Die Nachrichten (2005)

September 22, 1995, Hamburg. Newsreader Jan Landers, an “Ossi” (an East German), reads the evening news. He is on the verge of being appointed head of the news program. Landers is from East Berlin and dropped out of a cultural studies degree at Humboldt University. He is alert and has a way with women. At an art opening, he falls in love with Margarethe Beer, daughter of the multimillionaire brewery owner Johannes Beer. Landers looks at a loft right on the Elbe as a possible new home. Elsewhere in Hamburg, at a Spiegel editorial meeting, Doris Theyssen, an exceptionally tough reporter, is assigned an article on “Successful Ossis,” about athletes, actors, businesspeople, and Jan Landers. Theyssen, who, like Landers, is from East Berlin, follows a tip from Bernhard Blöger, head of the Gauck Authority’s Berlin office, whom she knows, and researches the newsreader’s past at the Stasi Records Agency’s Neubrandenburg branch. By chance, the seasoned local journalist Thomas Raschke gets wind of it. Raschke—quite a drunk, but always alert—immediately smells a “scoop” for the weekend edition of the naz (Neubrandenburger Allgemeine). A staff member at the records agency slips the reporter a Stasi index card on Landers. A race between the two journalists to get the best story begins. A call from Bernhard Blöger to Landers’s boss, Reichelt, alerts the broadcaster that a Stasi file exists on Landers and that he may have been an unofficial informant. Landers is suspended and “taken out of the line of fire.” The newsreader is stunned. Since he believes he has done nothing wrong, but has almost completely forgotten or repressed some details of his past, he takes a train to Neubrandenburg after a call from Raschke. In the early 1980s, he did his 18 months of compulsory military service there with an NVA helicopter regiment. Landers and Raschke set out to find the truth. In the process, he will also meet Carsten Zelewski, formerly the Stasi officer responsible for Landers’s army unit. Doris Theyssen has meanwhile already visited Zelewski in his apartment in a prefabricated high-rise block. After taking some time to think it over, he agreed to look through his notes and help the Spiegel reporter with her story in exchange for a fee of 3,000 marks. As someone who has been unemployed for a long time, Zelewski can use the money, and his wife is an alcoholic. In the end, however, Zelewski contacts Landers himself and secretly picks him up in his Lada. He wants to speak with Landers alone, without the two newspaper reporters finding out. In an open field outside the city, he explains to the newsreader that the Stasi never listed him as an active agent. At entertainment evenings during his army service, Landers had played records, including a song by Udo Lindenberg with a sensitive East-West theme, “Mädchen aus Ostberlin.” This naturally drew the Stasi’s attention to him. His file, “Pankow,” had been opened merely as a precaution, in case he ended up joining the Stasi. At the time, Landers had seemed “approachable.” The two part ways. At a loss, Landers wanders along the road through the countryside. Shortly afterward, Margarethe happens to turn up in her sports car. The happily reunited couple drives back to Hamburg. Zelewski is back home. He sees no future for himself or his marriage and does not want to betray anyone either. He leaves the Spiegel fee in the living room, writes a farewell letter, and jumps from the balcony. Shortly after Zelewski’s death, Doris Theyssen turns up at the apartment and, unnoticed by his bewildered widow (who has not yet realized that her husband has killed himself), takes her money back, along with Zelewski’s farewell letter, which she later reads and destroys. However, the Spiegel journalist does not pursue the matter further and sends Landers his file. After briefly looking through it, he throws it into the trash, relieved and freed. Raschke’s sensational article in the naz is stopped by the editor-in-chief shortly before printing, after a call from Blöger. November 22, 1995. Landers is back in his chair in front of the camera, presenting the news.