Aufbruch in die Freiheit (2018)

Erkelenz, early 1970s: Erika Gerlach, a butcher’s wife, learns that she is pregnant for the fourth time. She wants absolutely no more children, as work in the family business and the confines of village life are already wearing her down enough. Under the pretext of visiting her sister Charlotte in Cologne, she secretly has an abortion. Complications arise when the police arrive, and Erika has to undergo emergency surgery. Afterward, she stays for a while at the shared apartment of her much more emancipated sister, who is preparing a protest action against Paragraph 218 with her friends. When Erika returns to her home village, the situation escalates. Her husband Kurt refuses to let their daughter Ulrike attend the Gymnasium and tells Erika that he knew about the abortion. A loud argument breaks out, and Erika leaves Kurt, taking the children with her, and moves in with her sister. However, she has difficulty building a life of her own: as a woman, she is not allowed to sign an employment contract or enroll her daughter in the Gymnasium without her husband’s consent. So she forges Kurt’s signature. Through her sister’s friends, she also gets a job as a nursing assistant at the hospital. But when she takes part in a demonstration against the abortion ban with her children and appears on the front page of a newspaper, Kurt seeks to take custody of the children from her—and wins in court. Erika is initially distraught, but then joins others in the “We Have Had Abortions!” action and appears on the front page of Stern magazine on June 6, 1971. When her mother-in-law dies and it becomes clear that Kurt will not be able to manage the situation and the butcher shop on his own, Erika decides to return. But she retains her independence: although she helps Kurt at the butcher shop, they do not get back together as a couple, and Erika keeps her job at the hospital.