Cold War Drama
October 3, 2007
The theme isn't new. The fact that former communist East Germany's government, with the help of its extensive network of spies and its dreaded Stasi secret police, made life a living hell for many of its citizens is well known and documented -- both in historic records and on the big screen in hugely successful dramas.
But a recent film aired on German public network ARD veered away from the fictional to reconstruct the real-life story of a GDR victim whose fight for justice remained a thorn in the side of both West and East Germany for years.
"The Woman from Checkpoint Charlie" tells the story of Jutta Gallus, played by German actress Veronica Ferres. A young, headstrong mother in East Germany, Gallus yearned to move to the free world on the other side of the Berlin Wall.
In 1982, she tried to escape along with her two young daughters by pretending to be taking a vacation to Eastern Europe, where she hoped to emulate the example of countrymen who had managed to escape to the West through slightly less stringent border controls. But her flight was foiled by the East German government and the family was forcibly separated. Gallus was thrown into prison, while her two daughters, aged 9 and 11, were put in a children's home.
Free, but without her kids
Two years later, Gallus was bought free by the West German government, a fairly common practice that earned the GDR regime much-needed hard currency in return for releasing mainly political prisoners. She was, however, prevented by the regime from taking her children with her to the West.
The film centers on Gallus' attempts to petition high-ranking West German politicians and bureaucrats and draw attention to her fight to get her daughters out of East Germany.
On Oct. 7, 1984, the 30th anniversary of the GDR, Gallus planted herself at Checkpoint Charlie, the Allied border crossing in Berlin, with a placard around her neck reading: "My children have been forcibly given up for adoption! Please help us!"
Gallus became a daily fixture at Checkpoint Charlie, demonstrating from dawn to dusk and inevitably drawing curious tourists and journalists. Her image and the tale of her fight to be with her children went around the world.
"Checkpoint Charlie was a legend in Berlin," Jutta Gallus, now Jutta Fleck, said recently in an interview with Berlin daily Tagesspiegel, explaining why she chose to demonstrate there. "Besides, there were tons of tourists there -- it was just what I needed."
Protesting between Kohl and Brandt
Gallus proved untiring in her efforts to be reunited with her children in West Germany.
At an event on the 25th anniversary of the division of Germany, which was aired live on television, she leapt on stage between Chancellor Helmut Kohl and former Chancellor Willy Brandt and held up a placard.
"I'm a live example. I have been separated from my children for four years. I appeal to you and the German government to do everything so that my children are finally with me," Gallus said in a shaky voice before being nudged aside by Kohl.
Not surprisingly, her public demonstrations embarrassed and annoyed the two German governments, who were at pains to maintain good diplomatic relations. But her tactics also helped.
In 1988, six years after Gallus first began protesting at Checkpoint Charlie, her daughters were allowed to leave and join their mother in the West. It remains unclear what prompted the East German regime to take the unusual step.
Critics say film jazzed up unnecessarily
"I simply wanted to show that a normal person without weapons is in a position to change things," Fleck said this week after the film premiered in a Berlin movie theater.
Hans-Dietrich Genscher, West Germany's foreign minister from 1974 to 1992, who met with Gallus and heard out her case in the 1980s, said the film was an important contribution to understanding the past.
"It's a deeply moving film, also because it focuses on the victims for the first time," he said. "There were unfortunately too many of these stories."
But critics in Germany weren't as enamored with the two-part drama that earned top television-viewer ratings. Many said the filmmakers should have cut out the gloss and cheese.
"Why is the authentic story of suffering of a young mother being jazzed up as a spy thriller?" a review in on Der Spiegel magazine's Web site asked. "The real life of Jutta Gallus offers enough drama as it is."