Der Funktionär

Essayistic documentary film in which director Andreas Goldstein portrays his father, the GDR cultural official Klaus Gysi (1912-1999). Gysi had experienced the First World War as a toddler and the collapse of the empire at the age of six. In 1928 he became a member of the Communist Youth Association and joined the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) in 1931. Under the Hitler regime he was expelled from the university in Berlin and went to England. From 1940 to 1945, however, he lived in Berlin again, even though as a Jew he was constantly in great danger. After the war, Gysi made a career as an SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) party member in the GDR: he became publishing director, minister of culture, ambassador and state secretary for church affairs. In 1988, shortly before the collapse of the GDR, he was dismissed from public service. 20 years after the death of his father, Andreas Goldstein tried to draw a sober and complex picture of the functionary and private man Klaus Gysi. In doing so, he also places Gysi's complex life path in relation to German and German-German history.