Summaries

Synopsis

The East-German TV production, clearly presented from the official East-German categorical perspective, is supposed to be based on a criminal trial in 1973.

Dieter and Dagmar Högner, 12 and 7-8 years old, are children happily living in East Germany with their grandmother Anne, the boy an active swimmer.

A man, later named to be Mr Kirschner, studies their habits, secretly takes pictures of them, including in the swimming pool with Dieter's trainer Frau Thiele, a student in pedagogy and Manfred, a fellow swimmer.

The children's father Rudolf Högner, now deceased, had fled East Germany towards the West while owning some valuable patents invested in his brother's small company in the West, however his share in the company was passed on to his children still in the East.

This brother, Mr Högner, urgently needs to control this heritage, which would require to become the legal guardian of the children.

Mr Benzinger, presented as a rich man with his assistant Roland and a servant, takes a down payment of 40 000 Deutschmark from solicitor Dr. Bertram's client, Mr Högner, to act as a professional escape agent and promises to have the children smuggled into the West within a week, which would earn him 80 000 DM in total.

Still in the West, Kirschner, with a false identity as Joachim Schneider, allegedly working for travel agency Hubertus, promises a single-parent mother, Astrid Arnsberger, to marry her, and in preparation to take her two children Tom 12 and younger Katrin, to a holiday trip to Czechoslovakia in a city hotel.

Later Kirschner discusses with Siegel, a dodgy yellow press journalist from the "Kurier", a press campaign during the smuggling operation. The plot is to abduct the Högner children from their Eastern-German home, bring them to Czechoslovakia over the green border, and to use the passports from the Arnsberger children to carry them further to West Germany.

Meanwhile in the East, another of Mr Benzinger's men, Mr Kornbichler alias Korn deceives the Högner children's grandmother Anne that he represents a major sport school, inviting Dieter to a test training.

Kirschner alias Schneider arrives with the Arnsberger children in a Czechoslovakian riding hotel, different from the hotel he named to the mother, and holds a meeting with Kornbichler on the nearby East German border. In a short scene, he holds the Arnsberger's passports showing the photographs of the Högner children, apparently forged.

Despite the children getting homesick, Kirschner leaves them with an excuse in the hotel and sneaks over the green-border to Kornbichler, where four forest workers help them to bump-start their car.

Now in East Germany, Kirschner alias Schneider introduces himself as the second trainer from the sport school, coming with a story that the visit has been moved a day earlier, but fails to convince the grandmother to take the younger sister to the trip as well. It turns out that the children's mother died as well, two years ago.

Dieter brags among his peers and his competitor Manfred with the trip to the sport school in Karl-Marx-Stadt.

Kirschner/Schneider excuses Dieter from today's training by calling Ms Thiele, pretending to be a doctor ringing from a clinic, inventing a minor bike accident. He picks the boy up, and convinces him to take his sister along and to collect her from the playground.

On the road, little Dagmar starts talking about stories with "Herr Fuchs und Frau Elster", highly popular hand puppet characters from East Germany's children's TV, but little known in the west. Kornbichler confuses them with real people, which seeds some doubts among the children in the car.

The doubts are nourished when Kirschner asks Dieter strange questions about his dead father, and when he smokes cigarettes during a restaurant break, in contrast to his acclaimed role model as a trainer. They put sleeping powder in the children's beverages, which Dieter drinks but Dagmar tips over.

Frau Thiele the trainer tries to visit Dieter as home, following up on the alleged accident. The grandmother becomes seriously concerned until they find out that the excuses don't match. They go to the police.

Dieter falls asleep from the drugs and hallucinates in the car while Dagmar is hyperactive and unnerves Kornbichler. Further attempts to drug her continue to fail.

The police recognises an organised abduction and hands the case to the state secret service (MfS), their officer calms the two women and says they have started their operation. The officers are indeed well informed about potential visitors from the West.

The Arnsberger children become annoyed alone in the hotel but are calmed down by the friendly staff.

Little Dagmar grabs Kornbichler head while he drives the car, begging him to stop to watch some cows, so that the car runs into a tractor. While a police helper complicates the situation, Dagmar runs away towards the farm animals. The police helper already had forwarded the details, so the MfS knows the car is heading towards the border.

In the West, the Arnsberger mother find out that Schneider does not exist, does not work for the travel agent, and has never arrived in the city hotel with her children. In fear, she collapses in a public phone box.

Kirschner and Kornbichler, now having lost the little girl, feel that they are on the run and discuss options what to do with the boy, including to kill him. The girl is eventually found, she had been accidentally locked in a stable on the farm.

The men drive into the woods where they try to pass the green border with "half their payload", the boy still under drugs. However they have already been followed by a number of MfS officers, who jump out of the bushes and arrest them.

In the West, Benzinger and his assistant Roland get worried as they do not hear from Kirschner and Kornbichler, and agree that the would deny any knowledge about the operation.

Journalist Siegel appears in Benzinger's estate and informs him, that the abandoned Arnsberger children have been returned by Czechoslovakian officials to the Bavarian border police. He extorts a bit of money from Benzinger for not making the case public.

Dr. Bertram appears and threatens to sue Benzinger for breach of contract, but is brushed off. Benzinger leaves the scene as the winner.

The last scene shows Dieter and Dagmar rejoined with their grandmother, happily leaving the pool building at home.