Ernst Thälmann

Directed by Ursula Bonhoff and Georg Schiemann

With Helmut Schellhardt, Christine Schorn, Günter Grabbert, Peter Sodann and Marian Kociniak

This elaborate two-part television film features a section from the life of communist worker leader Ernst Thälmann. It begins with the bloody riots on May 1, 1929 in Berlin, in which police officers shot at demonstrating workers, and ends with February 7, 1933, when Thälmann appeared as a speaker at the illegal meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany in goat neck. This period was marked by the struggle of the Communists against the ever stronger National Socialists and the rise of Adolf Hitler.