Anyone watching Deutschland 83?

[Destinysdaughter]

Am enjoying it so far. Very intriguing
premise and beautifully shot. I don't mind subtitles, find they make me concentrate more and am very interested in this period of history. Looking forward to see how it develops...anyone else? ( guess most of you are watching War and Peace tonight!)

I shall have a good read back later, we binge watched the first 3 episodes on Saturday and then had yesterday's and now I'm waiting a whole week...

I'm loving it so far, the Martin's mother/Thomas thing is fascinating, all I can think is that it won't turn out as I imagine it given that so many people were informing on each other to the stazi. If Annette does go to Leonora I expect she already knows about her sister. I can only think that this sort of knowledge is power to be used when needed.

Thanks, 2ManySweets. I didn't see Mayer shoot himself, I just saw him open the drawer, then there was a bang and blood, so I thought the drawer had been booby-trapped. My eyesight's not very good and I quite often miss important little details like that one!

I'm pretty sure Leonora has suspicions about Ingrid, which is why she's posted Annett there. Although I also get the feeling that she's playing some sort of game around Annett, not sure what it is.

That was a cracking epsiode - I said to DH just before it started I feared it was going to turn bleak but I hadn't expected it that bleak quite so quickly.

I think Annett is the embodiement of a lot of GDR people - she's torn between wanting to do the right thing for the state and protecting someone she cares for. Hence her trying very hard to make sure Ingrid is not compromised anymore. She's also utterly confused as to who she can trust. I suspect Tante Leonora suspected/knew that Ingrid was involved in something not allowed and she wanted Annett there to keep it under control. Leonora is not above a bit of gaming the system herself after all with the coffee and bumping her sister up the transplant list (allegedly).

I suspect it's not going to end well for many of them - Tobias will probably be ok (except for the fact they seem to be signposting him getting AIDS quite heavile - that was clunky continuity last night I thought, in 1983 did the general public really know that much about it?) and Leonora has the air of someone who survives about her (either that or she's going to be utterly destroyed) but I don't see happy endings for most of the rest.

I'm even more convinced that Alex is going to be Red Army Faction now he's jumped into bed with Tobias and been slung out by his dad...

Didn't Tobias tell him he knew a group that were more radical than RAF and their name was something to do with East Germany?

I did point out to DH, that AIDS wasn't widely known in 1983 too. That could be a very dark plotline.

Ooh was it more radical than the RAF? I thought it was just more radical than the current 'let's get Willy Brandt and Heinrich Boell to speak at a demo' group...

Dark is definitely the way this is going to go I think, but it has to really - they are 6 or so years out from the Wall coming down and reunification.

Who ran over poor Linda? We only saw their legs didn't we - could be Tobias, Leonora or the 'fixer' embedded with the Army?

Rock - Yes, because Tobias said " I know a more radical group", to which Alex replied "The Red Army Faction?", and Tobias said "No, Obvious Front Organisation for the East German State".

On the Guardian recap blog, the commenters reckon the kevs belonged to Kramer (the other Stasi agent higher up in the German military) as they had uniform on.

Who ran over poor Linda? We only saw their legs didn't we - could be Tobias, Leonora or the 'fixer' embedded with the Army?

I thought it was Aunt Leonora's boss (last seen puzzling over the IBM587 with the Stasi nerd) - he got out and threw the shovel down by Moritz telling him to "bury her!"

I thought the suicide was very realistic as he did it really quickly, just as I suppose you would before you had time to change your mind.

I remember the Sannyasin in London in the 80's. Those bead necklaces have meanings, some of them refer to their availability for sex and iirc a green one meant they had an STD.

Symphony - that's a great post. Mumsnet is so educational

I am loving it, too and another knitter enjoying German [waves at justkeeponsmiling].

I could not post last week, but re: the PC there must have been a first time the Stasi got one and we are meant to believe that was it. Also the CoCom-list was quite a serious thing at the time, so you could not just bring stuff out from the West.

I thought the more radical group was the East German spy network.

great article here. Thumbs held for 86 and 89!

Am loving the way this thread is bringing out all the German speakers as well!

Brilliant article rocknroll! Makes a really good point about how little is known about what was happening then.

Fingers crossed and "daumen gedruckt" for a trilogy.

Very interesting article, thanks RockNRoll . Fingers crossed indeed, that would be awesome!
I just had a funny moment reading the director of the series stating that the young people of Germany today don't know much about the conflict between East and West back then. I felt a bit and as I feel that I actually know quite a bit about it! Then I realised... at 35 I'm probably no longer classed as "one of the young people of Germany" . Ah well...

Those of you talking about the subtitles not matching the German - it was written in English but filmed in German so you might say the English is correct! I can't not read the subtitles either even though I understand the German.

Thought this week's episode (caught up last night) was very bleak. Up until now it was quite amusing in parts - James Bond Martin/Moritz certainly isn't. Would the Stasi really have sent such an inexperienced incompetent? But I do like it and it's so nice to have some German-language drama to watch.

Oh and the town where Martin comes from is right next to Berlin-Zehlendorf, (which was/is West Berlin). So not in the sticks.

I wondered about accents but assume that a Potsdam/Brandenburg accent will be similar to Bielefeld (or maybe the soldier he replaced was from the Berlin/Potsdam area originally but stationed in Bielefeld, not sure if they said). If Martin had come from Saxony there's no way he could have passed for a West German.

Name change - I wondered about accents too, also there'll be lots of cultural references he won't know.

In the 80's a South Korean plane was blown up by a two North Korean agents. When they caught one of them, it was easy to ascertain who they worked for because, despite supposedly being an elite, highly trained spy, she could only name a North Korean brand of televisions.

Didn't they mention accents in the first episode? They also showed him messing up a few cultural references, like one about Cuba. He covered it by saying that Cuba was the name of a club.

Isn't the real Martin from Braunschweig? Or is that just where he was stationed? There seem to be quite a few references to him having more or less grown up there...

Sorry yes it was Braunschweig not Bielefeld :)

Thanks for the article link, RockNRoll.

I was also surprised by the AIDS reference as my memory is that it didn't start to make mainstream media in the UK until the second half of 1984. But maybe it was earlier in W Germany. I wonder whether it will be Alex or Tobias who gets it. I can imagine it being Tobias, which would have all sorts of implications for the Stasi network in the West, while Alex becomes increasingly hardened, hardline and ruthless.

sluggerotoole.com/2015/03/10/two-tribes-the-winds-of-change-and-an-old-mans-death/

This is more about the USSR than the DDR, but it's a good discussion about how strong the West thought the Eastern Bloc was, as opposed to the reality.

Sorry for double posting, but Joerg Winger (one of the creators) has a very informative twitter feed, @wingertv.

Aside from apologising for the petrol pump, he's said that Martin/Moritz truly loved Linda and that the mystery man who ran over Linda was:

"one of the foot-soldiers who have been watching Stamm - you saw him earlier at the train station..."

Interesting...

Was Martin expecting Linda to drown? Did he have a change of heart or was she making too much noise so he had to rescue her? Or was his intention always to save her then 'turn' her as she'd then trust him more? After the rescue?

I thought he'd intended to drown her, but then when he saw her actually drowning he couldn't go through with it because he genuinely had feelings for her - I think we're watching a nice guy gradually being hardened and brutalised. What I didn't get, and I watched it again last night to try to pick up some of the things I'd missed first time around, was why the East Germans wanted her dead. And what exactly did 'turn' mean in the message 'turn or eliminate Linda'?

I also noticed this time that when Martin runs out of the building in search of Linda, we see in the foreground an arm sticking out of a car window, and the smoke of a cigarette. It's as if we're watching Martin from inside the car, which presumably someone was. And we see Martin going into the phone box from the same vantage point. So who do we think was watching? It couldn't have been Tobias as he was very obviously in bed, and I thought it was a man's arm so not Lenora. Was it "one of the foot-soldiers" and was he the one we saw "earlier at the train station"? And are the foot-soldiers East or West?