The lives of others

(Das Leben der Anderen)

Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 137 min., colour, 2005/06

November 1984: in the Hohenschnhausen Correctional Institute, East German State Security (Stasi)
Captain Gerd Wiesler interrogates a prisoner who is suspected of helping someone leave the country
illegally. The interrogator applies many forms of coercion. He uses tapes of the interrogation as teaching
aids at the Stasi academy. Wieslers former schoolmate Anton Grubitz has already been promoted to
lieutenant colonel in the State Security Ministry, where he is cultural attach. The two officers attend the
premiere of a play by Georg Dreymann. The audience includes Minister Hempf, who runs the playwright
down in front of Grubitz. Maybe he isnt as clean as it would seem. At the premiere party the minister
chats up Dreymanns partner, actress Christa-Maria Sieland, and assigns Grubitz the mission of putting
Dreymann under surveillance after he had protested against the decision to ban director Albert Jerska
from practising his profession.

Eavesdropping devices are installed in the authors flat. Wiesler listens in the attic. An elderly woman
tenant gets wind of the matter and is threatened: One word and your daughters university career is
over! The captain monitors the conversation at Dreymanns 40th birthday party. Writer Hauser, a
dissident, takes a director to task for being a Stasi officer and calls Dreymann a pitiful idealist. Jerska
gives Dreymann a score: The Sonnet of the Good Man. The listener in the attic even witnesses the
night of passion shared by Dreymann and Christa-Maria.

Minister Hempf waylays Christa-Maria, with whom he has long had a liaison, and invites her into his
limousine. He explains: Ill look out for you. The seemingly benevolent promise is also a threat. The
actress gets out of the ministers car in front of Dreymanns flat. Wiesler makes sure the author catches
on. At home in his prefab apartment block the captain hires a prostitute. He has obtained a volume of
Brecht poems from Dreymanns apartment. In the attic he reads Remembering Maria A. The banned
director Jerska has hanged himself. When Dreymann hears the news, he reaches for the score and plays
The Sonnet of the Good Man on the piano. Wiesler listens to the performance in the bugged flat.

Christa-Maria senses the growing mistrust of her partner, who finally tells her what he has learned.
Wiesler and Christa-Maria meet in a pub. It appears that both have a problem and need to drown it with
alcohol. At the end of their conversation the actress tells the Stasi captain, whose identity totally escapes
her, You are a good man.

After Jerskas death Dreymann decides to write an article on suicide in the GDR and publish it in the
West. The annual suicide statistics have been classified information since 1977. Hauser warns his
colleague about Christa-Maria and establishes contact with an editor of the news magazine Der Spiegel.
He furnishes Dreymann with a new typewriter whose idiosyncrasies are unfamiliar to the Stasi. Wiesler
must be aware of these activities, but he is distancing himself more and more from the cynical
opportunist Grubitz and has even greater reservations about his own operations.

When the article appears in Der Spiegel, Grubitz is dressed down by Comrade General. Dreymann is
suspected of authoring the story. Wiesler, who by now had even falsified eavesdropping transcriptions,
pleads ignorance. Hempf advises Grubitz to question Christa-Maria. When Grubitz interrogates her, the
actress refuses to cooperate, but when Wiesler questions her, she goes so far as to reveal the place
where Dreymanns typewriter is hidden. But Wiesler beats Grubitz to it and removes the only piece of
evidence that could incriminate Dreymann. The Stasi operation in his flat is fruitless. But Christa-Maria
dashes into the street, is hit by a truck and dies in the arms of her partner. Grubitz is enraged, but he is
unable to prove anything. He arranges to have Wiesler demoted as punishment. In 1989, when the Wall
falls, Wieslers job is opening envelopes with steam.

Not until 1991 does Dreymann learn from ex-minister Hempf that he was under constant surveillance as
long as the GDR existed. After he discovers bugging devices in his apartment, he reads his Stasi file and
learns who kept tabs on him and ultimately covered for him. Dreymann tracks Wiesler down but in the
end decides against approaching him. In 1993 Wiesler buys a book written by Dreymann. Its title: The
Sonnet of the Good Man. A coded dedication is in the foreword. Wiesler knows that he is the person the
author is alluding to.
The Film:

Filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck grew up in the West. But he says that visits to the GDR
were part of his childhood experiences. This means that the screenplay for DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN
was not based on his own involvement but on extensive research. This factor influenced his storytelling
strategy. Unlike Fassbinder, for instance, who in LILI MARLEEN not only told a story from the Third Reich
but also reflected the moviemaking techniques of the pre-war and wartime Ufa Studios, Henckel von
Donnersmarck makes no allowances for the cinema style of the East German Defa Studios. He staged
DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN mainly as a miniature theatre production and his inspiration is more likely
to be found in Hollywood thrillers and melodramas. He has every right not to orient his visual world and
his conception of film music on GDR cinematic traditions and to employ conventional movie effects
consistently and intentionally. His film demonstrates that he has acquired profound knowledge of the
mechanisms of the operations of the GDR State Security Ministry (MfS or Stasi). How necessary and
important DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN is, among other things as an act of recording and remembering, is
illustrated convincingly by the sad fact that the former East German cultural workers, as they were
officially classified, have more or less held their tongue on this subject to this very day, even if they were
State Security victims. In fact, until now no former Defa director has made a film about the MfS. In 2006
former Stasi members began to speak out more boldly in assemblies and assert the legitimacy of their
earlier duties not only the legality, but also the morality of their activities for the service. It does not
appear that any sense of injustice worth mentioning has infiltrated their ranks to date.

Anyone who thinks DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN was exaggerated to make it a box office attraction only
needs to consult MfS regulations. The ministrys Guideline 1/76 of January 1976 on planning and
conducting operative measures is entitled Forms, Means and Methods of Subversion and one passage
reads: Proven, applicable forms of subversion are: systematic discrediting of the targets public
reputation, his or her esteem and prestige on the basis of coherent, true, verifiable and deprecating as
well as untrue, believable, irrefutable and thus also deprecating statements; systematic organization of
professional and social failures to undermine the self-confidence of individuals; sustained undermining in
connection with particular ideals, models etc. and provocation of doubts in personal prospects; inciting
mistrust and mutual suspicion within groups, factions and organizations; instigating and/or exploiting
and reinforcing rivalries among groups, factions and organizations by targeted exploitation of personal
weaknesses of individual members Proven means and methods of subversion are employing
anonymous or pseudo-anonymous letters, telegrams, phone calls etc., compromising photos, e.g. of
actual or fictitious meetings; ordering persons to appear at government agencies or social
organizations for believable or unbelievable reasons As late as 1989, the year the Wall came down, the
MfS had 91,000 employees. Around 13,000 of them were assigned to manage an army of about 170,000
unofficial collaborators (IMs).

How these mechanisms worked in practice is spelled out precisely in the first sequence of DAS LEBEN
DER ANDEREN. One of the most revealing features is the language of the commands, Halt! Eyes down!
You say, Captain, Sir! Hands under thighs, palms down! which accompany a prisoner to the site of his
interrogation. A demonstration of power and an act of humiliation with the goal of breaking the will of the
victim from the start. And the interrogation itself shows that torture was part of the process of obtaining
a conviction. Wieslers comments for his students reveal the reasoning: In interrogations you are
dealing with the enemies of our system. When he has Dreymanns flat bugged, it becomes clear that
this operation runs like a frequently repeated ritual, as a purely non-cognitive, mechanical routine.

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck does not portray the perpetrators priori as evil; they do not even
seem to believe in their own politics (there is next to nothing in the way of ideological discourse in this
movie!), because people like Grubitz, Hempf, and initially Wiesler, have no interest in politics; they focus
exclusively on their careers. Grubitz does not even mind admitting it, cynically. Christa-Maria Sieland
also becomes a victim of her own career-consciousness not only the evil forces of State Security prove
to be her downfall. The films courage in presenting a Stasi captain who discovers his own conscience
should by no means be misinterpreted as playing the secret police abuses down. It does not change the
potential of the system to be inhumane. Throughout the history of the GDR there were always socialists
by conviction (even ministers) who expressed disillusionment with government practice and had to pay a
heavy price for their misgivings.

The fact that the author and director link Wieslers conversion to a cultural experience of all things (the
captain hears The Sonnet of the Good Man, admittedly without knowing its title) has a concrete
historical precedent. Maxim Gorki wrote that Lenin refused to listen to Ludwig van Beethovens
Appassionata too often because it would prompt him to say sweet nothings and pat the heads of
people whom he actually should beat, mercilessly beat, to pursue his revolution to its final conclusion.
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck: When I thought about it, an image occurred to me a medium-
range shot of a man in a desolate room wearing headphones playing wonderful music. And while I
contemplated this image, thoughts bombarded me. The man is not listening to this music for his own
entertainment, but because he is supposed to eavesdrop on somebody, an enemy of his ideas, but a fan
of this music. Who is this man sitting there? Who is he spying on? The questions came over me in a rush,
and so did the answers, and within minutes the entire framework of DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN was in
place. The idea is compelling and has something consoling: an informant eavesdrops on an enemy, and
the information he expects to justify his activity instead leads to his enlightenment, which means more
to him than his career. What would have become of the GDR if this had been the rule rather than the
exception?

Credits

Production format 35 mm

Duration 137 min., colour

Production Wiedemann & Berg Filmproduktion (Mnchen), In Co-Produktion

mit: Creado Film, Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) (Mnchen), Arte
Deutschland TV GmbH, Baden-Baden

Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Screenplay Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Camera Hagen Bogdanski

Editor Patricia Rommel

Music Gabriel Yared, Stphane Moucha

Sound Arno Wilms, Christoph von Schnburg

Actors Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Mhe, Sebastian Koch, Ulrich Tukur,

Thomas Thieme, Hans-Uwe Bauer, Volkmar Kleinert