In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the German Department and the EUCE have organized a film and lecture series.

The first film, Der Geteilte Himmel/Divided Heaven (1963), will be held on September 11th at 5:30pm in room 324 of the Cathedral of Learning. The film will be introduced by Prof. Halle

Pizza will be provided at the film events.

The Divided Heaven
(Der geteilte Himmel)
Director: Konrad Wolf, b/w, 113 min., 1963/64

East Germany in 1961, just before the construction of the Berlin Wall. After suffering a nervous breakdown, Rita Seidel returns to her village from the city of Halle to find peace and quiet. She recalls the past years, her love for chemist Manfred Herrfurth, her work in a railway car factory and her studies to become a teacher. There were problems with political opportunists and ideological hardliners in the factory and at university. Rita’s love affair came to an end after Manfred, bitter that uncompromising supervisors had rejected his new chemical process, fled the city for West Berlin without Rita, who chose not to join him. THE DIVIDED HEAVEN, created just a few years after the Wall was constructed, is one of the bravest movies ever to be made in the GDR – not only because of its unusual dramaturgy, but also because it seeks responsibility for conflicts in one’s own country and not with the “class enemy”.