Bremer Freiheit (1972)

The television drama is based on Fassbinder’s stage play, which draws on an authentic case from the history of the city of Bremen: Gesche Gottfried (called Geesche by Fassbinder) is considered by her fellow citizens to be an honorable, God-fearing woman. In 1831, however, she is publicly executed for fifteen murders committed against her parents, children, husbands, and other people. Fassbinder’s Geesche is a self-assured woman whom those around her refuse to allow to think, live, and love independently. Geesche poisons her first husband because he tyrannizes her like a slave. She longs for a loving marriage and is happy when Gottfried, the man she loves, takes over the business of her saddlery. Geesche’s mother (played in the film by Fassbinder’s mother) reproaches her severely for her views and her relationship with Gottfried, which is not sanctioned by marriage. The mother, too, is therefore given poison. Geesche poisons the two children from her first marriage because Gottfried says he cannot imagine having a child with her who would grow up among another man’s children. When Geesche becomes pregnant by Gottfried and wishes to marry him, all she gets in response is humiliation. In despair, she gives him poison too—but still manages to obtain the answer she wants from him as he lies dying: yes. After that, one murder follows another: her father, because he wants to force her to take her nephew as both business manager and husband; her old friend Zimmermann, when he extorts back a gift she had given him; her brother Johann, because he wants to wrest control of the business from her and force her back into the role of a housewife; and her friend Luisa, after Geesche happily extols her freedom and Luisa, unable to understand her, calls Geesche’s life a hell. Only her friend Rumpf notices that Geesche is putting pills in his coffee. He has them analyzed by the police. In his film, Fassbinder focuses on the poison murderess (Margit Carstensen) and the social and psychological circumstances that led to her crimes. He portrays Gesche Gottfried as a woman who, amid the injustices of a male-dominated society, saw no way to achieve liberation and self-fulfillment other than through murder.