Róża Berger-Fiedler’s walk through the Jewish Cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee in search of her grandmother’s grave turns into a walk through the chequered Jewish history of the whole city. Interspersed are impressions of Chanukah celebrations at the “Restaurant of Nationalities” Café Moskau in Karl-Marx-Allee in East Berlin, light-drenched and devout. The film artfully interweaves the past and present of active Jewish life with memories of expulsion and annihilation, brings private and historical perspectives together and thus creates a sensitive approach where in the GDR formal distance was long dominant.

The GDR formed an image of its citizens, hardy in everyday life and firm in principles, that it wished to see reflected in “their” art. Dresden-based artist Volker, called Via Lewandowsky, avoided the vanity of the GDR art scene and reflected something else back to his superior state: the indolence of the flesh, the gluttony of the systems that allegedly ordered the world. This Super 8 film from the late German Democratic subculture rubs against Heiner Müller’s stage text “Anatomy Titus Fall of Rome A Shakespeare Commentary”. The manuscript was (half) published in 1986 by the East Berlin Henschelverlag with the following proviso: “If the play is not accepted for production, this book must be returned immediately […].” Lewandowsky emigrated to West Berlin in 1989 before the fall of the Wall.

Opening the film is a highly visible Soviet coat of arms with translations of Marx’s call “Workers of the world, unite!” into several languages. In the middle of a media circus, representatives of the Soviet Union restituted art treasures to the GDR. The highlight was the return of “evacuated” objects to the Green Vault in Dresden.