The documentary “Anderson” with its Berlinale 2014 premiere has only one protagonist, and Berlin director Annekatrin Hendel gives him room and a rope to hang himself. Sascha Anderson, born 1953, was the charismatic pop star of East Berlin’s oppositional literary scene in Prenzlauer Berg in the 1980s, a close acquaintance of famous GDR intellectuals such as Christa Wolf and Heiner Müller.
And he was a zealous informer working for the Stasi, snitching on friends and colleagues.
Hendel sat Sascha Anderson down before a camera 25 years later --in the original, temporarily relocated GDR kitchen that hosted many of the artist salons in the 1980s-- to ask him what prompted him to act as he did. The finely woven web of lies, half-truths and legends he unfurled around him still raises tempers (certainly with the audience in Berlin, who nearly started a riot in the post-screening Q&A).
The music of celebrated Berlin electronica band To Rococo Rot happened to be playing at poet Bert Papenfuss’ bar "Rumbalotte” while Hendel was shooting there. When Hendel approached To Rococo Rot's Ronald and Robert Lippok to ask for their moral as much as legal permission to have their music score the film, the brothers were torn. As part of East Berlin's alternative music scene in the 80s, they themselves had been under Stasi scrutiny (Robert left the GDR for West Berlin in 1988). They agreed to leave their music in the film. I attended the premiere with Robert Lippok:
Robert, we just walked out of the old GDR cinema International after the “Anderson” premiere, the protagonist is in the audience, as are many of his former friends and victims. Was the film what you expected?
It was very interesting to see Sascha Anderson so close-up again. In the 80s, he was this "guru" who organized several events I was involved in in the East Berlin arts scene. I was a bit too young then to be treated as an equal by the group around Sascha though.
And we were hanging out in the "wrong" bar --the Tutti Frutti, not the Posthorn, where all the serious people drank their brandy. (Strangely both located near Alexanderplatz, so close and yet so far.) But after a while I understood how oddly this guy Sascha was thinking. Some reasons for him to collaborate with the Stasi I think was a kind of self-aggrandizing and narcissistic view of reality, thinking that he could control himself, his friends, the security police. And thinking that all he did was for everyone's good. He seems to be thinking he was living a true adventure, playing spy like in the Russian children books he used to read when he was a kid.
Looking back, it now looks like live-action role play, a multi-player Stasi dungeon if you allow me to say so. At the same time Sascha was and is not unlikeable -- funny, smart, entertaining, sexy (I liked how one former female friend in the film said that he was "a born wearer of jeans" - a decisive way to characterize him as a man in East Germany, where jeans were not just pants but a message!). I like how the film shows really well that things are not as black and white as you may think.
Do you think there’s a way to mend bridges after such a major betrayal, a chance at redemption for Sascha Anderson? In the film, Wolf Biermann, who made Anderson’s dirty secret public on German television when the Stasi files were opened, said “We can’t forget, but we can forgive” (while calling him "Sascha Asshole" from thereonin, I have to add).
I think Wolf Biermann was quiet happy about this Stasi outing because from this day on he didn’t have to deal with the Prenzlauer Berg poetry scene artistically anymore! (laughs) But seriously, Sascha ruined so many relationships in such a profound way that many bridges have been broken forever. It’s not for me to forgive him because he didn´t harm me directly (I've seen the files the Stasi had on me). It’s something between him and his close friends. But
one day I will light a candle at the Zionskirchplatz church where I grew up and pray for his misguided soul, knowing he was quiet happy about the fact that his story filled a big cinema at one of the biggest film festivals in the world.
Would you tell your friends to see the film --knowing that some of them are so far refusing-- and why (not)?
Personally, I´m not that interested in the past, the present is challenging enough. But I know that for many the whole Stasi and East Germany debate is still going strong. All I can say is
if you hate Sascha, watch the film; if you like Sascha, watch the film. I´m sure there will be some diffusion between these two viewpoints.
Robert Lippok was born in 1966 In East Berlin. He studied theatre set design before going into music. With his brother Ronald Lippok he founded the legendary experimental music project Ornament und Verbrechen in 1984. He now tours the world with the defining electronica trio To Rococo Rot. His upcoming record release "Instrument" with To Rococo Rot will be out in May 2014.
by Jutta Brendemuehl, Toronto
image: Robert Lippok plays in Toronto, c Goethe Institut
