Film “Erich Mielke – Champion of Fear”: The man who wanted to love all people – Tagesspiegel

08:12 clock By Kerstin Decker <- self.position: 1 -> <- classid: hcf center -> <- position: center -> <- text position: hcf text-left -> <- inisprint: false -> <- inhaspic: true ->

He was the Stasi chief: The game with scenes enriched documentary “Erich Mielke – Champion of Fear” is a DDR-hate figure to the biographical background.

<- inteaserpicposition: 1 -> <- self.position: -1 -> <- classid: ! hcf inline-left -> <- position: left - text position> <-> <- inhaspic:! true -> <- ! - include ps2> <- self.position eq 2 -> <- inteaserpicposition:! 1 -> <- self.position: 2 -> <- classid: hcf-line ! left -> <- position: left -> <- text position: -> <- inisprint: false -> <- inhaspic: true ->

Hannah Arendt’s worn arg Word of the “banality of evil”: It fits perfectly. Who, when he heard them again, ever again forget Mielke’s remarks at his last public appearance in the fall of ’89? “I love it all, all the people!” A sentence, spoken in Verwunderungsgestus a child. Welch grotesque scenario! This verbal helpless old man, responsible for unprecedented surveillance and intimidation apparatus assigns a quasi-declaration of love. That too was

A quarter of a century after the end of which seem tells the Dadar. All stories about the State Security. Oddly enough, was still missing the story of their leader – a deficit that now want to resolve the documentary filmmaker Jens Becker and Maarten van der Duin. Just what the scenes at the beginning? For infantilization of the current documentary nature to recreate key events in the costumes of the time and with borrowed faces belongs. So the ambience documentary produced for the concentration disturbed contemporaries unless just Heinrich Breloer directs. Soon, however, carries the matter. Maybe it’s Kaspar Eichel as Erich Mielke. He is the man to be sovereign and play at the same time to take seriously succeed. This is elementary

. <- self.position - otherwise> <- self.position: -1 -> <- position: left - text position> <-> <- inhaspic:! true -> <- ! - include ps1> <- self.position eq 2 -> <- inteaserpicposition: 1 -> <- self.position: 2 -> <- classid: hcf-line ! left -> <- position: left -> <- text position: -> <- inisprint: false -> <- inhaspic: true ->

With most experts He does not speak a word

A young psychologist examined in 1990 the oldest inmate in the prison Moabit on. He waits for his first trial – for killing two police officers at the Berlin court on 9 August 1931. Bülow Seven evaluators examine Mielke’s negotiating capacity, with most, he speaks not a word. “Mr. Mielke, when were you born?” Asks the psychologist. No Answer. She calls date and place, December 28, 1907 in Berlin, Wedding. “In red Wedding” Mielke adds with emphasis. It may be that he regretted the moment to have broken the silence. Too late. “Would you say that your family was poor?” The former Minister of State Security of the GDR is to provoke nothing, but here he has now but counter sneeringly: “Arm is not the word!” Although the figure of the psychologist is fictitious so the dialogues but follow the protocols.

Maybe you should look at the East German elites once from this point. The number of those who had a child without a bed to sleep is, irritatingly high. But governments are often asked by people who already as a child slept in their own beds. Here some lower ground has been swept by historical distortions very rare type upwards. Of course, Erich Mielke had a bed, how could six dormitories fit into the 30-square-meter room where his family lived? Father, mother, four siblings. We slept in turns, which was nothing special in the Berlin working-class neighborhoods to beginning of the century

In no moment Erich Mielke is in Eichel’s representation to a mere copy. It is he who by it is not. Again, not expert and eyewitness votes to be interrupted for short sequences, but rather the reverse: Mielke’s lawyers, the former KGB General Nikolai Germantow, the historian Nikita Petrov and others mingle with short sentences into what you probably call not fictional fiction must. And what they say,

An “idealist” the very own nature

On is almost always illuminating. His manner was his client “idealist,” said Mielke trial lawyers not without structural admiration , The second certifies him do a great ability to adapt to his opponent. Both, probably exceptions, pay Mielke respect for the persisting elements of his character. Usually the people now without DDR experience the type Schabowski tells more. One who has distanced himself repeatedly from the GDR and herself Unlike Honecker, Mielke and the other

The main difference however, lies elsewhere:.. In the generation. Schabowski, the GDR type ogre, was an unconditional makers, but unfortunately involved in a project from which nothing could be done. When he realized this, he was very upset. The authentic experience Mielke and other old Communists was: Only we ourselves can save us from our misery! Mielke’s parents came in 1919 in the KPD a. “Beat their leaders dead!” Cried the ruling class.

The GDR? A sect that has made a mistake in the format

These are basic experiences. The revokes it in one, and it also does not excuse for it. Only they do not qualify for the governance of a country, on the contrary. What was the GDR, brought to the simplest formula? A sect that has made a mistake in the format.

Of course, this is not the discourse, the leads of the film. “Erich Mielke – Champion of Fear” lures with a questionable demonizing title. But there remains no remnant of the diabolical. Another reason why it is worth to see this movie. The story of a boy who is even a free place at the high school gets for a certain talent, and the parents take him then but from school: misery with school? That just does not fit.

“I love you but all!” It is important to know this much quoted phrase in context. Four days after the fall of the Wall, on 13 November 1989, Erich Mielke joined, 83-year and asked to account, before the People’s Chamber. He began with “Dear Comrades, Dear MPs” to decide to the following information: “I’ve an extremely high contact with all working people.” First laughter in the auditorium. And that’s just the beginning.

In Berlin in the cinema Babylon Mitte, Casablanca, Sputnik, Tilsiter Lichtspiele

<- inteaserpicposition <- - self.position eq 2!>: 1 -> <- self.position: 2 -> <- classid: hcf inline-left -> <- position: left -> <- text position: -> <- inhaspic: true ->