Even his mother, who had moved to the West, had sympathies for the communist government for quite some time. Much of it must have gone off when she was stripsearched for hours during A visit to East Germany in the early 1980s, the son remembers. The incident amazed and shocked him and his brother. "We could not understand people had the right to undress our mother!" he adds ruefully. "She seemed so powerful to us."
Before the disillusionment there were quite a few arguments in the Donnersmarck household about communism.
"My father was more of a liberal conservative and pretty much had a contrary political position (to that of his wife)," Donnersmarck says with a fond laugh. "I know the Cold War very well; because it happened every evening at our dinner table. I can't remember a single peaceful conversation about politics in our home. So everything in my life was somewhat divided! I think that probably kept the interest awake and led to the fact that I had this idea (for the film) so many years later."
(Betty Pais also interviewed Donnersmarck for this story)
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Even his mother, who had moved to the West, had sympathies for the communist government for quite some time. Much of it must have gone off when she was stripsearched for hours during A visit to East Germany in the early 1980s, the son remembers. The incident amazed and shocked him and his brother. "We could not understand people had the right to undress our mother!" he adds ruefully. "She seemed so powerful to us."