Friede Freude Katzenjammer [Peace, Joy, the Morning After]

Founded in Magdeburg in 1886, the firm Paul Schuster Ltd specializes in the preservation of historical buildings and monuments. Nationalized under the East German regime, it was renamed VEB Denkmalpflege and led by the founder’s grandson, Hans P.H. Schuster. In 1990, the family-run company was re-privatized and once again took on its original name. Schuster devotes his business skills and civic engagement to his native city’s artistic monuments, as he strives to rescue these and other artefacts from neglect. Yet Schuster is also an elected member of the German Bundestag for the Free Democratic Party. While he is out looking for West German investors, his company’s workforce feels let down by him and by many others. Featuring historical archive footage, Friede Freude Katzenjammer portrays this versatile businessman and politician, employees of his and other companies, as well as two unemployed youths who adopt a neo-Nazi stance thanks to their bleak prospects in the initial months following German reunification – the head-on collision of capitalism and socialism. The contradictions of the new united German reality are pulled into focus in the scenes in which employees affected by “staffing adjustments” are set to be motivated and retrained in order to “boost their employability in alternative professional fields”. Without recourse to polemics, Friede Freude Katzenjammer puts personal stories under the spotlight against the backdrop of the broader anonymity of grand-stage historical events.