The Portrayal of GDR History in motion pictures made since 1989/90 has sparked lively debates in the trade press, in nationally renowned newspapers and magazines, and among leading cultural and political figures. Commentators have repeatedly and often passionately questioned who has the right to tell the history of the GDR, Easterners or Westerners? Those who lived through it and can vouch for the authenticity of their story based on eyewitness experience or those who never took part in the events and therefore have the distance to look back on history and reflect upon it objectively? Without falling into the trap of essential-ism that would privilege one voice over another based on some perceived innate truth (or arguing that history can only be told by contemporaries), it is important to note that in the Berlin Republic the position of former GDR citizens is structurally inferior to that of Westerners, and that the debate about a filmmaker’s place of origin is fundamentally about this inequality. Contentious film reviews in the trade press are symptomatic of the larger debates over the emerging GDR memory landscape.

Already at the time of the unification process, then Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble stated for the record that the West did not view the East as an equal partner but more as the prodigal son returning to the fold under the protection of the righteous father. Schäuble maintained:

Entering into the union as the wayward state, the GDR and its citizens were given and accepted the mandate to shed their sovereignty and identity and adopt Western standards. This process of assimilation is far from over, and the distance between Easterners and Westerners continues today.