Du bist min. Ein deutsches Tagebuch

Filmstill Diary of a German Woman

Diary of a German Woman

Du bist min. Ein deutsches Tagebuch
Michael Englberger, Hans-Joachim Funk, Manfred Krause, Andrew Thorndike, Annelie Thorndike
Retrospective 2022
Documentary Film
GDR
1969
111 minutes
German
subtitles: 
None

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Michael Englberger
Hans-Joachim Funk
Manfred Krause
Andrew Thorndike
Annelie Thorndike
DEFA-Gruppe 67
Ernst Oeltze
Hermann Ihde
Christian Lehmann
Siegfried Mogel
Günter Ost
Siegfried Oschatz
Alexander Westlin
Christa Bramann
Hans-Dieter Hosalla
Werner Klein
Annelie Thorndike
Andrew Thorndike

The core of this most personal of the Thorndikes’ projects are Annelie’s diary entries: Her story is to be the starting point for a kind of all-German ‘Heimatfilm’ that praises the utopian power of the GDR and sharply condemns Federal German wrongs, but finds transcendent beauty on both sides of the wall. Over the course of production, however, the visionary dimension of the project was progressively trimmed down, though it’s still tangible everywhere in the compromised final version: The intensity of its pathos is both oppressive and enchanting; some historical simplifications and ideological twists and bends may be hair-raising, but they still achieve the desired effect.

Felix Mende
#
From the Archive