Team
Director
Ulrike Brincker
Director of Photography
Boris Becker
Editor
Bettina Strunk
Production Manager
Vernen Liebermann
Line Producer
Gregori Winkowski
Creative Producer
Katharina Lambsdorff
Producer
Regina Ziegler
TV Editor
Beate Schlanstein WDR, Dr. Katja Wildermuth MDR
Info
Genre
Documentary
Seprated for the Sake of the State
2009 - Germany
"Somehow there was always something missing," says Erika Thesenvitz. "You knew there was somebody there, there is still somebody, somebody still alive - a child you could have brought up yourself."
This film tells the stories of mothers and children who were forced apart during the days of the East German regime, often coming to face to face with one another 20 years later. However, after all those years of separation the son or daughter had become a stranger to the mother, and only in very rare cases were they able to establish a relationship again. The expectations on both sides had become too great, and sometimes the connection to the adoptive family had become too strong. In most cases everybody involved was overwhelmed by the situation, and many reacted by breaking off all contact again. Thus Erika Thesenvitz lost her son "all over again. But at least I know what he looks like, and where he lives."
Between 1950 and 1990 there were approximately 75,000 adoptions in East Germany. No doubt most of them were prompted by concerns about the welfare of the children, but there were a not inconsiderable number of cases where the parents were deprived of the right to bring up their children in an attempt to bring them into line with the social and political ideology of the state. According to East German law, parents were obliged to bring up their children "to adopt a socialist attitude towards life and work". If, in the view of the authorities, they failed to do so, the state was entitled to intervene. Today it is only possible to estimate exactly how many families and siblings were torn apart by the regime in East Germany.
There are a few forced adoptions which were documented fully - such as the case of Arne Grahm. During the 1960s his mother committed the crime of "fleeing the Republic" - escaping to the West - and shortly afterwards her son was given to another East German family with a new identity. In other cases the situation is not described so clearly; generally there is mention of a mother's "a social behavior".
This was the accusation leveled against Katrin Behr’s mother, who was arrested in front of her two children. Overnight the children no longer had places in the kindergarten, so Kathryn's mother couldn't go to work. However, anybody who refused to do state-organised work was guilty of "damaging the social and communal life of the citizenship as well as public order and security" and therefore, according to Law 249 of the East German penal code, could be imprisoned for up to two years. Catherine, who was four years old at the time, was first placed in a children's home and then given to hardliner members of the Communist Party to bring up. "I always said one day I would see my mummy again. Always. I said it all those years. And I thought of my mummy every single day," explains Catherine Behr, even though she was told as a child that her biological mother didn't want her.
This documentary shows how difficult it is for people in situations like this to track down their own histories. In many cases these people still don't know they were adopt it. It was only by accident that Erika Thesenvitz’s son Oliver discovered his birth certificate and used the Internet to search for his biological mother. Generally the mothers themselves have no chance of discovering the names and addresses of their own children. When they were deprived of the right to bring up their children it was also made impossible for them to establish contact with them. 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall the people involved are entitled to view the files, but as a rule they are not provided with the evidence. Consequently, even today people who were condemned for the crime of being "asocial" many years ago, and therefore lost their children, still have virtually no way to prove their innocence. "One great failing in the reunification agreement which brought East and West Germany together again is the paragraph which stipulates that adoptions inflicted against the will of the parents were not to be considered serious breaches of human rights," explains Uwe Hillmer from the East German Research Institute.
In this documentary Ulrike Brincker tells the stories of lives which were broken and can no longer be healed. It may well be that the people involved have come to terms with their own personal destinies, but there is still huge disappointment that they have not been acknowledged as victims.
