Synopsis
Jenny Groellmann (1947-2006), often called the "Romy Schneider of the East", was one of the great character actors of the GDR, who, under other circumstances, would have entered into the annals of world cinema. But then came the Fall of the Wall and a reunified Germany trying to come to terms with an uncomfortable past, often craving scapegoats. Jenny soon found herself caught in the maelstrom of a ruthless media campaign that sought to denounce her as a Stasi informer. A witch-hunt began with the promotion of the film "The Lives of Others", starring her former husband Ulrich Muehe.* And. Jenny had cancer, and it was spreading. Jenny thus had two battles to wage.In the end she won one and lost the other. The Life and Death of a Star in the turning tides of two Germanies is also a film about Germany once a "land of poets and thinkers" but until this day strifetorn.
* Right before the release of “The Lives of Others” Ulrich Muehe, the star of the film, announced in an interview, without any evidence, that his former wife, Jenny Groellmann had collaborated with the Stasi, and he promised more “details” in
the book on the film. On her deathbed, Jenny Groellmann fought against the subsequent media campaign and won all the ensuing court cases. The evidence concerning her past that I had come up with proved to be decisive. Nevertheless, more than two years after Jenny Groellmann’s death a German magazine is preparing to take the case to the Supreme Court.