Franziska Rempe

May 8, 1945 – 11:00 p.m. – the guns fall silent on German soil. The greatest war the world has ever seen comes to an end for the Germans along the Rhine and Ruhr. The Zero Hour—Liberation Day—becomes both history and myth. During this time, people like Elisabeth Wilms, a baker’s wife from Dortmund, and Friedrich Lieffertz, a restaurateur from Cologne, become chroniclers. They capture the final days of the war with their cameras. The documentary by Franziska Rempe and Lukas Hoffmann begins with this so-called “Hour Zero.” Along the Rhine and Ruhr, life is gradually returning to the cities. And across Europe, thousands are now making their way back to their homes.

GOOD MORNING, MY BEAUTIES! The film is a vibrant group portrait of East German women from a wide variety of walks of life in the GDR. What they all have in common is that they grew up in the GDR and were shaped by it; they do not view this background as a “burden,” but rather base their self-image and identity on it. The film explores and describes the true state of women’s equality in a country that claimed to have resolved this issue once and for all—in sharp contrast to the Federal Republic of Germany. The book features the voices of female musicians, writers, LPG chairwomen, workers, painters, politicians, and scholars. They all recount the daily grind, their everyday lives, and their struggle for recognition in a repressive state that persecuted, punished, and imprisoned its opponents.

May 8, 1945 – 11:00 p.m. – the guns fall silent on German soil. The greatest war the world has ever seen comes to an end for the Germans along the Rhine and Ruhr. The Zero Hour—Liberation Day—becomes both history and myth. During this time, people like Elisabeth Wilms, a baker’s wife from Dortmund, and Friedrich Lieffertz, a restaurateur from Cologne, become chroniclers. They capture the final days of the war with their cameras. The documentary by Franziska Rempe and Lukas Hoffmann begins with this so-called “Hour Zero.” Along the Rhine and Ruhr, life is gradually returning to the cities. And across Europe, thousands are now making their way back to their homes.

GOOD MORNING, MY BEAUTIES! The film is a vibrant group portrait of East German women from a wide variety of walks of life in the GDR. What they all have in common is that they grew up in the GDR and were shaped by it; they do not view this background as a “burden,” but rather base their self-image and identity on it. The film explores and describes the true state of women’s equality in a country that claimed to have resolved this issue once and for all—in sharp contrast to the Federal Republic of Germany. The book features the voices of female musicians, writers, LPG chairwomen, workers, painters, politicians, and scholars. They all recount the daily grind, their everyday lives, and their struggle for recognition in a repressive state that persecuted, punished, and imprisoned its opponents.