Saying Goodbye to the German Democratic Republic
Goodbye Lenin!, a film created and directed by Wolfgang Becker follows the story of Alex Turner in the German Democratic Republic in October 1989 (right before the fall of the Berlin Wall). After awakening from a coma induced from a near fatal heart attack, Alex is told his mother cannot be exposed to any form of excitement or she will die. As a result, Alex decides he must reconstruct the reality of the GDR for his mother because “[she had] overslept the triumph of capitalism” (Becker). Despite creating a parallel reality where the GDR still exists was meant for his mother, overtime Alex begins to replace his mother’s GDR with a fantasy version he wanted when the government was still in place. This is exemplified throughout the film with his reconstruction of reunification, incorporation of Alex’s childhood hero, Sigmund Jähn in the reunification segment, and his father in Alex’s version of the GDR. While Alex originally reconstructed the GDR to deceive his mother, he eventually begins to rewrite the ending of the GDR so that it ended in a dignified and
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On a mission to seek out his father in Western Germany, Alex encounters a taxi driver who he believes resembles his childhood hero, Sigmund Jähn; the first East German to fly in space. Despite him being a taxi driver and not the actual cosmonaut, Alex asks that he participate in the creation of the final news segment on the rewritten reunification of Germany. Much of the segment is spent comparing unification with space; a clear example of Alex’s desires and interests in space and cosmonauts overlapping with his reconstruction of the GDR. His insistence on the driver’s participation on the final news segment projects back to how his personal wishes (to be a cosmonaut) and interests influence his version of the