I WAS NINETEEN

April 1945. Wearing the uniform of a Soviet lieutenant, 19-year-old Gregor Hecker returns to Germany for the first time after emigrating to Moscow with his parents when he was eight. He passes by Berlin in the wake of the 48th Army and urges those German soldiers who are still putting up resistance to change sides. The moods of the people he encounters daily vary enormously– some are hopeful, others confused, desperate. Gregor feels at home with his Russian comrades, but is often perplexed by the Germans he meets. As he begins to grasp that there is no such thing as “the” Germans, his first meeting with anti-fascists liberated from a concentration camp is a moving experience. Well-known DEFA director Konrad Wolf was examining aspects of his own biography in ICH WAR NEUNZEHN, which is now included in the canonical listing of the Federal Office for Political Education