His daughter, meanwhile, has a life in the West but cannot freely communicate with her family any attempt to do so would place them under severe scrutiny. In fact, because of the father’s outspoken lapse, he is institutionalized in a mental hospital. Any divergence from blind allegiance to the party casts suspicion and harsh penalties on the citizens. The father is caught between his high ethics and the demands of the party. Her father works as headmaster in a school that is suddenly ordered to propagate Communist party loyalty rather than educate the students. Her future is limited since she has not joined the party and therefore cannot find work. The author’s mother, Hanna, is a strong-willed girl who sees the oppression around her and the change to the family’s once happy existence.
For forty years, an East German family was separated by the division between East and West Berlin and the efforts of the Russian and pro-Russian German government to end emigration.
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