GDR history: The Indomitables 2: The resistant women of the GDR

After writing a few biographies about famous men, you turned to female perspectives. What triggered this change of heart?

While working on the biography of the Willy Brandt family, I noticed how one-sided the old Bonn Republic was remembered and told in the media. Supposedly strong men everywhere! Were there no female politicians? Were there no female journalists? Were there no female voices, no female gaze? The history of the Bonn Republic is largely a history of ignoring female identities, and that really dismayed me, who grew up in this republic.

What role did Maxie Wander’s book “Guten Morgen, du Sch” play in this?öne,” after which you named your new film about GDR women?

I wanted to learn from this book: listen, collect, condense. That was the composition principle of Maxie Wander’s reports, which are so impressive because female identities become visible in their diversity and colorfulness, because the back and everyday life of the socialist republic became visible. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no film footage of Maxie Wander, which I would otherwise have loved to include in the film. A great woman with a great sensitivity for nuances. She was just beginning to find herself as a writer.

Interview

IMAGO/Malte Ossowski/SVEN SIMON

Torsten Körner was born on September 21, 1965 in Oldenburg. He studied theater studies and German in Berlin. Körner has lived in Berlin as a freelance author and journalist since 2000. Among other things, he wrote biographies about Götz George, Franz Beckenbauer, Heinz Rühmann and Willy Brandt’s family. With the film “Angela Merkel – The Unexpected” (ARD 2016) he presented a television portrait for the first time. This was followed by films about the GDR’s last republic anniversary (“Palace of Ghosts”, Arte/MDR, 2019), a portrait of former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (“Gerhard Schröder – Beat the Drum”, Arte/MDR, 2020) and about Bonn politicians ( The Indomitable, 2021).

See differences when working with male and female protagonists?

It’s difficult to answer because you would have to make generalizations that are often misleading, but I’ll venture a guess: men want to control their emotions more in front of the camera, women are more inclined to the moment, they then trust the situation more and are more open to their own feelings . Men want to be strong and beautiful, but their self-control mechanisms are more suspicious.

Are you now consciously working with more women behind the camera, and has anything changed as a result?

I really enjoy working with camerawomen and have met some really great people. I filmed a lot, especially with Anne Misselwitz. Most of the time, women are – I imagine – more team-oriented, while men are more ego-oriented as directors, myself included. Whether there is a special female gaze? Maybe they are more receptive to people’s auras, to mood values; My editor Sandra Brandl also has a good eye and ear for the nuances and images behind the images. In general, I prefer working in mixed teams. I find filming teams that only consist of men difficult because they form such a “mass of men” in which I don’t feel at home.

You say that after “The Indomitables” about female politicians in the Bonn Republic you couldn’t have made a sequel just with female GDR politicians, and you leave it alonel 2 very different Eastern protagonists (from the artist to the metallurgist) have their say. Would a counterpart to “The Unbreakable 2” be conceivable that would allow women from the old Federal Republic of Germany from different areas (not just politicians) to have their say? What would be the differences?

Such a counterpart would certainly be conceivable, but it would probably have been more difficult to surprise with it. The old Federal Republic of Germany was a society of individuals, a capitalist market society that also thrived on its individuals taking their own lives to the extreme in individualized living environments in order to conquer space in the market. The GDR has often been described as a niche society, but people often did not want to see the pluralistic ways of life because they seemed hidden by collectivist tendencies. The individual woman was perhaps not seen because in the West people were more likely to subscribe to the propaganda image of the equal female comrade and only saw women as individuals if they had violated this image as dissidents or artists. In doing so, the Western gaze unknowingly participated in the erasure of individual biographies that the GDR’s collective guardians pursued. We know that women were also persecuted in the GDR because they simply wanted to be different, insisted on difference, because they wanted to be sexually self-determined, because they simply did not want to conform to the prescribed image of women. This is also why Maxie Wander’s book was so successful. It offered these women in particular a space for self-development. That’s why I wanted my film to show GDR women who lived their individuality beyond the clichés and big images, who remained stubbornly within themselves without immediately becoming dissidents of great history like Bärbel Bohley. They were dissidents of the moment, pirates on the sea of ​​everyday life.

Did you notice the discrepancy between the state of emancipation in East and West, the “The Unyielding 1 and 2« reveal, surprised?

What would be the discrepancy and how would it be described? The protagonists of the first part were female politicians who had emancipated themselves in politics over decades, developed thick skin and extended elbows. The women of the GDR had to emancipate themselves against the emancipation claimed from above, which on the one hand was part of the state identity, but which was often not fulfilled in everyday life. Even in the GDR, women had less free time than men; they were paid less and were less likely to hold management positions; They were primarily the ones who did the family and household work. Looking back, I am surprised that the Politburo managed to get away with claiming that women’s equality was almost achieved and at the same time almost completely excluding women from this body. What the women of the GDR achieved deserves to be described and appreciated again and again. You don’t have to create a myth, just empirical evidence is enough. I think it would be good, especially for the architecture of our current society, to build on this potential for experience and to collect, recognize and make visible even more life stories.

Do you also see your new film as an appreciation of the artistic heritage of the GDR, music, architecture, painting and especially Defa filmmaking, which you quote a lot?

Absolutely! The so-called West knows far too little about this legacy, especially since the “reconstruction of the East” was at the same time a “demolition of the East”. In the course of “reunification,” much that should have been preserved was erased, blown away, eradicated, and flattened. I deliberately used brutal images here. But young people from East Germany also know too little about this heritage. You should have heard of Volker Koepp and his Wittstock series, of Helke Misselwitz and her fantastic film “Goodbye Winter”; There are and have been great singers like Uschi Brüning, Christiane Ufholz, Regine Dobberschütz, Ines Paulke, Veronika Fischer and many others.

How do you explain the fact that a demonizing and stereotypical view of everyday life in the GDR still prevails in German film and television? And what motivated you to contrast this with a differentiated picture?

It is always easier to maintain stereotypes than to create differentiations. At least I tried to find nuances, intermediate images and people in between – the audience will have to judge whether I succeeded.

“The Indomitable 2 – Good Morning, Beautiful Ones!”, Germany 2024. Directed and written by Torsten Körner. 104 min. Cinema release: August 29th.

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