An innovative approach to the subject of National Socialism which uses a composition by Georg Katzer, a GDR pioneer of Neue Musik. The sound level – acoustic distortions and sound bites by leading representatives of the Third Reich – dominates, juxtaposed with minimalist images. A dialogue between viewers and memorial evolves in shots and counter shots.

This pointed montage of contrasts recalls the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, authorised by US President Harry S. Truman, and the devastating consequences: images of Harry in a warm embrace with a girl, images of wounded children in Japan. In September 1945, the island state in the Far East surrendered and the Second World War was officially over.

After the Wehrmacht invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, the Jewish population was disenfranchised and killed, as this etude, staged at the Terezín Memorial, recalls. The fact that there was successful Jewish resistance even in extermination camps like Sobibór did not fit in with the traditional image of the passive victims that is melodramatically re-enforced by this film.

The well-known illustrator Werner Klemke uses his drawings to teach the youngest bookworms about the value of reading. Taking this as a starting point, Lotte Thiel presents the GDR as a land of books whose capital is Leipzig. Figures and images from the 1971 International Book Art Exhibition underscore the significance accorded to books as a tool for shaping the “socialist personality”.

Commissioned by the German Book Traders’ Association, Lotte Thiel follows the preparations for the 1971 International Book Art Exhibition, prominently supported on screen and on the soundtrack. The tradition of this fair is recalled, from its predecessor BUGRA 1914 to the first IBA in 1927 and the subsequent events that took place every five to six years starting in 1959. Award-winning illustrations can be viewed in detail.

A representative of the Volgograd Section of the German-Soviet Friendship Society recalls German “comrades who fought against Hitler here […] and at other front sectors.” Equalisation with the people in the Soviet Union is completed at the Mamayev Kurgan memorial: The (German) visitors merge with the survivors who mourn their fallen.

A male voice, accompanied by the eponymous instrumental piece by Reinhard Lakomy, comments on photographic and material evidence of the events on the grounds of the Langenstein-Zwieberge subcamp. The audiovisual tour concludes with a visit by an FDJ (Free German Youth) group who lay down wreaths at the memorial site built in 1949. The speaker unequivocally classes this ritual of remembrance as part of the raison d’état.

A tinted nitrate fragment of the company film “A. Gutberlet & Co., Leipzig-Mölkau, Spezialfabrik für Falzmaschinen und Faden-Buchheftmaschinen, gegründet 1901“ (specialist in the manufacture of folding machines and thread book stitching machines, established 1901) was an exceptional find. It could be restored in its original colour tones by analogue methods in 2024 and then digitised. Combined with the dupe negative of another version, it now offers insights into the factory halls and the work on the machines.

The married couple Angelika and Horst Butter sum up successes and setbacks of their joint amateur filmmaking. They now produce elaborate puppet animations in their private rooms, under sometimes adverse conditions. They adapt fairy tale and fantasy sources, but also take up topical social issues, for example in an entertaining vision for International Women’s Day.

East Berlin plays host to the world at the 10th World Youth Festival. The secret capital of the GDR, Leipzig, also gets some reflected glory. On 3 August 1973, festival delegations from forty countries take a special train to the trade fair city. Between the official events there is room for ambiguous side glances, captured in this report of the day made by several Leipzig company and amateur film groups.

After the military coup in Chile and the death of Salvador Allende in 1973, tens of thousands of opposition members were persecuted and murdered. The GDR took in about 2,000 refugees, including nine-year-old Tania and her family. The fact that the GDR was initially sceptical about Allende’s politics and granted political asylum only to selected Chileans is part of the logic of a bipolar world order.

With no introduction, the audience find themselves in the middle of the film’s subject. Soviet ballet master Arkady Sakharov instructs the children’s and youth dance ensemble of the Radebeul district’s arts centre with an insistent voice. Belarussian, Ukrainian, Uzbek and Russian folk dances are rehearsed under his strict guidance and performed at the packed local arts centre.