Destinies of Women

This DEFA production from the 1950s uses the exemplary story of four women to examine the social models in East and West Germany after the war. Hanns Eisler and Bertolt Brecht contributed the soundtrack.

The story is set in Berlin in the early 1950s, seven years after the end of the Second World War. Four young women from East and West encounter the seductive Dandy Conny, who exploits them at will and then abandons them. Renate, who comes from a middle-class background, turns thief for him and is blamed for her brother's death. Law student Barbara, a concentration camp survivor, longs for some security. Anni, a seamstress, is expecting Conny's child and is coldly rejected. Only Isa von Trautwald, a down-and-out West Berlin aristocrat, seems to be the right companion for Conny's easy-going lifestyle.

The film has propagandistic elements, but was also criticised by female SED functionaries for the types of women it portrayed, who did not fit the socialist ideal. Even today, the film is still complex and full of contradictions.

Directed by Agfa Wolfen, 1952, 105 min

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Host or Publisher Goethe-Institut Glasgow