The Oscar-winning best foreign language film has parallels with a true Cold War spy controversy, writes Derek Scally, in Berlin
Life doesn't always imitate art. In the case of The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen), this year's Oscar winner for best foreign language picture, art imitated life in an unexpected and tragic fashion.
The film, released in Ireland next month, tells the story of an East German theatre director and his actress wife whose lives are changed forever when they come under the merciless scrutiny of the Stasi secret police.
Actor Ulrich Mühe gives a haunting performance as the soulless Stasi officer slowly drawn to the bohemian lives of the people he is spying upon. In an interview for a tie-in book, Mühe divulged his own Stasi secret, saying that his ex-wife Jenny Gröllmann had spied on him for years as an inofficial Stasi informer (IM) with the cover name "Jeanne".
Jenny Gröllmann was married to Mühe from 1984 to 1990. They were one of the leading acting couples in the old German Democratic Republic (GDR), the Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson of their day. But after appearing in successful films together, like Ken and Em, they went their separate ways.
Gröllmann immediately denied Mühe's claims in the book as outrageous and untrue and started legal proceedings against her ex-husband. But time was running out: diagnosed with terminal cancer, she died last August before the case could come to court.
HER WIDOWER CARRIED on and faced Mühe in a courtroom last November for a court case that put in public view the poisonous legacy of the Stasi files, 17 years after the Stasi itself ceased to exist. With Gröllmann dead, the only real evidence in this case was this file, a relic from a discredited regime.
The file is a 500-page dossier with over 350 pages of information about Gröllmann: press cuttings, her personnel file and even secret observation reports on her. The more interesting section is 150 pages long, and deals with up to 24 alleged meetings Gröllmann had with her handler, although only about 70 pages are actual protocols of these meetings.
The protocols make for curious reading. The entire contents - information, opinions, gossip and allegations - is told through the stilted reported speech of her Stasi handler. The only record of Gröllmann are several transcripts of lost recordings, now missing, which read more like a civil servant speaking than an actress.
Just as interesting is what is missing from the file, in particular the usual handwritten statement by the individual that they are knowingly working as an IM.
Helmut Menge, her Stasi handler, stands by the file, saying it is an accurate reflection of their conversations during meetings that actually happened.
"But the file was completely irrelevant, unimportant, it just lay in a cabinet for years," he said. Menge denies that she ever acted as an active IM to spy on others - "it never went that far for a variety of reasons" - and says the existence of the file had more to do with the way the way the Ministry for State Security (MfS) was run rather than her usefulness as an IM.
'CERTAIN FILES WERE opened as security measures. In Gröllmann's case, she was contacted using a so-called 'legend', a cover story, and she thought she was talking to police officers. That is the way we kept in contact. That she was talking to an MfS officer, that is something she didn't know," he said.
Menge's memory tallies with the file, showing that Gröllmann was picked up by Stasi officers pretending to be police officers and driven to meetings outside Berlin. But the file throws up countless contradictions too. The reports are dotted with names of people she said she never met, as well as statements that she allegedly said to others which they say are not true.
Also, several of the alleged meetings took place while Gröllmann was performing on the stage of the Maxim-Gorki Theater in Berlin.
Suhrkamp, the publisher of the book that led to the court case, commissioned two experts to assess the file's authenticity. They judged the file to be accurate, using the logic that it would have been impossible, given the checks and controls in the MfS, to fabricate so much information.
Friends of Jenny Gröllmann don't dispute that some of the file could be accurate, but question the veracity of the information in the 70 pages that document alleged meetings.
"Much of the file is a collage of information easily available from other sources, most of which is just harmless, irrelevant theatre gossip," said David Ensikat of Berlin's Tagesspiegel newspaper, who has researched the case. "It seems to stem more from the wish of the officer to have won Jenny Gröllmann as an IM."
The court case ended with a defeat for Suhrkamp - they reprinted the book without the allegation against Gröllmann. Ulrich Mühe no longer talks about the matter in public, particularly after it emerged that he isn't even mentioned in the file as he claimed. The last alleged meeting between the IM "Jeanne" and her handler happened in 1984, before Gröllmann and Mühe married.
AND SO A SHADOW hangs over the reputation of Jenny Gröllmann which may or may not contribute to the success of The Lives of Others, a worthy Oscar winner .
"The awful thing about this case is that it is impossibly difficult to judge the truth," said Ensikat.
"I don't want to judge people about what they did then. But I think it is possible to judge, to criticise people who claim to know now perfectly how it was then, something that has horrible consequences."
The Lives of Others opens on Apr 13