The woman’s name was Jutta Fleck. In the movie she is called Sara Bender. She is played by the actress Veronica Ferres. Her children were called Claudia and Beate. In the movie they are called Silvia and Sabine (or “Bine” – pronounce “BEE-ne” - for short).
In 1982 Sara Bender is living with her two daughters Silvia (11) und Sabine (9) in Erfurt in the GDR (East Germany). Their mother said some things that criticized the government of their country. In a communist country like the GDR it was a bad thing to be critical of the government. Because of what their mother said, her children were treated badly at school.
Sara wants to marry Peter Koch, whom she knows at work. A wedding is arranged. Sara’s father lives in Helmstedt in the West Germany. He travels to his daughter’s wedding, but on the way he has an accident on the motorway and is seriously injured. The wedding is postponed. Sara wants to visit her father in hospital in West Germany, but the government of the GDR do not allow her to go because of the critical things she had said. Her father dies. Sara still keeps asking for permission to leave her country, but she is not allowed, and things are made difficult for her at work.
She tries to escape from the GDR with her two daughters. They manage to get to Romania, and they want to go to Yugoslavia, but they are caught by the East German secret police (Stasi). The Stasi knew they were going to try to escape because they had put secret microphones in Sara’s flat so that they could hear everything that was said. Sara and the children are brought back to East Berlin. At the airport the children are separated from their mother. They are taken to a children’s home in Dresden. Sara is locked up in a police cell. Her friend Peter, whom she had wanted to marry, turns out to be on the side of the Stasi. He works against her. Sara is sentenced to three years in prison.
After two years in prison Sara is let out, thanks to the West German government who paid the GDR to free her and let her come to the West. She is still not allowed to see her two daughters who had been sent to live with a foster family who were loyal to the communist government. Sara is tricked into signing papers which actually mean that she no longer has any rights to see her daughters.
Sara cannot bear to be in the West without her daughters. She immediately starts to beg the GDR to let her daughters join her, but nothing happens. Even the West German government does not help her, because, for political reasons, they do not want to make bad relationships with the GDR in East Berlin.
Sara thinks the only way she can make anyone take any notice of her is to get publicity. She gets help from a journalist and photographer Richard Panter. She stands at Checkpoint Charlie, the place in the middle of Berlin, where foreigners could cross over from one side of the divided city to the other. She wears a big placard which says: “Give my children back to me!”. Richard takes photographs and gets newspapers all over the world to print them. The GDR government does not like this at all. They send agents to threaten her. She is even attacked and wounded in the street, and told that next time she will be killed if she carries on her campaign. Even the FRG (West German) ask her to stop her campaign, because it is bad for international relations.
However, Sara does not stop. She manages to contact her children by smuggling letters and messages on cassettes. The girls are really cheered up and think they will soon be able to join their mother in the West. But no permission is given.
Sara travels to a conference in Helsinki where she wants to speak to Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the West German Minister for Foreign Affairs (the movie is slightly different here to what really happened). She is given a lift in a car by men who say they are taking her to Genscher, but they are Stasi agents who take her to a forest to murder her, but she manages to escape.
Her two daughters are told that their mother has been killed in a car crash, but this is a lie. The children happen to see their mother demonstrating on a television news report. They realize she is still alive. Her foster parents find a recording on a cassette on which the girls have criticized the GDR government. They are harshly punished.
In the end their foster mother feels sorry for them and helps to persuade the GDR government to let the children go. They are reunited with their mother in West Berlin.
Mulde
The Mulde is a river in Central Germany. It is formed when the "Zwickauer Mulde" and the "Freiberger Mulde" coming from the Erzgebirge meet near Colditz. It runs on through the Saxon towns Grimma, Wurzen and Eilenburg to Dessau in Saxony-Anhalt. The river flows three kilometers north of Dessau into the Elbe River.
The Mulde has a length of 124 kilometers and is one of the fastest rivers in Central Europe. It is not navigable.
Grimma
Grimma is a town on the banks of the river Mulde in northwestern Saxony, Germany. It is about southeast of the city of Leipzig.
Wurzen
Wurzen is a town on the banks of the river Mulde in north-western Saxony, Germany, about 20 kilometers east of the city of Leipzig.
Ai Takahashi
Her first appearance on TV was in 1999, on a children's talent show, where she won a prize.
She joined Morning Musume in 2001 with Asami Konno, Makoto Ogawa and Risa Niigaki. Her first single was "Mr. Moonlight ~Ai no BIG BAND~" which she sang with the group. In 2002 she launched her first photobook alone and joined the group Mini Moni. She also acted in a movie, "MiniMoni Ja Movie: Okashina Daibouken". She was called "Takkity" by her fans because her dress in the movie was like a black cat.
In 2003 she replaced Mari Yaguchi in the group Mini Moni. In 2007 she became leader of the group Morning Musume after Miki Fujimoto left the team. In 2008 she joined a new group, High King, created to promote the musical: "Cinderella the Musical". Takahashi plays the main character in this new group and Reina Tanaka is the leader.
In 2009 she was made the leader of the group Hello!Project. She is the only member of Morning Musume that plays a character in a dorama (Japanese drama).
Diffusion
Diffusion is a process where molecules of a material move from an area of high concentration (where there are many molecules) to an area of low concentration (where there are fewer molecules)until it has reached equilibrium (molecules evenly spread).
Diffusion usually happens in a solution in gas, a liquid and occasionally colloids. It is possible to see diffusion happening when two liquids are mixed in a transparent container.
It describes the constant movement of particles in all liquids, gases and colloids. These particles move in all directions bumping into each other.
Molecules tend to move from places of high concentration to places of low concentration, just by moving randomly. For example, there is more oxygen in a lung than there is oxygen in the blood so oxygen molecules will tend to move into the blood. Similarly, there is more carbon dioxide molecules in the blood than in the lung so carbon dioxide molecules will tend to move into the lung. It happens in cell biology, where small molecules simply diffuse through the cell membrane, but larger molecules only get through by using energy: see active transport.
The random movement of fluid molecules makes them spread out until a boundary stops them.
Diffusion is a "passive" process, therefore does not require energy as it occurs down a concentration gradient.
Osmosis and heat transfer are types of diffusion.
Diffusion is affected by:
In small unicellular organisms, simple diffusion can exchange molecules quickly enough to keep them alive. A high surface area to volume ratio helps.