Michael Schönherr

The False Promise of Advancement

Origin sticks like shit to your shoe! That's what Marlen Hobrack says, who grew up as a working-class child in Bautzen. But the promise of the old Federal Republic was that you can become anything if you just try hard enough. But that no longer applies. So is class in Germany fixed from birth? Have we long been living in a country in which origin and family background are more important for future prospects than individual performance and commitment? In Germany, it takes six generations to rise from poverty to the middle class, in Denmark only two generations. Those affected reflect on their life stories, the burden of their social origins, the wrong and right turning points for social advancement, as classified by social researchers. They talk of pride and shame, of financial hardship and wealth, of origin and future, of growing up and moving up in this Germany with its entrenched selection mechanisms for social advancement.

Die große Angst – Zukunft in Ostdeutschland?

In the 2024 elections in the eastern German states of Saxony and Thuringia, the right-wing extremist party AfD and the socio-culturally right-wing but socio-economically left-wing party BSW performed strongly. A similar result is predicted for Brandenburg. What will the enormous voter support for AfD and BSW mean for the economy, society, culture and local politics in eastern Germany in the future? Will the east of the country become increasingly ungovernable due to the decline of the established parties and the electoral successes of AfD and BSW, will the social mood change or can new compromises be found? In search of answers, the filmmakers accompanied people from Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg for several months, who presented their personal perspectives and life situations and gave insight into their worries, fears, wishes and expectations.

The Billions of Others

The market regulates everything! Diligence and work create prosperity! Capitalism needs growth! What is the truth behind the great principles of capitalism? And how do they work in Eastern Germany - a region that has been a capitalist test laboratory for around 30 years? It is symbolic of various places in the world that are going through similar processes. Renowned economic experts answer questions. How does a large-scale settlement of a global corporation like DHL take place and what must politics make possible for this? What happens when investors pour around a billion euros into one of the largest real estate projects in Europe in the Baltic Sea resort of Binz (Prora) on the Island of Rügen and no place is created that is worth living in? And how are the people in places like Zeitz, which capitalism has obviously forgotten? The film takes you through various stations, through the strongholds of Eastern German capitalism and the places where capitalism has not yet arrived.

Bischofferode. Das Treuhand Trauma

In 1990, when Bischofferode entered the market economy, potash production in East Germany was in third place in the world's export ranking and in West Germany in fourth place. Bischofferöder Kalisalz is of a special quality and the plant therefore had loyal customers in Western Europe, especially in Scandinavia, even before the fall of the Wall. In the West, there is a major competitor - BASF subsidiary Kali und Salz AG from Kassel. The film reconstructs the mega-deal in one of the world's most important raw materials markets. The so-called potash merger was the biggest economic deal of German reunification, which has cost the taxpayer almost two billion euros to date. The Free State of Thuringia - the federal state with the best potash deposits in Germany - is still the big loser of the mega-deal today. Thuringia may be rich, but it loses almost all its potash mines, along with Bischofferode, and now has to spend millions of euros each year to rehabilitate and secure its mines.