Die Frau des Heimkehrers (2006)

In the summer of 1944, Corporal Karlheinz Rombach spends leave from the front with his family. As he says goodbye, he gives his wife, Eva, a medallion hammered out of a cartridge case, with a picture of the two of them enclosed inside. He asks Sebastian, his childhood friend who was wounded in the war, to look after Eva and their little son, Peter. In the autumn of 1944, Karlheinz and his reconnaissance unit are captured by the Russians and made to work in a quarry. Since the letters he writes home never reach Eva, he waits in vain for mail from home. One day, he sees Soviet soldiers burning letters. He takes the next opportunity to escape and gets out of the camp in a Soviet uniform, but is discovered beneath a railway carriage. Instead of being shot, as was the usual procedure, he is sentenced to 25 years of labor in a coal mine. Eva’s father is Julius Kantor, the local NSDAP leader. To everyone’s surprise, in April 1945 he orders a Volkssturm unit not to fight the advancing Americans. They arrest him. It is the summer of 1948. Kantor is released after the currency reform. The mayor says he helped bring about the release by having the U.S. district commander shoot a twelve-point stag from the municipal forest. Sebastian has built up a growing haulage business and offers Eva a job as a bookkeeper, which she accepts. As she waits, almost all her hope is lost when Sven Elsenau, a returning prisoner who was captured with Karlheinz, turns up and asks about him. Elsenau had believed an escape attempt had succeeded, and falls silent when Eva asks what happened to those who were caught trying to escape. Meanwhile, Karlheinz has warned others in the mine about coal that was about to cave in, and is released. Eva does go to the mayor’s office intending to have Karlheinz declared dead, but abandons the plan there; she is now receptive to Sebastian’s continued advances. He confesses that he has always been in love with her and was heartbroken when she fell in love with Karlheinz. Eva takes the medallion from her neck and puts it away in a small chest with a framed bedside-table photograph of Karlheinz. She lets Sebastian take her to an American dance hall, while Karlheinz arrives at the nearby railway station. As they dance, Eva and Sebastian kiss, then stop at a barn on the way back and go into the hay, while Karlheinz rings the bell at their home. Sebastian tells Eva how immeasurably happy he is, while Peter serves Karlheinz. Eva is incredulous when she finds Karlheinz in the apartment. Shortly afterward, an outdoor welcome banquet is held for Karlheinz. Eva’s unmarried cousin Hilde, who has been unable to attract Sebastian’s attention and works at the mayor’s office, tells Karlheinz that Eva had wanted to have him declared dead and begin a new life with Sebastian. Karlheinz’s expression darkens; he leaves the banquet and goes into the house. Eva follows him. He calls her a “whore” and rapes her. Outside the house, Karlheinz attacks Sebastian as a “traitor” and knocks him down. He breaks things off with Eva and lives in his locksmith’s workshop until Peter brings them together, the couple talk things out, and Karlheinz reconciles with Eva.