Documentary film “The Unyielding” in the cinema: Power is female – culture

Herbert von Karajan conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker with jagged, authoritarian movements. You can hear a bombastic wind section from Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9. All of the orchestral musicians in the picture are white and male. In between, recordings of the most important politicians from the first years of the Bonn Republic are cut – from Adenauer to Strauss. All men too. Already the beginning of Torsten Körner’s documentary “Die Unbeugsamen” makes it clear who was in charge in the early days of the Federal Republic of Germany – and not only during this period.

But this rousing, more than overdue cinematic foray into seventy years of political history is not about men. Körner dedicates his film to the numerous female political pioneers of the Bonn Republic and lets them have their say in historical archive recordings and in current interviews that were conducted at their old places of work. Even if a woman has been at the forefront of German politics for sixteen years – the proportion of women in the Bundestag has declined again after twenty years and is only 31 percent in 2021. This decline is largely due to the arrival of the AfD in the Bundestag, which at just over ten percent has the lowest proportion of women of all parliamentary groups. An anti-feminist backlash?

“Power is perceived as unfeminine,” said SPD politician Renate Schmidt in an interview. If you let Koerner’s film work on you, the uncomfortable thought soon arises that nothing is really going on for the women. Are the struggles that the protagonists have fought on the political stage for decades, and the questions they have had to put up with journalists, still the same with which the green candidate for Chancellor Annalena Baerbock is confronted today? How can one combine work and family and whether, as a woman, one is competent enough to rule a country? In 1961, for example, Elisabeth Schwarzhaupt (CDU), as Minister of Health, had to very politely declare in a television interview that the address “Frau Ministerin” was logically given for her by the German language. There was just no minister in the Federal Republic before her.

In retrospect, embarrassing truths are also revealed

In twelve chapters, the film spans an arc from the 1950s to reunification and shows moving moments of feminist achievements – including the struggles, difficulties and humiliations that politically active women were exposed to. So “indomitable” like Ursula Männle (CSU), Christa Nickels (The Greens), Ingrid Matthäus-Maier (FDP / SPD), Rita Süssmuth (CDU) and the aforementioned Renate Schmidt remember sexist attacks in the Bundestag and journalists, which she did not take seriously, but also to the cross-party solidarity between women. In retrospect, embarrassing truths about the country’s most important decision-makers are uncovered and misogyny on the political stage is exposed.

Körner dispenses with a comment and lets some impressive archive finds speak for themselves, in between he cuts static architectural photos of the empty government buildings in Bonn, which look like megalomaniac memorials. One follows the speech by Hildegard Hamm-Brücher (FDP), who in 1982 rebelled against her own party leadership in view of the vote of no confidence in the overthrow of Helmut Schmidt and spoke out in favor of new elections, or Waltraud Schoppe’s lecture from 1983 on the occasion of the discussion about the controversial abortion paragraph 218, in which the politician of the Greens stands up for the woman’s right to self-determination and punishment for rape in marriage, and is then laughed at in plenary by her male colleagues and mocked as a witch. Shameful evidence of deep-seated sexism and male hegemony in the face of clever, quick-witted colleagues.

“The Unyielding” shows all these impressively sovereign politicians and others like Petra Kelly in old excerpts. This makes it clear that there have always been courageous women who have stood up for their opinions. By making these feminist role models visible, the film also changes the perspective on historical debates and events that have so far been strongly masculine. On the other hand, it is frightening to see that, even after so many years of emancipation history, certain topics keep recurring: A kind of “Me Too” discussion was held decades ago, as the incident involving Helga Schuchardt (FDP) shows, in which a male member of parliament In the middle of the Bundestag tried to feel whether she was wearing a bra because he had run a bet in the CSU parliamentary group about it. Schoppe’s provocative statement on NATO’s double decision: “We don’t need new missiles. We need new men in this country,” seems plausible in view of such abuses.

Open detailed view

A chancellor still seemed unimaginable at the time, recalls Christa Nickels from the Greens: “If the choice had been between the best woman of all in her seventies and a stupid August, then stupid August would have become chancellor.” Nevertheless, the woman at the top with Angela Merkel has become a reality – and maybe a little more natural in other areas as well.

“The Unyielding” closes with recordings by the young conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, who directs the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra with great physical effort and long, flowing hair. The orchestra plays Beethoven’s Leonore Overture, its line-up has become more feminine and diverse. Then you can see how all interviewees from the film line up for the class photo. Ursula Männle says that perhaps in another quarter of a century the idea of ​​equality between men and women will finally be anchored in people’s minds. Her words sound confident, but the hesitant expression on her face says the opposite.