Vocational school teacher Brasch (Helmut Griem) gets into the crosshair of the west german state security. After one of his pupils commits suicide Brasch finds out that he used to work as an state security informant tasks with spying on his classmates. Soon his handler Körner (Martin Benrath) tries to recruit Brasch. Who not only refuses but also makes this connection public. This leads not only to Körner dismissal but also his own. When Körner meets with Brasch a last time, before vanishing to East Berlin, he gives Brash his state dossier and makes him, through this knowledge, an enemy of the state. Having his flat searched and losing custody of his daughter (Meret Becker in her first acting role) Brash tries to reconcile the situation with Berlin's minister of the interior.
This film perfectly captures the mood in West German in the last seventies, early eighties among the political left. After the police had been given more and more freedoms because of the Baader-Meinhof crimes, in 1972 the so called "Radikalenerlass" was passed. This was a decree prohibiting members of extremist organisations from becoming civil servants or teachers. It lead to the covert inspection of around 3,5 million people in Germany and the firing or non-employment of about 1500 people. The films plot is of course slightly (or not so slightly) exaggerated and dramatised.
Always in the background of this film what was back then considered the spy capital of the world, West-Berlin. Even in the scenes where Brasch is just going sledging with his girlfriend you see the American radar station (or weather station we had to called it back then) in the background.
This film perfectly captures the mood in West German in the last seventies, early eighties among the political left. After the police had been given more and more freedoms because of the Baader-Meinhof crimes, in 1972 the so called "Radikalenerlass" was passed. This was a decree prohibiting members of extremist organisations from becoming civil servants or teachers. It lead to the covert inspection of around 3,5 million people in Germany and the firing or non-employment of about 1500 people. The films plot is of course slightly (or not so slightly) exaggerated and dramatised.
Always in the background of this film what was back then considered the spy capital of the world, West-Berlin. Even in the scenes where Brasch is just going sledging with his girlfriend you see the American radar station (or weather station we had to called it back then) in the background.
