Why is it that some architectural structures simply do not let us go? What is it about them that haunts us and holds us in such a firm grip? Why are we never safe with respect to such sites? What makes us feel compelled to respond to them in the strongest possible terms? The I. G. Farben building and surrounding grounds in Frankfurt offer one such instance of a place I myself came to love wholeheartedly when I went there to work each day during the academic year 2008–2009. The filmmaker Eva Heldmann and her friend, who is mentioned in the film’s title, the Film Studies professor, Annette Brauerhoch similarly reveal a love for it in their 1999 film fremd gehen. Gespräche mit meiner Freundin, where it evokes memories of a private utopia experienced there during the late 1980s. Of the building’s history, the historian and founding director of the Fritz Bauer Institute Hanno Loewy reminisces:

The legend captured in Heldmann’s film in and around Frankfurt’s “haunted castle” offers insights into the afterlife of the sexual revolution of 1968. It affirms what psychoanalyst and former president of the Socialist German Student Union (SDS) Reimut Reiche maintains was that movement’s unwavering belief in the possibility of an autonomous and uninhibited sexuality, one free of consequences. This dream of a “free” sexuality, it was thought, would offer both a viable response to, as well as redemption from, the deeds of the parental generation.