DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN



Beta Cinema

presents

a Wiedemann & Berg Filmproduktion

in co-production with

Bayrischer Rundfunk, Arte and Creado Film

The Lives of Others

starring

Martina Gedeck

Ulrich Mühe

Sebastian Koch

Ulrich Tukur

Written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Academy Award 2007 (Oscar)

Best Foreign Language Film

Golden Globe Nomination 2007

Best Foreign Language Film

Winner of three European Film Awards 2006

(Best Film, Best Actor, Best Screenwriter)

Winner of 7 "Lola" German Film Awards 2006

including Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Screenplay

Beta Cinema contact:

Dirk Schuerhoff / Andreas Rothbauer

Gruenwalder Weg 28 d

82041 Oberhaching / Munich

Germany

Phone +49-89-67 34 69 80

Email: ARothbauer@

TABLE OF CONTENTS

|Contents |Page |

| | |

|Cast & Crew |4 |

|Press note |5 |

|Synopsis |6 |

|Production Note |9 |

|GDR (1949-1989) – Background Information |10 |

|Interview with Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck |11 |

|Martina Gedeck (actress) |20 |

|Ulrich Mühe (actor) |20 |

|Sebastian Koch (actor) |21 |

|Ulrich Tukur (actor) |21 |

|Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (director, script) |22 |

|Hagen Bogdanski (cinematography) |22 |

|Silke Buhr (set design) |22 |

|Gabriel Yared (music) |22 |

The Lives of Others

Cast

Christa-Maria Sieland MARTINA GEDECK

Captain Gerd Wiesler ULRICH MÜHE

Georg Dreyman SEBASTIAN KOCH

Lieutenant Colonel Anton Grubitz ULRICH TUKUR

Minister Bruno Hempf THOMAS THIEME

Paul Hauser HANS-UWE BAUER

Albert Jerska VOLKMAR KLEINERT

Karl Wallner MATTHIAS BRENNER

Crew

Director/Scriptwriter FLORIAN HENCKEL VON DONNERSMARCK

Producers QUIRIN BERG

MAX WIEDEMANN

Cinematography HAGEN BOGDANSKI

Set Design SILKE BUHR

Costumes GABRIELE BINDER

Make-up ANNETT SCHULZE

SABINE SCHUMANN

Casting SIMONE BÄR

Editing PATRICIA ROMMEL

Music GABRIEL YARED

STÉPHANE MOUCHA

PRESS NOTE

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's directing debut is nothing less than spectacular: after having aroused the public's attention with award-winning shorts (including "Dobermann" and "The Templar"), he set out to conduct intensive research in archives as well as among historians and eyewitnesses, then wrote the script and directed the film, his first full-length feature. The result, THE LIVES OF OTHERS, is extraordinary, for in it he relates a story from deep within the heart of the GDR, uncompromisingly and with unstinting truthfulness, and not in the form of the "GDR comedy" that had been favored until now. THE LIVES OF OTHERS is an intense, gripping thriller and a moving love story at the same time.

Henckel von Donnersmarck also ventured off the beaten track by confronting everyday life under the repressive GDR regime with a never-before-seen accuracy. His film shows with remarkable consistency that the mechanisms which upheld the GDR ultimately led to its demise. Full of warmth and deeply felt humanity, it follows its believable protagonists in their effort to extract dignity from their regimented lives.

The script won over some of Germany's best actors: Martina Gedeck ("The Elementary Particles," "Mostly Martha"), Ulrich Mühe ("Funny Games," "Amen"), Sebastian Koch ("Speer and Hitler: The Devil's Architect", “The Tunnel”), Ulrich Tukur ("Amen," "Taking Sides"), Thomas Thieme ("Downfall," "Taking Sides") and Herbert Knaup ("Agnes and his Brothers").

The cinematography was entrusted to Hagen Bogdanski ("No Place to Go") and the editing to Patricia Rommel ("Nowhere in Africa"). The music was composed by Oscar winner Gabriel Yared ("The Talented Mr. Ripley," "The English Patient") and Stéphane Moucha.

An exceptional, dramatic, emotional film, THE LIVES OF OTHERS was produced by Wiedemann & Berg Filmproduktion GmbH & Co. KG in coproduction with BR, ARTE and Creado Film. It was supported by the FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, FFA and Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg.

THE LIVES OF OTHERS was awarded four Bavarian Film Prizes on 13 January 2006: best actor for Ulrich Mühe, best script for Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, best young director for Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, best young producers (VGF Prize) for Quirin Berg & Max Wiedemann. THE LIVES OF OTHERS was awarded the grade "particularly worthwhile" by the German Film Evaluation Bureau.

SYNOPSIS

November 1984. Hohenschönhausen Detention Center. A prisoner is suspected of having helped a friend flee the country. State Security Captain Gerd Wiesler (ULRICH MÜHE) interrogates him efficiently and mercilessly, using an arsenal of means to pressure the man, including sleep deprivation. Wiesler has his interrogation tape-recorded for use as an example in the classes he teaches at the College of the State Security (Stasi).

Lieutenant Colonel Anton Grubitz (ULRICH TUKUR), a former classmate of Wiesler's who now heads the Culture Department at the State Security, invites Wiesler to accompany him to the premiere of the new play by Georg Dreyman (SEBASTIAN KOCH). Minister Bruno Hempf (THOMAS THIEME) is also attending the performance. Afterwards, at the premiere party, Hempf cannot seem to take his eyes off the attractive lead actress Christa-Maria Sieland (MARTINA GEDECK), Dreyman's girlfriend.

Minister Hempf tells Grubitz that he has doubts about the successful playwright's loyalty to the SED, the ruling Socialist Unity Party, and implies that he would approve of a surveillance. Grubitz entrusts the monitoring, or "operative procedure," to his friend Wiesler, who promises to oversee the case personally, as he is convinced that Dreyman cannot possibly be as loyal to the Party as has always been assumed. Lieutenant Colonel Grubitz is primarily interested in his own career and in proving himself worthy in the eyes of the minister.

At the premiere party, Dreyman asks Hempf to lift the professional ban imposed on his friend, stage director Albert Jerska (VOLKMAR KLEINERT), who used to stage Dreyman's plays so masterfully. Hempf denies that there is anything like black-listing in the GDR.

While Dreyman is away from home, his apartment is systematically bugged. A neighbor who notices the operation is forced to keep silent by massive threats. Wiesler sets up his surveillance headquarters in the attic of Dreyman's apartment building.

Wiesler is just in time to take part – acoustically – in the playwright's 40th birthday party and write a report on it. Many friends from the cultural world are there, including the director of Dreyman's latest play. Paul Hauser (HANS-UWE BAUER), a well-known author and dissident, accuses the director of being incompetent and a Stasi official. When Dreyman intervenes, Hauser calls his friend a "wretched idealist." In a burst of anger, Hauser tells him that he will not have anything to do with him anymore until he decides which side he's on.

Albert Jerska is also at the party and has brought his friend a musical score: the "Sonata for a Good Man." The party ends in the early hours of the morning. Dreyman and Christa-Maria unpack presents, then "presumably have intercourse," as Wiesler notates in the attic, meticulously notating the time as well...

Wiesler informs Grubitz of his first findings. Struggling for composure, Grubitz tells Wiesler that their mission is really to get rid of a hated rival for a member of the Central Committee. Hempf, who has been carrying on an affair with Christa-Maria for some time now, becomes increasingly overt: following her in his official car, he asks her why she did not show up at their last rendezvous. In the car, he becomes importunate, and his "I'm looking after you" sounds like a threat. From his attic perch, Wiesler observes Christa-Maria's return. By setting off the doorbell of Dreyman's apartment, Wiesler gets Dreyman to look outside and see his girlfriend getting out of the minister's car. Dreyman is cut to the quick, but does not confront her with his knowledge.

Every day, Wiesler feels increasingly disoriented when he leaves his observation post and returns to his own life. Feeling lonely, he calls a prostitute to his anonymous, gray prefab building. A few days later, he removes a book from Dreyman's apartment and reads Brecht perhaps for the first time in his life.

Dreyman's life changes one day when he learns that Albert Jerska has committed suicide. From now on, he begins to see things in a different light. At a conspiratorial meeting with Hauser, he expresses his wish to write an article for the Western press about the horrifyingly high suicide rate in the GDR, data that is suppressed by the regime. Hauser establishes contact with Georg Hessenstein (HERBERT KNAUP), the correspondent of the respected and widely read Spiegel news magazine. The project is subjected to the strictest secrecy, and even Christa-Maria is not told about it.

One evening, when Christa-Maria is preparing to go out to allegedly meet a former classmate, Dreyman begs her to stay. He tells her that he knows about her affair with Minister Hempf, and also knows about her secret drug addiction. With the words, "But you get in bed with them too," the actress leaves the apartment, plagued by her conscience and still unsure whether she should go to Hempf or not. In a pub close to her apartment, she runs into Wiesler, whom she does not know. He shyly confesses that he is a great admirer of hers and begs her, the great artist, to believe in herself and remain true to herself. The stranger intrigues and surprises Christa-Maria, who decides not to go to her rendezvous with the minister.

In order to check whether Dreyman's apartment is safe, the friends pretend that Hauser wants to flee the country, hiding underneath the back seat of a Western car. Wiesler hears this and believes it. But as he reaches for his radio to pass the news on to the border guards, he hesitates and, at the last minute, decides to do nothing. The car passes the border without being inspected.

For Dreyman and his friends, this is clear proof that his apartment is not bugged. Now feeling totally safe, they organize a meeting with the Spiegel journalist Gregor Hessenstein in Dreyman's apartment. Hessenstein has smuggled a small new typewriter inside a cake. The Stasi will not be able to connect the type with Dreyman. The author hides the typewriter in a hollow space beneath a threshold. Christa-Maria sees this, but does not want to know anything about it.

There is great unrest when the article appears in the Spiegel. Grubitz finds himself in an uncomfortable situation, with Hempf insinuating that he does not have sufficient control over his cultural charges. Dreyman is suspected of having written the article. Wiesler, who has monitored everything and is now falsifying reports, claims no knowledge of the affair. He says that Dreyman and his friends are working on a new play. Grubitz orders a search of Dreyman's apartment, but the Stasi inspectors find nothing, even though they turn everything upside down.

After Christa-Maria stands up Minister Hempf, he orders a permanent monitoring of the actress and thus finds out that she is illegally acquiring drugs. This is an ideal means of exerting pressure on her, which he promptly takes advantage of: he has Christa-Maria caught red-handed in a dentist's office and has her taken to Hohenschönhausen for interrogation. She is now forced to betray Dreyman as the author of the Spiegel article – otherwise she will never be able to appear on stage again. Wiesler, who is sent in to question her, is wary not to give himself away, and succeeds. The next day, as she is being sent back home, Wiesler also immediately leaves the Stasi headquarters. Sure of himself now, Grubitz sends his men to Dreyman's apartment once again. He has them lift the floorboard of the threshold – but all they find is an empty space.

Someone was faster and removed the incriminating evidence. Yet no one can stop Christa-Maria, who is completely beside herself and plagued by feelings of guilt, from running out into the street, where she is hit by a truck. She dies in Dreyman's arms.

Grubitz then stops the "operative procedure." Wiesler is punished by being sent to work in the postal department of the Stasi, where he steam-opens letters for the rest of his professional life. It is there that he hears about the fall of the Berlin Wall four and a half years later.

In 1991 Dreyman runs into ex-minister Hempf and learns that he was indeed monitored back then; he knows better, however, than to show his shock and surprise to his antagonist. Sure enough, at home he finds the cables and microphones behind the wallpaper and sets out to research his life. In the Stasi files, which are now available for consultation, he reads his way through piles of information. On the last of the reports, which are all signed by HGW XX/7, there is a red fingerprint – red like the ribbon of the typewriter on which he wrote the Spiegel article back then...

Dreyman discovers the identity of the man who began by watching him, then watched over him. He sees Wiesler on the street and is about to address him. But then he has another idea about how he can thank the person who transformed himself from a spy to a rebel...

PRODUCTION NOTES

Director and scriptwriter Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck spent nearly four years conducting intensive research and writing his screenplay before he began to shoot THE LIVES OF OTHERS in Berlin on 26 October 2004. The shooting was completed 37 days later, on 17 December 2004.

In addition to reading a great deal of specialized literature, the author also spent countless hours in conversation with eyewitnesses, former Stasi employees and their victims. Henckel von Donnersmarck was advised and supported on historical matters by a number of distinguished specialists, including Prof. Manfred Wilke, head of the Research Committee on the SED Regime; Jörg Drieselmann, head of the Research Agency and Memorial in the Normannenstrasse; former Stasi colonel Wolfgang Schmidt; Bert Neumann, the chief stage designer of the Berliner Volksbühne. The film team also numbered several people who had been personally involved with the GDR regime and whose experiences contributed to making the film as authentic as possible. The film's property master, for example, was once held in a detention center in the GDR.

No efforts were spared to shoot on original locations

Original locations are of decisive importance for a historical topic. Among the venues chosen for the filming were the former Stasi headquarters in the Normannenstrasse – a feared address during the years of the SED regime. Today there is a memorial there. This is where the scenes with Ulrich Tukur as Lieutenant Colonel Anton Grubitz were shot. His office was directly next to that of Stasi boss Mielke. The patina of the GDR had even been preserved. With their typical wood paneling, these offices have a unique "charm" and can be clearly assigned to a particular time and particular style – a situation that is both exciting and oppressive.

In order to ensure the greatest authenticity, the producers wanted to shoot on original locations as much as possible. Yet even though the film relates events that took place only fifteen years ago, much has changed since then. "Ultimately, there is not much difference, as far as costs are concerned, whether you're shooting Berlin in 1930 or Berlin in 1984," says producer Max Wiedemann. In order to recreate the backdrop of the GDR, a great deal of effort went into the sets and decors. Particularly arduous was the painting over of graffiti, which is nowadays found everywhere. No sooner had the "works of art" been painted over than they reappeared the following morning!

The production was also the first and is, to this day, the only feature film that was allowed to shoot in the original file-card archives of the former Stasi headquarters in the Normannenstrasse with the express authorization of Marianne Birthler, the "Head of the Federal Authority for Documents of the State Security Service of the Former GDR." Scenes bearing a unique eyewitness character arose amidst this gigantic mechanical filing system. The archive was restructured and digitalized after the shooting was completed. The data are preserved, but the location of the files and documents no longer exists in the form shown in the film.

The technical credits also testify to the production's high standards of quality: the producers had already admired cinematographer Hagen Bogdanski's ("No Place to Go") work through their collaboration on "The Templar." Gabriele Binder ("Doubting Thomas") was entrusted with the costumes, and Patricia Rommel ("Nowhere in Africa," "Beyond Silence") with the editing.

Music from an Oscar winner

It took quite some work and a good amount of luck, however, to win over an Oscar and Golden Globe winner to write the film score. It is unusual for a German film to go new ways for the music and to choose an international orientation: "We were convinced that the film justified this choice and that it could carry such a score."

Gabriel Yared ("The Talented Mr. Ripley"), a native French speaker, was given a translation of the script at a very early phase, and the project was presented to him in many conversations in Paris and London. The scale of the project was most untypical for this internationally acclaimed composer, who is often involved in films budgeted in the hundreds of millions. Yet Yared admired the filmmakers' commitment and agreed to do the project on the basis of the script, which convinced him.

The music was recorded in Prague with the Prague Symphony Orchestra – one of the best film-music orchestras in the world.

With a composer living and working in London and Paris, a director and team located in Berlin and the film lab in Munich, it was necessary to master many logistical challenges. The post-production – the film is 137 minutes long – took about a year. It was shot in 35 mm Cinemascope with an ARRI camera and Kodak film material.

The possibility of shooting with a less expensive digital camera instead of on film was never seriously taken into consideration. Berg: "There are only few scripts that do justice to the demands of the cinema. You thus have to make the most of this particular quality. This subject demands the cinematic experience and aesthetic; anything else would be a waste."

GDR (1949–1989) – Background Information

The rule of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED - Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands) was based on a world view stamped by Marxism-Leninism and molded by class warfare. The Socialist Unity Party (SED) had expectations from "its people," which it laid down in the form of programs, plans, directives and clear restrictions, and which it manifested in, for example, political criminal law.

The conceptual eradication of even specific human individuality allowed the Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS), or Stasi, to categorize the "others," whom it interrogated, spied on and battled, and thus to transform them into objects of its hatred.

To be arrested was already proof that one was dealing with an enemy or with a hostile, negative "element." The MfS understood its party program as an active and threatening involvement in the lives of others, in order to change them radically when they no longer corresponded to the party's expectations.

The central detention center of the MfS was in Berlin Hohenschönhausen; young interrogators were trained at the MfS College in Potsdam-Eiche.

The term "operative procedure" (Operativer Vorgang, OV) was used by the MfS to designate the highest level of conspiratorial monitoring of suspected individuals. The preventive character of the OV was stressed in the administrative language of the State Security of 1976.

One "offense against the system" that was punishable by two years of imprisonment was, for example, the "illegal border crossing" (§213 GDR penal code). Even the planning and attempt to "flee the republic" were punishable. The fortification of the inner-German borders and the Berlin Wall gave rise to escape agents from the West. The GDR made their activities punishable as well, and whoever contributed to taking someone "abroad" through active escape aid was menaced with a sentence of up to eight years.

In the GDR, a nation under surveillance, there were about 13,000 of the 91,000 employees of the MfS regulating an army of about 170,000 Unofficial Employees (Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter, IM) in order to realize the SED's delusional project of the total surveillance of an entire society.

The abbreviation "Stasi" designates the SED dictatorship's secret apparatus of repression.

Manfred Wilke

Text excerpt from: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck: Das Leben der anderen. Filmbuch. Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main 2006. suhrkamp taschenbuch 3786. 224 pages.

Professor Manfred Wilke is the head of the Lankwitz Division of the Research Committee SED Regime at the Freie Universität Berlin. Wilke was a historical adviser for THE LIVES OF OTHERS.

Interview with Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Why did you want to make a film about the GDR? How and when did you have the idea?

It wasn't my intention to make a film "about the GDR". I was in my first year in film school, in late 1997. I was listening to a Beethoven piano sonata, and suddenly I remembered what Lenin had said about the "Appassionata" to his friend Maxim Gorky. He said that it was his favourite piece of music, but that in the interest of finishing his revolution, he did not want to listen to it any more, because it made him want to "tell people sweet stupid things and stroke their heads" in times when it was "necessary to smash in those heads, smash them in without mercy". I find that to be a terrifying quote. It shows so clearly how any ideologue has to shut out his feelings altogether in order to pursue his goals. Suddenly, in that moment, I understood that this was the true essence of ideology: the total dominance of principle over feeling. It became clear to me that one of the biggest challenge in life is finding the right balance between principle and ideology when confronted with a moral choice. Lenin had chosen one extreme: all principle, but in a way, his statement was also a beautiful testament to the humanizing power of Art.

So, I thought: What if Lenin could have somehow been forced to listen to the Appassionata, just as he was getting ready to smash in somebody's head? What if I could build a dramatic situation where Lenin felt that he had to listen to the Appassionata, because he was actually trying to listen to something else? As I was thinking about that, an image popped into my head. Tom Tykwer always said in interviews that the image of a red-haired girl running through Berlin just suddenly popped into his head, and I always thought that was simply a story he told to the press. But suddenly that same thing happened to me, too: I "saw" a picture (actually even something like a medium close-up) of a man in a depressing room, with earphones on his head, expecting to hear through them words that go against his beloved ideology, but actually hearing a music so beautiful and so powerful that it makes him re-think (or rather: re-feel) that ideology. 

I knew I was on to something and I let the information flow for a few minutes (my composer, Gabriel Yared, always says that artists are merely receivers, not creators), then sat down and wrote the story for "The Lives of Others" in less than three hours. It took me three years, however (one and a half years of research and one and a half of writing) before I had a draft that I felt was good enough to shoot.

Why did you choose 1984? Orwell?

If yes, that would have been more of a subconscious motive. There were two other important reasons: Firstly, I knew the East-Berlin of 1984 pretty well, even if only as a child. And I wanted to use my personal experience. Secondly, 1984 was actually a year that, for the entire Eastern bloc marked a return to something closely resembling Stalinism. In February 1984 Yuri Andropov, the General Secretary of the CPSU, of whom many hoped that he would be a real reformer, died sixteen months after assuming office. Konstantin Chernenko rose to power. Chernenko was a disciple of Brezhnev, and in direct Stalinist tradition. Not so unfortunately for mankind, Chernenko's days were numbered, too. He died in March of 1985, after only twelve months in office, making way for Gorbachev, who really spun around the wheel. The main storyline of my film ends the day Gorbachev's election is announced.

What are your personal memories of Eastern Germany?

In 1984 I was 11 years old and was living in (West) Berlin, a democratic island in the middle of the East. If we wanted to drive anywhere else in Western Germany or in Europe, we had to drive through the communist GDR. But we also often went there specifically to visit people. Since both my parents were from the East (my father from Silesia, which is now Poland; my mother born in Magdeburg, Eastern Germany) we naturally had friends and relatives on the other side. An uncle of my father was even chief of protocol for Erich Honecker's office. However, my parents, especially my mother, were on special Stasi lists. Since part of my mother's family had actually stayed in the East, while her part of the family had left before the Wall was built, I assume they were considered traitors to the communist cause. And since it was the Stasi that controlled the borders, she was subjected to particularly humiliating checks whenever we went over. At one time, she was held for hours, and strip-searched, which really amazed and shocked my brother and me. That people would have the right to undress my mother! She seemed so powerful to us. But now it was almost as if the Stasis were the adults, and my mother was the child! The experience taught me an important lesson about the very nature of totalitarianism. 

Once we had managed to get to the other side, the fear continued: When we visited our friends in the East, I could see fear in their faces: fear of being seen with us, fear of what it could do to their lives and careers if this was reported to the Stasi. I well remember those strange glances left and right –they were looking to see who would be reporting them. It was an important experience for me as a child to see that kind of fear in adults. I never again had the feeling that adults were completely in control of everything. And it instilled in me a profound dislike of strong government.

What is fact, what is fiction?

The film is historically true in the way that a film like "Doctor Zhivago" is true about the Russian Revolution, or that "The Deer Hunter" is true about the Vietnam war. It is a truthful account, but not a true story. There was no Captain Wiesler in 1984, and there was no Georg Dreyman who wrote an article about suicide in "Der Spiegel".

However, there were plenty of stories that were similar. For example: An anonymous official from the East-German communist party published the so-called "Spiegel Manifesto" in 1978, in which he decried the deep level of corruption in the GDR government, and courageously called the GDR Stalinism and Nazism "twins". It drove the Stasi crazy that they couldn't find out who the insider was (in the end, they did find him, though). That, in combination with the fact that it became know after unification that the communist government had suppressed its suicide statistics, inspired me to come up with Dreyman's Spiegel article. Any technical aspects of Stasi work –from surveillance to the machines that can steam-open 600 letters per hour, right down to the odour samples– are of course authentic.

My research was extensive. I read the biographies of many great GDR writers and artists, talked to quite a few of them, and elements of their lives found their way into the characters and plot. I researched the GDR culture scene, politics and the Stasi for one and a half years before writing the first line of dialogue. I talked to Stasi officers and to their victims. Interviewed a former Politburo member one day, and a group of former resistance fighters the next. The research was one big emotional and intellectual rollercoaster ride. All of these stories somehow influenced my film. I spent almost too much time with the realities. But in the end, I had reached a point where I knew that I would be able to create a fictional story that was somehow truer than a true story. I do believe that fiction can actually be richer in content than fact. But perhaps that is a very German thought. The German word for fiction and poetry is "Dichtung", which actually means something like "Density".

Why do you think that writers and artists were so particularly interesting to the Stasi? Can you give me some examples of how writers were persecuted in the GDR?

The Stasi's declared goal was "to know everything". And they wanted to know it before it happened. Now, artists are unpredictable. The day an artist starts becoming predictable, he ceases to be an artist. But the Stasi never understood that. They thought that if 5 people monitoring a writer couldn't predict what he was going to do next, then perhaps 10 could, and so they just kept increasing the man force.

There are so many horrifying stories that inspired me that I don't even know where to start. And there are many more I have found out about since then. For instance, only a few months ago, the great East German lyricist Günter Ullmann sent me his latest book of poetry with a dedication of thanks for "The Lives of Others". It included a text about how he kept being interrogated by the Stasi so brutally that he became completely paranoid. He could not understand from where the Stasi had its information about his most personal thoughts. When he had isolated himself even from his wife, and the interrogations still continued, he concluded that his dentist must have implanted bugs into his teeth. He went to another dentist and had all his teeth extracted, only to find out after unification, upon consulting his Stasi files, that his closest friend, Manfred Böhme, while encouraging him in his writing, had been informing the Stasi about his every move.

The East German writers Ines Geipel and Joachim Walther founded a documentation centre called the "Archive for Persecuted Literature of the GDR". It documents how the poet Uwe Keller was sentenced to six years and eight months of prison in 1981, how Frank Romeiß got three years and six months for 12 poems the Stasi didn't like. How the writer Ralph Arneke was sentenced to one year and ten months simply because the Stasi found out that he had tried to publish a manuscript in the West. How Alexander Richter got 6 years in 1982 because his texts were considered "anti-state agitation". The list goes on and on and gets more depressing with every page.

Were there actual Stasi officers who worked against the system or who showed any kind of humanity?

The Stasi was an organization of almost 300.000 people. That means there was most everything, including –of course– officers that were disloyal to the system. In fact, they were a huge source of worry to Stasi chief Erich Mielke. Just to give you one example: While I was researching, I received a call from the Birthler Office (the administration of the Stasi files), telling me that in their archives they had found a recording that would interest me. It was a tape from 1981 with a sound recording of a short trial against Stasi officer, Captain (!) Werner Teske. He had been caught by his superior as he was looking at files that were none of his business. Not really a big crime. But his superior still brought him to trial, saying that the only way he could hope to save his position would be by talking completely honestly about what he had been reading and why. For some reason, Teske took his boss by his word and really did admit to everything that was on his mind – everything he had been reading in the files, all his doubts about the state, about the system, about his job. He even said he had thought about escaping to the West. It was devastating to listen to this honest, open, idealistic man talk himself to his own death. Because after that short trial, Teske was sentenced to death, and executed the way disloyal Stasi officers were always executed: he was "shot into the back of the head at short range." All this only a few miles from where I was living at the time, completely unbeknownst to anyone. I'm sure part of Captain Teske entered Wiesler's character. 

There were also funnier stories. In an article about my film published in 2006, "Der Spiegel" recounts of one of the Stasi officers who monitored Wolf Biermann (the greatest East German poet). The officer was so impressed with Biermann's poems (which he was forced to listen to via his headphones every day) that he actually started writing poems himself, and founded a Stasi Poetry Group. Regularly, these Stasi employees met to read each other their ambitious new poems –awful stuff, I can tell you, but touching none the less, don't you find? Angry Stasi victims often referred to the Stasi employees who persecuted them as "Stasi pigs" ("Stasi-Schweine"). With his usual humanistic sense of humour, Biermann refers to this strange admirer as "mein Stasi-Schweinchen", "my Stasi piglet".

At the same time, it is important to stress, of course, that the majority of Stasi people did stay party-loyal. I hope and trust that the film makes that clear. Most of them, unlike Wielser, did continue following their orders to the very end, and –this I know because I talked to them– still believe that what they were doing was right. It takes a lot of moral courage to allow yourself to acknowledge that the path you've been following most of your life is not the right one, and to begin your life's journey all over again. Not many people have that kind of courage. All the more do I admire Wiesler. 

What makes the Stasi officer change?

Now there's a question I heard very often while trying to secure the financing for this film: "Where is the turning point? What is the one thing that triggers his change?". People read about the necessity for turning points in books about screenwriting, and somehow trust these books more than their own life experience. In my experience, when people change, there is never just one cause. Unless there is direct divine intervention like for Saul at Damascus, there are always one hundred little things that together push a man into the same direction.

In the case of Captain Wiesler, the change actually begins very shortly after we enter the story. Already, going to the theatre draws him out of his normal life. Then, the blows just keep coming. On the Stasi side, he sees that his friend from college days, Grubitz, who was always a little less intelligent and always a little less party-loyal, is actually having a far better career than he is. Wiesler realizes that people even somehow mistrust him because he is so politically correct (originally a Stalinist term, I've been told) and because he's so loyal. Also, he finds out that what he considered a sacred mission –finding dirt on a potential enemy of the state– was initiated simply to satisfy a Central Committee member's sex urges. This discovery constitutes his first direct encounter with the arbitrary use of absolute power. Then, when he begins with the Operation 'Lazlo' (did anyone notice the Casablanca wink?), he starts to get to know these people quite well, not just in an interrogation situation, but in every aspect of their lives. After a while, he starts asking himself: 'Are these people really the enemy? Is this what I've been fighting against all my life?' He experiences them as normal people, with their moments of greatness, but also their moments of weakness. And he also experiences people for whom art is something natural –a central, beautiful but also a very normal part of their lives. And this is the third level: Brecht, Beethoven (or rather: Yared) –simply Art. He has never experienced anything like this before, at least not with the right kind of preparation.

And all these things together make him change. But he doesn't change into a white knight who draws his sword and starts fighting to save the maiden. At first, he is quite unwilling. He lets one thing go (Hauser's supposed flight to West-Berlin), then another, and almost grudgingly starts falsifying the reports. But the moment still comes where he goes to his boss and wants to betray Dreyman after all. He thinks the better of it, and continues protecting Dreyman. Only at the very end does he commit one actual, physical act of heroism. It takes him quite a long time. And it never feels heroic. I think that is one essential truth about heroism: it only feels good in retrospect.

But do you really think the kind of extreme change you show in your film is plausible?

Allow me to ask back: Would you think it possible that the same man who shed bitter tears at the death of 'little father Stalin' in 1953 would have become the greatest Anti-Stalinist in the history of mankind 30 years later? Well, that's the story of Mikhail Gorbachev. People do change. I have seen it happen.

How did the German press react to your movie ?

I was treated incredibly well by the press. All serious publications, FAZ, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Welt, Zeit, Spiegel, Focus –they all wrote reviews that could not have been more positive. There were actually three waves of reviews: First, the press asked the leading authors, freedom fighters and intellectuals of the former GDR to write about the film: Wolf Biermann, Thomas Brussig, Lutz Rathenow, Vera Lengsfeld –they all wrote impressive texts about the film, and their public endorsement and generous praise really helped me very much. Joachim Gauck wrote two pages about my film in "Der Stern" that were headlined: "Ja, so war es!" ("Yes, this is the way it was!"). Wolf Biermann called it "insane and true and beautiful" and then said something really original. He said what had always driven him crazy was that these Stasi people knew everything about him (whether he had doubts about a poem, whom he slept with, and how long he brushed his teeth), but he did not even have a face to put to them. My film, he felt, had finally given them faces in his mind.

With the authenticity question thus out of the way, the film critics could write about "The Lives of Others" as a film, and those were the articles I enjoyed most. Because, at the end of the day, although I spent much time researching this topic, my true passion is films, dramaturgy, actors, psychology, not the Stasi or communism. I am not a preacher, nor a historian or politician but a filmmaker, a storyteller. I most enjoy thinking and talking about how to help actors live their art to the fullest, I spend my free time philosophizing about colours, shapes and beauty. Of course, the Stasi is an interesting topic, but the Story was there first. And that's what the film is really about. Or do you think Ang Lee is interested only in Homosexuality? Coppola mainly in the Mafia?

Having said that, I was very glad about the third wave of articles that followed: Articles on the papers' Politics pages that talked about how "The Lives of Others" had caused a shift in how the Germans see the GDR, and had caused people to re-think the new German phenomenon of "Ostalgie" ("Ostagia", a word made up of Nostalgia and the German word for East, which is "Ost". It is used to describe people's warm, nostalgic feelings for the good old GDR.)

What do you think of "Ostagie"?

I think it is somewhat understandable, but definitely dangerous. Understandable because it is very easy to feel nostalgic for one's one past, and become confused: you think you're nostalgic for a country and a system that has vanished, when actually what you're feeling nostalgic about is your own lost youth. But to show you the danger, too: The German writer and theatre director Freya Klier did a survey among German adolescents, asking them if they thought the GDR had been a dictatorship. The overwhelming majority was surprised even by the question, and the answer was: "of course not". The Ostalgie Shows in German television and the nostalgic comedies in our cinema had been too effective in re-writing history, and portraying the GDR as a place of humour and humanity. I would hope that after my film, which was used by history and politics teachers in many schools, the results of that survey would be different. For not only was the GDR a dictatorship, it was a dictatorship that even called itself "dictatorship": "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" was the official Marxist term for the phase between "Capitalism" and "Communism" that the GDR never passed.

I think once the facts become known: The psychological torture of dissidents, the merciless killing of people who tried to cross the border, and the fact that the so-called "economic stability" was paid for in large part by the selling of political prisoners to the West –it becomes hart to stay ostalgic.

How was the public reaction in Eastern Germany? 

The public reaction in the East was truly amazing. Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Koch and I toured through the former GDR for two weeks when the film was released. And we were deeply touched by people's reactions (Sebastian always says that the goose bumps on his back have still not gone away). Viewers there were thankful that we had gone to such lengths to portray the GDR as it had really been, and were grateful that we had had taken the people and problems of the GDR seriously for a change. The Q&A sessions after the screenings went on for hours. And often we didn't even talk much, and rather just listened to people tell us their own terrible stories, often for the first time, and often in tears. 

In a way, it was less emotionally exhausting to present the film in the West, because here people considered it to be more of a political thriller. They were not plagued by terrible memories or by guilt as were our viewers in the East. But the film was just as successful in the West as it was in the East, which is a very rare thing for any film in Germany, no matter what the topic.   

Is it true that Ulrich Mühe, the actor who plays the Stasi captain, was under surveillance through the Stasi?

Most people working in the Arts and the Media were under surveillance, and so was Ulrich, who was a big star of East German theatre. He found out from his files that 4 members of his theatre group from the Deutsches Theater in Berlin were actually spying on him. The administration of the archives was able to give him the real names (behind the code names) of only two of them. It was their assessment of his politically rebellious behaviour that made the Stasi place Ulrich Mühe on a list of artists to be interned in an isolated camp. He also found out that his wife of 6 years, herself a famous actress of the East, unbeknownst to him, was registered as an informer with the Stasi throughout all the years of their marriage.

When people ask him how he prepared for the role, Ulrich Mühe answers: "I remembered".

Did other members of the cast or crew have brushes with the Stasi? How did it affect their work?

Oh, more than just brushes! With 300.000 people working in the system, you would have to be more surprised if someone working in arts or the media was never harassed by the Stasi than if he was. Most of the East-German members of my team had Stasi experience. I also offered several Stasi victims little parts as extras. They had great fun playing their former torturers, and it was quite useful to have them there to correct any little inaccuracies in Stasi behaviour. The Stasi thug who opens Dreyman's apartment door with a crowbar, for instance, was a punk in the GDR whose life was destroyed by the Stasi when he fell in love with the "class enemy", a girl from the West who visited the East for her grandmother's funeral. The girl later immortalized their ill-fated love in the beautiful film "Wie Feuer und Flamme".

But just to give you an example of how their personal histories would affect people's work: The property master (i.e. the man who assembles all the objects for the art department), Klaus Spielhagen, had been a property master in East Berlin, too. Around the time our film was set, he officially filed a petition to be allowed to leave the GDR. As a result, they black-listed him, and finally put him into Stasi prison for almost two years. He knew all these interrogation techniques first-hand, and found an amazing way of using his experience for the film: When I described to him what objects I needed –bugs, surveillance equipment, a room full of machines that steam-open letters etc. etc.– he took it upon himself not to re-create these objects (as prop masters usually do), but to find the actual original ones! He found collectors of Stasi electronics and convinced them to lend us their priceless possessions for the film. He even managed to have the Stasi Museum in Leipzig give us one of the original machines that steam-opened letters (600 per hour) for the final GDR scene. Even the jar that is used for the odour samples is an original (disgusting, but true!). Of course this was not necessary, but Klaus kept saying: "I don't want those SOBs to be able to fault us on anything!". I honestly think it helped the very intense atmosphere on the set that we knew we were using the actual tools of martyrdom. And for Klaus it was very empowering to be the one wielding them, this time.

I always believed that film is a kind of therapy. In this case it was a therapy even for us filmmakers.

How did you come up with this subject? What triggered your interest? Was there a personal motivation?

Over the years, there were two things that led me to make the film. One was the many formative childhood memories of my visits to East Berlin and the GDR. As a boy of eight, nine or ten, I found it interesting and exciting to feel the fear of adults. And they were afraid: my parents, when they crossed the border (they were both born in the East and were perhaps more closely controlled for this reason) and our friends from East Germany, when other people saw that they were speaking with us, from the West. Children have incredible antennae for emotions. I think that without these experiences I would have had trouble finding the right approach to this topic.

And then there was an image that I was never able to forget after it came to me in 1997 during a creativity training at the HFF: the close-medium shot of a man sitting in a bleak room, wearing headphones and listening to supernaturally beautiful music even though he does not want to hear it. This man pursued me in my dreams and evolved over the years into Captain Gerd Wiesler. Gabriel Yared always says that a creative artist is only a receiver. If that's true, then there was some kind of very strong broadcaster sending out signals non-stop.

You conducted intensive research for this film – how and where?

I went to many places where you can still feel the spirit of the past, such as the Hohenschönhausen Memorial or the former Ministry for State Security, today the Research Agency and Memorial in the Normannenstrasse, as well as the Birthler Bureau and its archives. Places can store emotions very well, and these visits often gave me more than the many books that, obviously, I also read over the years, and the documentaries that I watched. What was decisive, however, were the conversations with eyewitnesses, from Stasi Lieutenant Colonel Wolfgang Schmidt, the head of the Evaluation and Control Group of the "HA XX," to Stasi prostitutes and people who spent up to two years in a Stasi detention center. I tried to get as many perspectives as possible and I heard many contradictory stories – but in the end, I felt I had obtained a very definite feeling for this time and its problems.

The last and most important element was provided by my work with the actors and team members. Most of them came from the East and brought with them many experiences and viewpoints, often very personal. For many, my research and the shooting were the occasion to speak about these things for the first time. This is amazing! Fourteen years after reunification! Some wounds truly take a very long time to heal.

Were there specific models for characters or events?

The characters were compiled from many different real-life figures, and many people will certainly be able to identify with one or the other character. But the film is not a "roman à clef" or a "film à clef." Characters and events are deliberately left in suspense. For example, Hempf is a minister without a portfolio. To me, what was important was not to lose myself in historical details. My aim was to tell a story about real people, but on a heightened level of reality and seen from an emotional viewpoint!

How did you manage to recruit an Oscar winner for the film music?

It took quite a bit of time, but whoever knows me knows that I don't take no for an answer! I had written my final project at film college on "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and always had the feeling that I had only really come to understand the film through the music. I kept writing to Gabriel Yared until I was finally able to meet him personally and give him an idea of the contents of the film. He was immediately interested. Then I was the beneficiary of a stroke of luck, as one of his big projects, Wolfgang Petersen's "Troy," fell through and he suddenly had more time. Yared's work method involves writing some music for a film already during the script phase. We got together three times in London in order to develop these approaches together. For instance, he composed the "Sonata for a Good Man" that Dreyman plays, before the shooting. Sebastian Koch said that he truly understood how to interpret Dreyman only after playing this piece. Further proof that Gabriel's method makes sense.

What aesthetic concept did you follow with respect to the sets and color schemes?

We had a very definite idea of the colors to be used. We tried to reinforce the tendencies that predominated in the GDR through reduction. Since there was more green than blue in the GDR, we completely omitted blue. There was also more orange than red, so we eliminated red. We consistently used certain shadings of brown, beige, orange, green and gray, and thus obtained an authentic aesthetic depiction of the GDR of those years. Emptiness is an aesthetically neutral condition. Because of the low budget, we were not able to construct many sets. Thus whenever we were unable to produce authentic beauty, we relied on reduction to keep the visual quality on a high level. We did not want an overload of "GDR props." For me, the set design has to deliver the perfect background for the emotions of the actors – no more, but also no less. I don't want the viewer to start thinking about individual props or about spots on the wall or other conceptional matters, instead of emotionally connecting with the characters.

Fortunately, my team agreed with me completely here. As in just about every matter. Silke had already prophesied at the beginning of our preparations that we would all be thinking and feeling together as one whole by the latest when the shooting began. It sounded strange to me when she said it; but that's exactly what happened.

The Cast

Martina Gedeck (Christa-Maria Sieland)

Munich-born Martina Gedeck spent her childhood in Bavaria and Berlin, where she also studied at the Free University. She majored in drama there from 1982 to 1986 and later developed an active stage career in Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt and other major cities. Gedeck made her film debut in 1983, and took her first lead role in Dominik Graf’s TV movie “Die Beute” (1987/88). In the early 90s she became a regular fixture in the cinematic oeuvre of the younger German generation such as “Maybe, Maybe Not”, “Talk of the Town”, “Life Is All You Get” and “Rossini”, for which she obtained the German Film Award. Her international breakthrough dates from 2001, when she starred in “Mostly Martha”, which nabbed her a German Film Award in 2002.

Four years later she was nominated again for the German Film Award (Best Actress in a supporting role) for Oskar Roehlers Berlin competition film “The Elementary Particles”.

Martina is a mysterious woman, both professionally and personally. Most of the time she does what no one expects of her, and is almost always right: she counters a tragic scene with extreme eroticism, or makes an erotic moment more erotic by playing only resistance. When I tried to understand more of her mysterious art in conversations with her, she explained that she slips into the world of the film at the moment the director shouts "Action!", like Mary Poppins in the scene of the chalk picture on the pavement. With such a great actress, even words such as "Please" and "Thank you" become magical formulas. (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)

Ulrich Mühe (Gerd Wiesler)

Born in Grimma in 1953, Ulrich Mühe trained as a construction worker before he began studying acting in Leipzig in 1975. In 1983, he joined the ensemble of the Deutsches Theater, where he established his reputation as a gifted stage actor. He appeared in a number of GDR films and TV productions before landing the lead role in Bernhard Wicki’s “Spider’s Web” in 1989.

After the German reunification he played leading roles in “Benny’s Video”, “Funny Games” and “The Castle”, three films directed by Michael Haneke. Particularly noteworthy was his portrayal of the notorious concentration camp Doctor Mengele in “Amen”, directed by Costa-Cravas.

Even after one year of intimate and very harmonious collaboration I still say "Mr. Mühe" to Ulrich Mühe. This is a man who keeps his distance in order to protect himself and his art. Whoever has ever stood face to face with him can sense why: Mr. Mühe's eyes look directly into your heart – and through them, you can also look directly into his. This mixture of intellectual giftedness and vulnerability makes him an eminent actor. In "Sylvia," Ted Hughes says of poetry: "It's not like magic – it is magic." This is how I feel about Mühe's artistry as an actor. (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)

Sebastian Koch (Georg Dreyman)

Born in Karlsruhe in 1962, Koch studied at the renowned Otto Falckenberg School in Munich and took his first steps as an actor on the stages of Ulm, Darmstadt and Berlin before making his film and TV debut. His role as Andreas Baader in Heinrich Breloer’s docudrama “Todesspiel” led to a number of high-profile roles in TV movies, including the lead role in “Dance with the Devil” in 2001 and the part of Klaus Mann in Heinrich beloer’s docudrama “The Manns”. Koch won the Grimme Award for those two roles in 2002. He has since become one of the most sought-after character actors for the depiction of historical figures, such as Count Stauffenberg in Jo Baier’s film on the man who plotted against Hitler. In 2004 Koch portrayed the Nazi architect Albert Speer in Heinrich Breloer’s three-part docudrama “Speer and Hitler: The Devil’s Architect”.

In my entire work with Sebastian Koch I never came across any limitations: if I can formulate it, Sebastian can play it. I developed much of my directing philosophy in front of the TV set over the years by abstracting Sebastian's playing and deriving my own rules from it [...]. Women get weak knees when they see him, and men too – me, at least. Sebastian always made me dream: he is a star like Curd Jürgens, Gregory Peck or Denzel Washington. And he would be reason enough for me never to leave Germany. (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)

Ulrich Tukur (Anton Grubitz)

Ulrich Tukur was born in Viernheim in 1957 and supported himself at first as an accordion player and singer before taking up his acting studies in Stuttgart. In 1982 he made both his stage debut in Heidelberg and his film debut in Michael Verhoeven’s “The White Rose”. He was named “actor of the year” by the prestigious theater journal “Theater heute” in 1986. Besides “The White Rose”, Tukur starred in a number of other highly acclaimed films on historical topics such as “Stammheim” (1986), “The Comedian Harmonists” (1997), “Bonhoeffer – Agent of Grace” (1999), “Taking Sides” (2001) and “Amen” (2002). He also appeared in Steven Soderbergh’s Hollywood production “Solaris” in 2002.

Whenever I have to do with Ulrich Tukur, there's always one thought that comes to my mind: "When I grow up, I want to be just like him!" I've heard many sensible people say something similar. I know of no more amiable, confident, independent man. And I know of virtually no better actor. Tukur would be a star in any era. There is something timeless and extremely free about his acting. For him, dealing with art and culture is as natural as walking his dog. It makes absolutely no difference whether he composes, sings, writes poems and novels, or acts – it is always an artistic experience, the kind you can't get from anyone else. (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (Director, Script)

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (born 2 May 1973 in Cologne) grew up in New York and West Berlin. He studied Russian language and literature in Leningrad (which turned into St. Petersburg during his stay), and went on to read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Oxford University. In 1996, he took part in an essay competition and won a directing internship with Richard Attenborough on the set of "In Love and War". He then enrolled in a writing and directing course at Munich Film Academy, where he made several award-winning shorts. For his feature film debut THE LIVES OF OTHERS he won the Academy Award 2007 in the category Best Foreign Language Film as well as three European Film Awards 2006. He has been also nominated for the Golden Globe as Best Foreign Language Film.

Hagen Bogdanski (Cinematography)

Born in Berlin in 1965, Hagen Bogdanski studied art and photography at the university there. He gathered his first experiences in front of the camera in smaller roles as a teen, for instance in "Die Sendung mit der Maus." After completing his studies, he worked as assistant cameraman for Xaver Schwarzenberger, Jürgen Jürges and Gernot Roll, among others. He has filmed about 30 features and TV movies since 1994, and photographed three films for Oskar Roehler. He recently completed Stephan Wagner's TV movie "Die Männer sind alle Verbrecher."

Bogdanski has won the Kodak Advancement Prize twice and been honored with the "aec award" for "Die Unberührbare" in the category Best Camera at the Ourense Independent Film Festival. In 2005 he was nominated for the German Camera Prize for "Tatort: Minenspiel."

Silke Buhr (Set Design)

Silke Buhr trained as a carpenter before studying interior decorating at the Fachhochschule in Detmold. After graduating, she took up the study of set design at the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film in Munich. Although she already worked as an assistant set designer during this time, in 1997 she began exercising this profession actively. Among the latest films for which she created the sets are Chris Kraus's "Nur für Mozart" (2005) and Annette Ernst's TV comedy "Alles auf Anfang."

Gabriel Yared (Music)

The acclaimed composer and Oscar winner was born in Beirut in 1949. One of the world's leading film composers, he has written over 80 scores. In addition to writing the music for many international hit films, he has also composed, arranged and produced songs for singers such as Françoise Hardy, Mireille Mathieu, Gilbert Bécaud and Charles Aznavour.

He made his debut in the film world in Jean-Luc Godard's "Every Man For Himself." Most recently, he wrote the music to the Iraqi-German production "Underexposure" (2005) and David Leland's "Decameron: Angels & Virgins" (2006).

Among Yared's many awards are an Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Score for "The English Patient," the British Academy Award for "Cold Mountain" as well as the César for "L'Amant." He was also nominated twice for an Oscar: for "Cold Mountain" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley."

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