Frozen Stories

The director's father, Professor Horst E.M. Schüppel - a 23 year old teacher in the Soviet occupied zone of East Germany - was a founding member of the LDP in Saxony. Although this involvement was bound to lead to political persecution, Schüppel decided not to flee to the Western zones. He was arrested in 1948 and later released, along with many other political prisoners, in 1955, following Stalin's death. Through interviews with ex-prisoners who knew his father, the author meticulously retraces the events leading to his father's arrest, and his incarceration in East Germany and Russia. These testimonies, combined with images of prison camps and extracts from his father's letters read by the author himself, exposes the steps taken for his father's political rehabilitation.