Hüpf, Häschen hüpf (1991)

Former GDR prosecutor Daniels is painting the fence outside his detached house. A closed van bearing the sign “An- und Verkauf GmbH” (“Buy and Sell Ltd.”) pulls up, and the driver asks whether a Mr. Bischoff lives there. Daniels says he does not. Mrs. Daniels, who is returning from shopping, also says she does not know a neighbor by that name, but directs the driver to the end of the street, where he can ask again. He does not do so, however, and drives away. The man seems familiar to Daniels, but neither he nor his wife can remember him. On the table inside the house is a completed questionnaire that Daniels needs in order to reapply for a job after the end of the GDR. He answers the questions very conscientiously, since one member of the selection committee is Simonis, a former colleague and prosecutor whom Daniels once sentenced for theft and who knows his past well. He and his wife go through all the questions again together, and some of the answers are new to her. She then goes into the kitchen to prepare something for dinner while he falls asleep in front of the television. Suddenly, a man is standing behind him. He identifies himself as Grill, a former major in the GDR Ministry for State Security, and says he is to take Daniels to Simonis. He makes him get into the van that had already been outside his door once before, handcuffs him, and has two plainclothes men guard him. In the vehicle, Grill tells him that the story about Simonis was made up so Daniels would not cause trouble. But Daniels is not the only one arrested: a woman actor is picked up outside the Deutsches Theater. A pastor voluntarily gets into the van outside the Old City Hall, having been promised that he will immediately get his own parish back if he agrees to everything, and a writer is arrested outside Humboldt University of Berlin. The detainees are taken to a bunker-like cellar in Berlin, where other prisoners are already being held. It turns out that several of them were members of an investigative commission made up of civil rights activists, which tried to identify those responsible for brutally abusing and torturing hundreds of demonstrators in so-called holding centers during the October days of 1989. Daniels is among those arrested because, as a prosecutor at the time, he refused to issue arrest warrants for people who had demonstrated peacefully, forcing the release of 53 so-called criminals. Underground, the former rulers have banded together within the new society that emerged after the end of the GDR and are once again hunting down the dissidents from that time. The prisoners have to hop up several flights of stairs in a crouch to a large, bare room, where a barred cage stands. They are crammed tightly inside it, and no consideration is shown even to a heavily pregnant woman. All attempts to complain fall on deaf ears among the uniformed soldiers. Only the former commission members are led out of the cage later and taken to another part of the bunker. Daniels is brought to a command center, where Major Grill is already waiting. Grill again reproaches Daniels for his decisions in October 1989, which led to the release of several detainees. The charge against him now is that he resisted the instructions of his direct superior at the time. Daniels, however, calls this a violation of the law, but Grill reminds him once again that he was supposed to protect the interests of the state. That is not even the main charge, though: Daniels is shown footage of his testimony before the investigative commission, which makes clear that he stood firmly by his decisions. He also reported there that Major Grill had prepared arrest warrants with only the names left to be filled in, but that Daniels’s actions had prevented them from being carried out. Grill then switches the footage on the bank of monitors, and they see the members of the investigative commission being shot with submachine guns. Daniels is then also led into the execution room. Gill takes off his glasses, asks whether he wants to say anything, and has his eyes blindfolded. In this situation, Daniels retracts all his earlier statements, whimpering and crying for his life. He realizes that he has made himself guilty, committed a grave betrayal that cannot be undone, and begs the new authorities for forgiveness. Then he tears the cloth from his eyes, sees the living members of the investigative commission, who have heard him plead for his life, and suddenly finds himself sitting in front of his television again. When Daniels’s wife enters the room with dinner, he tells her the story he has just dreamed. Suddenly there is a knock, and Grill is standing at the door to deliver an invitation to Daniels from Senior Presiding Judge Simonis. Simonis describes him as an untainted man who recognized the signs of the new era early and whom he very much wants for the tasks ahead. In order to meet Simonis as quickly as possible, Daniels gets into the van he already knows, while his wife watches him go.