2-21-07, 9:33 am

An anti-socialist axe to grind


The German film The Life of the Others (Das Leben der Anderen) has a one-in-five chance of winning an Oscar next week. The film is cleverly written, well directed and well acted. So, why do I hope that it does not win a valuable little statuette?

It tells the story of a dogmatic German Democratic Republic State Security officer, who proves, after a change of heart, that even a 'Stasi' operative can be a human being. Interesting it may be, but the film is also misleading, one-sided and has evil intent.

Few deny that the Stasi was intrusive, nasty and sometimes rough, but the film reduces GDR as a whole to this cliched image.

It features a villainous minister of culture, portrays the criminal methods of bugging apartments and tapping phones and depicts only innocent victims - such as the writer who wants to smuggle out the awful truth about the GDR to the West German magazine Der Spiegel - apart from the single heroic exception who sees the errors of his ways.

The Life of Others plays on the fact that any book, film or TV programme telling people in eastern Germany how terrible their lives were under 'Stalinism' and making West Germans shudder to think of what they escaped is sure to be promoted vigorously and, if not too primitive, to receive awards, prizes, publicity and innumerable screenings. And so it has proved.

What does the film leave out? The reality that, despite many problems and some unpleasant aspects, most people in the GDR led relatively normal daily lives, which included certain benefits, such as free childcare, which are sorely missed today, a democratic school system, where kids learnt together well into their teens and were not split up early into 'high achievers' and those from mostly working-class and immigrant backgrounds.

Some also recall the health system, which was usually less modern, but was available to everyone without charge after a small monthly tax was paid. Above all, the GDR provided jobs to everyone - men and women, young and old - something that is only a distant dream today.

It is largely the current German Establishment's fear that older generations may reflect on these lost advantages or that younger generations may learn of them that leads to films such as these being promoted.

They are rarely direct lies, which would be quickly rejected. Indeed, the events depicted may really have happened.

Certainly, no GDR minister of culture was ever such a miserable rotter. The first person to take the post was a famous anti-nazi poet, another was a brilliant Jewish exile during the nazi years who left the job to become ambassador to Italy and Vatican City.

There was one party leader who did display nasty, womanising conduct somewhat like that depicted in the film, but he was thrown out on his ear.

The terrible secret which the good writer smuggles out to Der Spiegel is that the GDR is concealing its high suicide rate.

It was definitely high. But, for some strange reason not mentioned in the film, the suicide rate is unusually high across central Europe. This applies to both sides of the former Iron Curtain, in Austria as in Hungary, in Denmark or Sweden as in Czechoslovakia, in both eastern and western Germany and, especially, in west Berlin.

One key scene features the key-by-key Stasi examination of the hidden typewriter used by the hero.

What is striking is the similarity to another case when the keys of a typewriter were magnified and examined. That was in 1947, in the trial of Alger Hiss orchestrated by red hunter Richard Nixon. Then, though, the roles were reversed.

There is another aspect to the story, which does not reflect on the undoubted acting ability of the film's hero Ulrich Muehe, but perhaps on his character.

Just as the film was getting early publicity, he came out with a blistering denunciation of his former wife, the very popular east German actor Jenny Groelmann, whom he accused of spying for the Stasi.

I do not know what truth there was to this, but a very disturbed audience of east Germans discovered that his charges were made while his wife was in the advanced stages of cancer. She died soon afterwards.

In making its awards, the Academy is expected to judge acting ability, not character. However, many German film-goers have not been able to completely separate the two regarding an axe-grinding film with a message not just aiming at a long-defeated enemy, but aiming to please the powers that be.

From Morning Star