Erdmut Wizisla

Philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), a German Jew, flees Germany in 1932, during the turmoil preceding Adolf Hitler's definitive rise to power. On September 26, 1940, he dies in Portbou, a small village on the French-Spanish border. The unexplained end of a man who managed to avoid a horrible fate just to face death in very mysterious circumstances.

Here meet personal memory, working knowledge, research interests and anecdotes together to vivid memory about the most important German dramatist of the 20th century. When the director Peter Voigt, former assistant director of Brecht at the Berliner Ensemble in 2004, finds a wallet with pictures and captions from the American exile, he pursued this track and discovered that Brecht has always worked with photography and film. Peter Voigt puts together an exciting collage of this film and photo material. A conversation with Erdmut Wizisla, the head of Bertolt Brecht Archives, moderated by Harald Müller, forms the dramatic bond of the film.

Meetings with readers, acquaintances and contemporaries of writer Uwe Johnson at the places where he lived. Volker Koepp, who is also from Pomerania, looks for Johnson’s sophisticated literary voice in the landscapes of the region they both stem from.