Helden wie wir (1999)

When the Berlin Wall falls on November 9, 1989, Klaus Uhltzscht runs into the West naked from the waist down. Nobody wants to believe that he was responsible for the Wall coming down, so now he tells his story. Klaus is born into a political world on August 20, 1968, as tanks drive past his house to put an end to the Prague Spring. Later, he lives with his parents directly across from the Stasi headquarters, and at school he is taught that a great struggle between capitalism and socialism is underway. He is a proud Thälmann Pioneer and a terrible swimmer. When the new student Yvonne Anders joins his class, he spends time with her and falls in love with her. Yvonne is determined to go to Holland someday, where there are fields of tulips. But after he hits her on the head with a swing, injuring her and angering her father, Klaus returns from a stay at summer camp to discover that she has moved away. From an early age, Klaus has a tendency to write down all sorts of things, and he witnesses people around him being taken away. So after finishing school, he has no trouble starting work for the Stasi. After Lieutenant Gollasch approaches him, he completes his basic training with the NVA and soon discovers that his father also works for the Stasi. Klaus is then assigned to the mail department, where he trains under Major Wunderlich. Thanks to his talent and clever remarks—such as, “Every blank page is a potential leaflet”—he completes his training successfully and from then on accompanies Wunderlich and his officers on surveillance missions. He is surprised to suddenly spot Yvonne again. He follows her—with a stopover to see Achim Mentzel—and discovers that she is working underground. The dissidents are short of paper, so he advises the opposition not only that “every blank page is a potential pamphlet,” but also that fighting matters more than petition drives. Yvonne is so impressed that she invites him to her home. But instead of having sex with her, he admits that he works for the Stasi, and they lose touch for a while. A few days later, Klaus is taken from his home. He donates blood for Erich Honecker so that he can survive. As a side effect, Klaus develops a penile blood congestion. In the hospital, he confesses to his mother that he, too, is in favor of the Wall coming down. During the surveillance of an individual at Alexanderplatz subway station that follows, a scuffle breaks out between the Stasi and passersby when the individual cries out for help. Yvonne is among the passersby, so Klaus attacks his own people to help her escape. He then runs to the Wall himself, but it remains closed. Through a trick—Klaus drops his trousers—the Wall is opened, and Klaus searches for Yvonne in West Berlin. But he only finds her in Holland, where he takes her in his arms and kisses her in a tulip field.