It has been dubbed a cold war Romeo and Juliet and has been drawing huge television audiences in Germany since its launch in the middle of last month.
So popular is the first German TV drama about daily life in communist East Germany, which critics say provides the first sympathetic portrayal of the lives of East Germans since reunification 20 years ago, that many believe it will outperform the US hit series Mad Men, which opens on German television next month.
The program is Weissensee, or White Lake, which is named after a district in the heart of former East Berlin. At its heart are the Kupfers and the Hausmanns, two warring families linked by an illicit love affair. The action is set in 1980. The Kupfers are a family of ambitious Stasi (secret police) officers keen to retain their status at all costs. The Hausmanns are a clan of feisty dissidents whose matriarch is Dunja, a popular cabaret singer.
Her daughter, Julia, falls in love with Martin Kupfer, despite his family’s deep disapproval and their concerted efforts to separate the couple.
The series, which is to be extended due to popular demand, has been credited for bringing an authentic depiction of life in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to the nation’s living rooms for the first time, two decades after German reunification, the anniversary of which was being marked across the country yesterday.
“Twenty years after German unity, a series has finally arrived that gives some Ossis their dignity,” wrote the august weekly Die Zeit, using the once derogatory and now popular term to describe East Germans.
While both the writer and director are west German, the actors are mainly from the east, and many were themselves the victims of state repression. Katrin Sass, who plays Dunja and is best known as the mother in the international film hit Goodbye Lenin!, was spied on by the Stasi in real life, including by one of her best friends who worked as an informer. Others in the cast spent time in Stasi prisons or fled to the west.
Their real-life GDR biographies, say critics, only add to the show’s authenticity.
The magazine Superillu, a publication with its roots in East Germany that continues to court readers from the former communist state, called Weissensee a “journey back in time to the GDR of the 1980s.”
“While some who experienced the GDR and the Stasi dictatorship might argue they’re laying it on too thick in some scenes ... I’d say rather a bit of exaggeration than to ignore history altogether,” wrote the magazine’s critic Susi Groth, adding: “In any case, Shakespeare would have approved.”
The series coincides with renewed interest in the lives of Ossis — fueled in part by films such as The Lives of Others and Goodbye Lenin! — and comes at a time when Germans are assessing the successes and failures of the unification process after more than 40 years of division.
Last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who spent the first 35 years of her life in the GDR, revealed the struggle she had had adjusting to the transition to a reunified Germany.
In a candid interview with Superillu, in which she might have been expressing the thoughts of thousands of east Germans, she admitted she still stockpiled food for fear of running short.
“I still buy something as soon as I see it, even when I don’t really need it. It’s a deep-seated habit stemming from the fact that in an economy where things were scarce you just used to get what you could when you could,” she said.
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