July 1990. At the beginning of the month East Germans have now gained what for many was the main motivation for unification. The western brand. Currency unification precedes state unification for obvious political reasons and this will create some…. spaces. East German bills are converted into Western currency at a 1:1 (one to one) ratio of up to 6,000 for over 60s, up to 4,000 for adults and up to 2,000 for children up to 14. The remaining amounts are exchanged at a ratio of 2:1 or 3:1 depending on when they were collected.

What to do with so much money?

The East German banknotes are withdrawn and taken to a warehouse in the middle of nowhere near Halberstadt, a town of 40,000 in Saxony-Anhalt. However, the guarding is not so… fanatical and a group of residents, who discover the “hiding place” start collecting banknotes in sacks and looking for ways to turn them into western ones. This story forms the screenplay for Natja Brunckhorst’s Zwei zu Eins, starring award-winning actress Sandra Hiller (Zone of Interest, Anatomy of a Fall).

An undisclosed amount of the withdrawn money was actually siphoned off by unknown persons who have never been found, but the authorities chose not to pursue the issue further. Gone, united, forgotten.

Likeable scammers

In the film the heroes are likable, slightly desperate at first, but extremely resourceful. They take advantage of the fact that they have three days left to buy any product with Eastern cash and create a huge black market network, first acquiring and then selling to the West ovens, televisions, stereos and other appliances. This is how they manage their own currency exchange, even with “Two for One”, which culminates with other “discoveries” afterwards. East German diplomats, for example, who lived abroad as hard-wired beneficiaries of the old regime, have the right to exchange unlimited amounts until November. They thus amass a not inconsiderable amount, which they then decide in a “crisis of togetherness and solidarity” to invest, buying the now defunct People’s Ownership Enterprise (VEB) to continue operating it. The idiosyncratic “money laundering” thus acquires a noble goal.

Industrialist with 1 mark

A highlight of the film is when they discover that this purchase will cost them just one (1) western mark. This is a clear allusion to the role of Treuhand, which undertook the divestment and privatization of the DDR’s state property, indeed selling off several businesses to Western investors for just one mark, with the promise that they would modernize them and continue to operate. Something that often did not happen.

The film thus sarcastically presents several of the less bright aspects of German unification and is sure to elicit more positive comments in the country’s five “new states”, especially among those sections of the population who still consider unification to be nothing more than a devouring of East Germany by the West.

After all, this is sometimes heard by the protagonists, along with their fear of the coming unemployment and the overall uncertainty that arrives unstoppably. All this, however, is presented more with humor and less with an aggressive mood. Sarcasm strikes sometimes in the West and sometimes in the East. In a certain dialogue, when one of the “conspirators” wonders why they wanted so much money in the previous regime and above all why they had printed 200 and 500 eastern mark notes that were never released on the market, the answer is disarming: “we wanted them to redeem the Westerners”.

Open accounts

Throughout the film the still acting East German policeman is presented as naive and unduly devoted to an agency and a state that everyone knows will soon cease to exist. It is a clear peak for the spirit of submission, which characterized much of the population in the eastern part of the divided Germany.

Overall the film seems to be trying to recall the mistakes and prejudices that marked an express process, against all economic logic and without calculating the costs. It shows that the unification chapter is not yet closed and is perhaps the best harbinger of what will happen this autumn in the elections in three East German states. It perhaps also serves as a reminder of the need for an honest assessment of a historical event.

Who is the cunning and who is the ignorant?

The relative happy ending is achieved only when the flexibility that the East Germans had developed to outwit an authoritarian regime meets the arteriosclerotic inability of the West Germans to solve problems for which there are no… instruction manuals. The role of the ignorant in this new landscape, unknown to both parties, is like a ping-pong ball going back and forth on the two sides of the fallen “walls”. The oldest lady of the company of “fraudsters” replies to the Western representatives, who come as “judges” when the great conspiracy is discovered, that they have no jurisdiction, since the state unification has not yet been accomplished. And they leave speechless and idle…

In real life, however, this rarely worked, as the reference at the end of the film reminds us of the fact that very few Eastern businesses managed to survive in the Western market.