When Berlin was still truely left-wing

Berlin filmmaker Renate Sami has died.

Renate Sami lived through '68 as well as the leaden Germany of the 1970s. And not just witnessed it: she was involved in left-wing political circles. She was not only a filmmaker, but also an actress and screenwriter and knew her way around a camera.

Renate Sami ©private

Renate Sami was already 40 when she discovered filming for herself. In her first life, she was an interpreter and translator and had also taught French, English and German. She worked on translations, such as the 1968 volume "Where is Vietnam?" with 89 American poets against the war in Vietnam and Jean Meynaud's "Report on the Abolition of Democracy in Greece" (1969). In the daily “tageszeitung” (taz) in 2008, she described in detail "her 68" and how her life continued in the 1970s.

Prison, Red Aid and a movie about Holger Meins

May 1970: Eggs, stones and Molotov cocktails are thrown at a demonstration in front of the Amerika-Haus, a cultural and information center of the USA in West-Berlin. The reason: in Ohio, on the campus of the University of Kent, students had protested against the Vietnam War, the National Guard had marched up and shot four students. That night, the news spread to all the shared flats in West-Berlin. Many people spontaneously took to the streets - including Renate Sami, of course. Hours later, far away from the Amerika-Haus, she was stopped by the police. As she had already attracted attention on another occasion, she was arrested on suspicion of having committed arson endangering human life at Amerika-Haus. She was remanded in custody for a year. In her own words: "Always in solitary confinement. The first few days are the worst. You don't think it's possible and you just want to get out! Then you get used to it. Strange, actually. I read, worked, translated. So I don't see it as a loss this year."

In 1971, Renate Sami was released and joined the left-wing "Rote Hilfe" (Red Aid) association that supported people it considered to be political prisoners. By then, the left-wing extremist Red Army Faction (RAF) had been formed and some had already been arrested. Some went on hunger strike, which other people wanted to make a movie about. It was through them that Renate Sami first came into contact with film. In November 1974, Holger Meins, a member of the RAF, died as a result of a hunger strike. Meins had studied film in Hamburg and West-Berlin. A group of young people who were also studying at the Film and Television Academy in Berlin therefore decided to make a film about Meins. However, the project came to nothing because they didn’t have enough money. Renate Sami kept at it. This resulted in her first film: "Everyone dies… but the only question is how and how you lived" (1975). A portrait of Holger Meins. In the the daily “taz”, she says with critical distance:

"He didn't have to starve himself to death. He could live today, could be free. But it was such peer pressure that was exerted. They wrote terrible letters to Manfred Grashof, who had broken off his hunger strike. He then started again. So there was a lot of peer pressure. And Holger took it all very seriously. The idea behind it. And you know by now that Baader [Andreas Baader was the head of the RAF] ate chicken, of course. We all know that now, don't we?"

Her first film was missing from a screening of Renate Sami's films to mark her 80th birthday at the Arsenal cinema in Berlin on May 25 and 26, 2015: perhaps, writes the reviewer in the daily “taz”, because after Holger Mein's death Renate Sami's work "has moved away from the political, aesthetics and poetry have come more to the fore, the preoccupation with literature and painting. Or traveling."

On February 6, 2024, many of her companions gathered once again at Renate Sami's grave - "the old Berlin". Back then, most of them would probably say, when Berlin was still truelly left-wing.

Obituary by a friend

Renate Sami was as helpful and gentle as it was good for her migraines. She always had a resounding laugh, which still rings in my ears today. We played ping pong for years on different outdoor table tennis courts. We had a table tennis location map where we could estimate when and how long the sun was shining and which wind direction was favorable for our balls. In winter, the table was cleared of snow and wetness. It was always a spontaneous phone call depending on the weather.

We traveled to Paris together for the premiere of her film portrait of the Italian writer Cesare Pavese at the Cinematheque Francaise. The ethnologist and director Jean Rouch organized his ethno film festival there every March. In the 1990s, we were able to "copy" a similar concept for ten years at the State Museums of Berlin with Wolfgang Davis.

Renate and I, severely afflicted by hay fever, traveled by car to Rome to Remo Remotti's "Commune: Group Love” on the Sun Terrace. To the horror of film director Harun Farocki, we danced on the bar in "Gottlieb’s", the pub in West-Berlin, where Harry Hund, wearing a glitter jacket, claimed that "we" were the competent scene. The people from Rauch-Haus, a youth center named after an activist, were often present. Thomas Hengstenberg - the photographer of the most famous "Kommune 1" picture with the naked butts - sailed in for the Berlinale film festival... It's so easy to digress when remembering!

The night the news of Holger Meins' death leaked out, some of us met up at "Kostas" in Grolmannstraße. Renate was leaning against the wooden wall in front of the large round table opposite the bar. Tears were silently running down her cheeks. That was the only time I ever saw her cry. Now, at her funeral, in the cemetery at the crematorium, I remembered Fritz Teufel's funeral. At that time, the writer Ulrich Enzensberger went through the crowd with the sentence: "We won't see each other like this again"!

Renate Sami died at the age of 88 on December 24, 2023, Christmas Eve. "One goes - another is born", I heard people say several times... I will miss her: her steadfastness in her artistic work, her attitude towards life, "pure brut", her amoral humor and her generous willingness to help.

People are irreplaceable!

Have a good trip

Annette C. Eckert, 7. Februar 2024

I interviewed Renate Sami on July 8, 2007 about her film and her personal impressions of Holger Meins for my radio report "RAF in Film". If you know German, listen here.