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Seven years have passed since the fall of the Wall, enough time to satisfy the plans and hopes of 1989. But who can make his wishes come true in a world without ideals, without God? Everyone, from the childless Ernst now reaching his 70s, to the orphan Mäxchen with his 14 summers, is trying on their own account to wring a little personal happiness out of life. Mäxchen is a waif and stray left behind years ago by Yugoslav cleaning woman. Ernst has taken a fancy to the boy who wants to be a pilot one day and goes around in an American flying jacket and takes a touching interest in him, although he really has no time with his ambitious museum building projects, which he now hopes will immortalise him. With the museum and the newly established foundation which Ernst wants to put his impressive Expressionist collection into, he could create a memorial for himself and become a person of high standing with politicians, bankers and art historians, but he knows that he would still be a lonely man without his own family, without love and peace of mind. Mäxchen might be able to fill this vacuum in Ernst’s soul if Ernst were not so confused and indecisive. He tortures himself with the question as to whether he should take Mäxchen in and train him to be his successor, but without coming to a decision.
Meanwhile Hermann and Clarissa seem to have found each other again, but they have to pay a very high price for being together. Clarissa’s cancer turns into a painful odyssey through operating theatres, hospitals, unpredictable therapies and further separations which Hermann devotedly fills with his solicitude. His daughter Lulu, who has by now finished her architectural studies, and Lukas, Hermann’s grandchild, are now living with him in the “Günderrode House”. As assistant to Delveau, the architect commissioned to build Ernst’s museum, Lulu has taken on the fascinating task of supervising the building work. With impressive energy she installs herself on Ernst’s property in the Goldbachtal and presses on with planning the building against ever increasing opposition from the citizens of Schabbach. A lot has changed in Schabbach too, and it seems that the village’s community spirit has given way to an individualistic profit orientation. “New Schabbachers” are now living in their opulent week end villas in the beautiful Hunsrück and are exerting an ever greater influence upon local politics. They want peace, an idyllic natural landscape and therefore no streams of visitors to Ernst’s museum. They start a campaign against Ernst and the Simon clan, whom they call the bane of Schabbach. In one respect the “New Schabbachers“ are right, and the natives also agree. The optical works once founded by Anton Simon have lurched from crisis to crisis after his death under his son and successor Hartmut Simon, and have brought misery to Schabbach, unemployment, loss of careers and controversy. Hartmut has fallen hopelessly into the clutches of an international company which is only interested in squeezing him out of the market as a competitor. In his desperate battle to implement his vision of the museum, Ernst also argues that he can save Schabbach from its financial troubles. But he is distrusted because he is a Simon. In his growing isolation Ernst gets the notion of engaging a Frankfurt detective to look for an heir. In his misery he actually imagines that he has unknowingly fathered a child somewhere in the world during his erratic life as an aviator, and can now bequeath it his wealth and all his unfulfilled hopes. When the community refuses him planning permission on the very day of his 70th birthday, Ernst gets into his light aircraft and crashes to his death on the Loreley rock. Ernst’s death makes the problem even greater. As usual there is a greedy scramble after his estate. People are particularly excited about his collection of paintings, exaggeratedly seen as a “dragon’s hoard“. His valuable art collection is inaccessible to everyone deep in an abandoned slate mine under his village. One day Meise, the Frankfurt heir-hunter, sets the rumour going that Mäxchen, the orphan that Ernst was so fond of, is the deceased’s son and the true heir to his millions. Hartmut and the Simon clan, harassed by bankruptcies, take up the battle. Mäxchen is under observation day and night and plans are laid as to how to deal with any of his potential claims. Meise, who is counting on a high success fee, fights against them. Hermann and Lulu try to mediate because they are sorry for Mäxchen, but nothing can be done to prevent the poor boy from being the victim of ever more blatant greed. When Meise manages to bring Mäxchen’s mother from war-torn Bosnia and to trick the poor woman into making a statement on oath that Mäxchen is Ernst’s child, the boy becomes frantic. He hides himself for days on end in Ernst’s slate mine, being the only person to have the key to it. But he is discovered and hauled off to a hospital in Mainz for a blood test. A DNA analysis is intended to prove that Ernst was his father. Mäxchen shakes off his pursuers and escapes to the Loreley rock, to the place where Ernst, his only friend, met his death. When his pursuers and his war-scarred mother track him down even to here, he throws himself into the depths. Mäxchen’s tragedy happens at the moment when Hermann has brought his convalescent Clarissa back to their beautiful "Günderrode House“. The view of the Loreley rock from there is so familiar and friendly that nothing now seems to stand in the way of Hermann and Clarissa’s newly-awakened hopes for a little happiness. |
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