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"Heroes Like Us"

By David Hudson

A film premiering ten years to the hour after the fall of the Berlin Wall reveals a younger generation's lighter take on Germany's heavy history.

"Whoever doesn't know my story doesn't understand what's up in Germany. I, Klaus Uhltzscht, opened up the Berlin Wall." Absurd? Of course. Delightfully provocative? That, too.

Klaus Uhltzscht is the hollow hero of Helden Wie Wir (Heroes Like Us), a novel released to all but universal acclaim in 1995. Sample blurbs: "An intelligent affront" (the staid and conservative "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung"), "Here it is! The great German unification novel!" (the respected liberal weekly "Die Zeit"), "Finally, the satirical novel from the Wild East" (the newsweekly "Stern"). Former East German singer and activist Wolf Biermann wrote in DER SPIEGEL: "I recommend it to you - the book - laughter that freshens the heart."

The novel was a smashing debut for Thomas Brussig, a young writer who grew up in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and who has had a very, very good year. Just over a month ago, the film version of another of his novels became a domestic box office hit. "Sonnenallee" (see the October 8 "Digest") tells the relatively sweet and straightforward story of a group of friends growing up in East Germany and is widely regarded as Exhibit A in the case for those who argue that there is a wave of "Ostalgie" (nostalgia for the GDR) sweeping at least the eastern half of the not-so-freshly unified country.

Helden Wie Wir is different. Not only does the novel "vomit anger" (Brussig) but Sebastian Peterson, who makes his own debut as a feature film director with the movie version, says, "I never would have thought of filming it." The narrative practically scampers out of control, running after one tangent, then another, as Brussig chases down and tackles just about everything he ever loved and hated about the GDR. Peterson, Brussig and fellow screenwriter Markus Dittrich have done a fine job honing the loose and baggy monster to a love story with countless yet digestible subplots.

While tens of thousands gathered around the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin for concerts and speeches, fireworks and memories (see below), another sort of crowd thronged the UFA Kosmos movie theater in what was once East Berlin to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Wall by taking in the premiere of the film alongside its stars and makers. Standard attire was basic Berlin black, from head to toe, while the characters on the screen blazed away in the overly eager colors of the GDR in the 70s and 80s. Brussig wandered the lobby, grinning from ear to ear, an easy-to-spot celebrity now that he's appeared on German television and the cover of DER SPIEGEL.

He was born in 1965, Peterson in 1967, and their fictional hero, Klaus Uhltzscht, was born on August 20, 1968. As his mother strains to press him out of her body, a convoy of Russian tanks rolls past the window. "Which way to Prague?" a Russian soldier asks Klaus's father who waves in the general direction, unwittingly bringing about an early end to the Prague Spring of '68. It's Klaus's first of many brushes with history, and Brussig readily agrees with those who call Klaus "a sort of East German Forrest Gump."

With its liberal use of animation, Super 8, video and historical footage and its jaunty rewriting of history, "Heroes Like Us" recalls not only that US hit but also the German smash "Run Lola Run", although it's neither as slick as the former nor as frenetically paced as the latter. The film tells its own story in its own language. It's a laugh-along rather than laugh-at sort of comedy with a light touch and a thin cloud of melancholy hanging almost imperceptibly over its irreverent head.

Klaus, born into the world as a blank slate, swallows the GDR's ideological line whole, but slowly comes to the conclusion, when his mother expresses her horror at the demonstrations threatening to undo 40 years of GDR history, that: "I want the Wall to fall, too, Mother." Without giving away the ending, let it be said that it involves an unnaturally engorged penis, an electronica-inspired remix of Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" and all the spunky attitude Germany's younger generation of writers and filmmakers dare to muster.

Germany and Europe on the Web today:

The Helden Wie Wir site is in German, but there are plenty of pictures.

"The date: Thursday, November 9, 1989. The place: East Berlin. The time: 6.53 pm. The occasion: a press conference after the emergency meeting of the Central Committee of East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party, given by its spokesman, the East Berlin party chief, Günter Schabowski." Daniel Johnson was there for the "Daily Telegraph" and recounts the astonishment that greeted Schabowski's bumbling, almost accidental announcement that the Berlin Wall had indeed fallen. Johnson's story winds all the way to the present ("Here in Berlin the past really is another country"), and the "Telegraph" links to four more related articles.

Another door onto another package the "Electronic Telegraph" put up on Tuesday is Andrew Gimson's report on the honors bestowed on former US President George Bush and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. That leads to Diplomatic Editor Christopher Lockwood's reflections on the worldwide impact of the fall of the Wall and two more stories.

And that's just Tuesday. Like so many other papers, the "Telegraph" has pulled out the stops in its anniversary coverage. On Wednesday, Gimson calls Germans' celebrations "subdued" but the story is linked to the paper's broader coverage.

The "New York Times" has set up a Web special: "One Europe, 10 Years" features current articles, archives and "slide shows". Roger Cohen pegs his Tuesday story, an overview of the issues facing Germany in the last ten years, on East German border guard Harald Jäger, whose face is suddenly all over German papers and television. Cohen also files a report on the upholding of the verdict against Egon Krenz, the last East German leader, for his role in the country's shoot-to-kill policy on those who tried to escape to the west. In Wednesday's edition, Cohen builds his report on Tuesday's celebrations on a quote from Chancellor Gerhard Schröder: "The wall fell from east to west, pushed down by brave and fearless East Germans." Free registration required

Roger Boyes has also been working overtime for the "Times" of London. The Wall has not only fallen, he reports, it's been scattered the world over and "the Berlin Senate is considering buying back bits to preserve as a monument." More Boyes: Tuesday's celebrations have been a "boost" for former chancellor Helmut Kohl; Krenz and other convicted eastern leaders; the current state of armies once central to the Warsaw Pact.

Also in the "Times": Richard Owen reports that liberals in the Politburo kept Kremlin hardliners from turning 1989 into a "bloodbath". Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher denies that she's snubbed the celebrations, according to Michael Binyon, who also recalls the euphoria ten years ago. But a lead editorial argues that "the end of the Wall was not quite what it seemed." And an excerpt from Along the Wall and Watchtowers by Oliver August.

More on the celebrations from William Drozdiak in the "Washington Post". The BBC's got loads of photos and a story.

Ralph Atkins concludes his report in the "Financial Times" with an amusing anecdote involving Coca-Cola and the east. Free registration required

A handful of broad perspectives from the "International Herald Tribune": Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping outlines his vision of a Europe united economically and militarily and closely allied with the US. John Vinocur examines the evidence leading to the argument that "reunited Germany has hardly turned out to be the economic subjugator and tiger shark of European politics France and Britain so feared at first." Justin Keay writes that "the move to a free market has not been as extensive or successful as was hoped" in central and eastern Europe, and William Drozdiak adds that ten years on, "Europe appears to be a better but not necessarily safer place... [T]he revolution of 1989... is still passing through a perilous transition."

John Hooper wraps up his overview of the hoopla in the "Guardian" with statistics showing that Germany is "One country, two cultures". Paul Oestreicher, former chairman of Amnesty International UK, recalls East German leader Walter Ulbricht's passionate defense of the Wall. A lead editorial reminds "Guardian" readers that history has not come to an end. Also: Tony Paterson on Krenz and Hooper on Bush and Gorbachev. Free registration required

And finally, other news. From the "Times", an update by Charles Bremner on the Socialist International meeting in Paris and Roger Boyes on the ten year sentence delivered to four German soccer hooligans who beat French gendarme Daniel Nivel so severely he was in a coma for six weeks.

Tony Paterson reports in the "Guardian" on new unemployment figures in Germany which may spell good news for Chancellor Schröder. Also: Kate Connolly on the financial crisis facing the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Free registration required

Richard Cook celebrates 30 years of Manfred Eicher's ECM Records in the "New Statesman".

In the "Village Voice", Deborah Jowitt reviews Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Charles McNulty catches the New York premiere of Peter Handke's The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other.