Als Unku Edes Freundin war (1981)

Berlin in the 1920s: Sinti arrive with their circus on the outskirts of the city. People react with suspicion; mothers usher their children indoors and take the laundry off the line. But twelve-year-old Ede Sperling quickly gets to know a girl named Unku, shows her his fish, and later rescues her from the newspaper boys chasing her. Unku gradually manages to dispel Ede’s prejudices against the Sinti. Ede’s mother is no longer alive, and his father has no income because the workers are striking at his workplace and no one wants to act as a strikebreaker. His older sister Lisa supports the family by working as an usher at the cinema. The family is constantly on the verge of losing their rented apartment, especially since their neighbor, a company manager, is trying to persuade Ede’s father to act as a strikebreaker. At Unku’s suggestion, Ede also tries to find a job. He would like to work as a newspaper boy, but he doesn’t have a bicycle. Even a secondhand one, which he admires in a shop window, would cost 30 marks. Ede has saved only five. His sister adds 20 marks from her weekly wages, and Ede and Unku set about earning the rest together, even though Ede spends a few pfennigs on a necklace for Unku. Once, they deliver newspapers by horse-drawn cart, but it ends in chaos. At the fairground, they take a job turning a carousel and try in vain to win money at dice. They are even recruited as extras for a film, but Unku is supposed to play a stereotypical thieving “Gypsy girl,” so she runs away. Back at Ede’s home, handing over the weekly wages leads to unexpected problems. His father has had to use the rest of the family’s savings to pay the rent. There is hardly any food left in the house, and Ede can no longer return his wages because he has already made a down payment on the bicycle. To his surprise, Unku gives him the missing five marks, which she says she found, and he is able to buy the bicycle. When he proudly shows it to the other newspaper boys, they claim Unku stole the money. Ede does in fact catch Unku using a trick to steal several coins from a visitor to the fairground. He throws his bicycle at her and runs off. Even Max, his sister’s boyfriend, who has stood up for him several times, can barely convince Ede that Unku is a good person. She only wanted to help him and could hardly have got the money any other way, since no one would employ the Sinti. Ede argues that his father earns no money either, but still wouldn’t steal. At home, Ede’s father turns up with several bread rolls. A short time later, the neighbor rings the bell and confronts him, saying that he took the rolls from the neighbor’s breakfast bag by the garden gate. He says he will forgo filing a complaint for petty theft if Ede’s father voluntarily goes back to work the next day. Ede realizes how badly off his family is, and how important the bicycle purchase was. In the meantime, Unku has brought the bicycle to him in the pouring rain and leaned it against the fence. The next day, he rides to see Unku, but she has already moved on. All Ede finds on the ground is the necklace he once gave her.