"The Unyielding" on women in the Bonn Republic: better, faster, more quick

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The »Feminat« of the Greens (1984): Only women at the top

Photo: Malte Ossowski / Sven Simon / picture-alliance / Majestic Filmverleih

It is one of the many scenes that will stay in the memory after seeing Torsten Körner's documentary "Die Unbeugsamen": The young Green politician Christa Nickels has just given a speech against the nuclear arms race in Bonn's Bundestag - then suddenly she goes fast Steps towards the Chancellor's square and, shy but determined, hands the surprised Helmut Kohl a Japanese origami necklace. A sign of peaceful protest. The Chancellor smiles politely and looks a little perplexed. He puts the utensil on the table in front of him.

Even if it is a rather quiet scene, the symbolic power is stronger than ever after almost 40 years. "The Unyielding" tells of the entry of women into German politics - and the election in 1983, when Nickels Kohl presented the necklace, marked an important milestone. The Greens had just moved into the Bundestag with 5.6 percent, the party leadership formed a »feminine« of six women, and the male world of the Bundestag at that time suddenly looked out of date when this new generation of women politicians drew attention to themselves with their first speeches.

The Berlin director Torsten Körner shows this development in the style of a classic documentary film without explanatory voice-over, only the politicians from back then have their say as interview guests. The main focus is on the 1970s and 1980s in the Bonn Republic, on the interaction between the politicians who are still known today and the, in some cases, forgotten women politicians. For example, Elisabeth Schwarzhaupt (CDU), who was appointed Germany's first female minister in 1961 (and after her inauguration had to make it clear to a journalist that he should address her as a minister and not as a minister), Herta Däubler-Gmelin (SPD ), Ingrid Matthäus-Maier (FDP) and Ursula Männle (CSU), without whose vanguard the later,new, uncompromising entry of the young Greens probably would not have given.

The pictures from that time clearly show that the movement was long overdue.

You see a world of openly flaunted chauvinism, few women are MPs.

The few have to assert themselves, sometimes fighting for their right to speak against a wall of established masculinity, which often reacts with incomprehension to the new political approaches.

The sad climax of the verbal failures

Like the Green MP Waltraud Schoppe, who gave a speech on May 5, 1983 about the paragraph 218 of abortion. It is about the criminal liability of rape in marriage, about men who leave women alone with their pregnancy and about the daily sexism in parliament. The reaction of the MPs in the first rows: infantile laughter and loud insults. Schoppe is mocked as a witch. The addressee ends the speech with an almost pitying look and states: "I can see that I said the right thing - you are hit." It is the sad climax of the verbal abuses.

Other scenes can perhaps be told as amusing anecdotes in the debriefing, but they show how naturally women were again and again belittled as staffage in politics. The FDP politician Helga Schuchardt remembers a member of parliament who ran his thumb over her back after a session in the Bundestag - and then told her that he wanted to test whether she was wearing a bra. The CSU parliamentary group made a bet about it.

Rita Süssmuth was appointed Minister of Health by Kohl in 1985 - also because the Green politicians were putting pressure on the CDU and the party's voters were running away. Looking back, she tells how she trained herself to be pragmatic under the given circumstances and learned to adapt at the right moment. Politicians, as Süssmuth and the other women see it, had to be better, faster, more quick-witted than the men in parliament, mistakes were not easily forgiven.

At the provisional end of this development, at the end of the film "The Unyielding" (to be seen in the cinema from August 26th) stands Germany's first female Chancellor. With an eye for the hidden joke that lies dormant in some archive material, Körner shows the famous elephant round 2005: Seven men and one woman discuss the outcome of the federal election - the only woman is Angela Merkel. Gerhard Schröder lost the election shortly before and is still certain of victory. He still resists the reality of a new time - and is then swept away by it.

Would this choice have been possible earlier? Christa Nickels, who had handed Helmut Kohl the origami chain at the time, stated towards the end of this remarkable documentary: "If the choice had been between the best of all women and a stupid August, then the stupid August would have become Chancellor - very clearly."