peaceful resistance against the SED dictatorship in the GDR. The German premiere was on September 28, 2007 on Arte .

action

Part 1

In 1982 Sara Bender lives with her two daughters Silvia (11) and Sabine (9) in Erfurt and works in the electronics combine. Because of some statements critical of the regime by the mother, the children suffer from disadvantages in the school and sports environment from an early age.

Sara wants to marry her friend and colleague Peter Koch. On the way to the wedding, her father, who lives in Germany , has an accident near Helmstedt on the autobahn. The wedding is initially canceled. Sara wants to visit her injured father in the hospital, but as a critical GDR citizen, she is forbidden to travel to the West. The father dies without Sara being able to see him again. She then submitted an application to leave the country , but it was rejected and brought her professional reprisals.

Her desire for freedom grows, and so she and her daughters attempt to flee across the green border from Romania to Yugoslavia . Her colleague recommends that she contact a man named Marek. He gives Sara a hint on how to cross the border. The Stasi , who bugged her apartment, gets wind of the plan and prevents her from escaping. Sara and her children are arrested in Romania and taken to East Berlin . There the family is still separated at the airport. The daughters are initially housed in a children's home in Dresden. Sara herself comes into custody. Her friend Peter, whom she wanted to marry shortly before, turns out to be a traitor who works for the Stasi and against them. Sara is finally sentenced to three years in prison in Hoheneck women's prison.

Part 2

After two years in prison, Sara was finally ransomed by the federal government in 1984 and deported to the Federal Republic. However, without her two daughters, who from now on live with a foster family loyal to the regime. Immediately before her deportation, Sara was tricked into agreeing to the revocation of custody.

But Sara doesn't want to live in Germany without her children. From the beginning she fought to get the two of them allowed to leave the country as well. However, this fails because of the resistance of the GDR authorities who want to make an example of Sara. She is disappointed to find that she cannot expect any real support from the federal government either, because it does not want to endanger the sensitive relations with East Berlin.

Sara sees her only chance to make her case public. She addresses the International Society for Human Rights . She receives support from the journalist Richard Panter. Sara regularly demonstrates at Checkpoint Charlie with a sign that reads “Give me my children back!” And Richard ensures that the pictures of the protest go around the world. The GDR leadership, which sees this as a severe provocation, tries to intimidate them massively. Sara receives anonymous threatening phone calls and is attacked by Stasi agents in West Berlin , who injure her and threaten her with death. She is also asked by the federal government to refrain from public actions.

But Sara is not deterred. She maintains contact with her daughters through smuggled letters and tapes, and all three hope to see each other happily in West Germany. However, Sara's numerous efforts repeatedly fail due to resistance from the bureaucracy.

Finally, in the summer of 1986, she traveled to Helsinki for the CSCE conference to protest against the injustice done to her in front of the world public. When she tried to meet Federal Foreign Minister Genscher there, she was ambushed by the Stasi and barely escaped an assassination attempt.

Her two daughters are told that Sara died in a car accident. They therefore consent to being adopted by their foster family. However , the children learned the truth through a report on western television about their mother's tireless protests, which they happened to see.

Thanks to the help of the foster mother, who finally took pity, the GDR authorities finally allowed the children to leave for West Berlin, where they finally saw their mother again on August 25, 1986.

Deviations of the plot from the historical model

The film is based on the story of Jutta Gallus (Sara Bender in the film, played by Veronica Ferres ) and their children Claudia and Beate (in the film Silvia and Sabine). The plot of the film deviates from the historical sequence in the following points:

  • Jutta Gallus' father did not die like in the film.
  • The children did not suffer from disadvantages in school or sports.
  • The person of Peter Koch, who was supposed to be married and worked for the Stasi, did not exist.
  • Jutta Gallus' apartment was not bugged by the Stasi.
  • The children were not forcibly adopted as shown in the film, but instead handed over to their biological father after a short stay at home, who was given custody.
  • Jutta Gallus did not travel to Helsinki, but to Vienna for the 10th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act. An assassination attempt was not carried out on them there.
  • The departure of the children was not triggered by the mercy of the foster mother, who in reality did not exist, but by the initiative of the children who turned to the lawyer Wolfgang Vogel when they were young . The departure also did not take place via Checkpoint Charlie, which at that time could only be used by non-German nationals, but in Wolfgang Vogel's car via the border crossing Invalidenstrasse.
  • The children were never told, as shown in the film, that their mother died in a car accident. With the permission of the father, the children were in contact with the mother by letter.

Locations

Swinemünder Strasse at the corner of Ramlerstrasse - the location is intended to represent the Bornholmer Strasse border crossing

The shooting took place in 2006/2007 in Leipzig , Berlin , Bucharest , Helsinki and Brașov (Kronstadt) . In Leipzig, the former Robotron training center at Gerberstrasse 3 served as the backdrop for the scenes at Sara Bender's workplace. Also in Leipzig, on the southern part of Halle / Leipzig airport , the scene was created that takes place at Berlin-Schönefeld airport after Sara Bender's return flight to the GDR . An IL-62 , which once belonged to the GDR airline Interflug with the identification DDR-SEF, served as the backdrop . The scene in which Sara Bender visits a GDR authority immediately after her father's accident to apply for a permit to visit Helmstedt was filmed in Building A of the Nalepastraße radio station in Berlin-Oberschöneweide , the former headquarters of the GDR radio . The Brașov train station served as the backdrop for the scene at the Bucharest train station.

Awards

The production was nominated for the German Television Award 2008 in the "Best Film" category. Veronica Ferres received the award in the “Best Actress” category for her role. In the same year, the film also won the Jupiter Award for Best German TV Feature Film. The audio description produced by Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR) and spoken by Wolfgang Schmidt was nominated for the German Audio Film Award.

Film bug

  • One scene shows a Coke Turka can . However, this lemonade brand has only existed since 2003.
  • The picture of Federal President von Weizsäcker hangs in the Federal German embassy in Romania, but at that time Karl Carstens was still Federal President.
  • The scene in the port of Helsinki takes place during the 1986 CSCE conference, which, however, took place in Vienna. The Silja Symphony passenger ferry can be seen in the background , but it did not start operating until 1991.

literature

  • Ines Veith: The woman from Checkpoint Charlie. A mother's desperate struggle for her daughters (= Knaur 77832). Knaur-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-426-77832-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of release for the woman from Checkpoint Charlie . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , March 2007 (PDF; test number: 109 633 DVD).
  2. ↑ The Woman at Checkpoint Charlie - Part I. (No longer available online.) The first , archived from the original ; accessed on November 3, 2019 (detailed summary Part I).
  3. ↑ The woman at Checkpoint Charlie - Part II. (No longer available online.) The first , archived from the original ; accessed on November 3, 2019 (detailed summary part II).
  4. ↑ mittendrin, MDR program guide, issue no. 9/2007
  5. ↑ The woman from Checkpoint Charlie (part 1) in the audio film database of Hörfilm e. V.
  6. ↑ 6th German Audio Film Award 2008