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Now the cards of world history are being reshuffled in the Hunsrück. The American troops have begun to leave their positions and abandon the Hahn military airfield. At night the huge “Galaxy“ transports thunder over the land carrying away the atomic warheads, Cruise missiles and secret weapons. In the fields behind the runway members of the peace movement hold a torchlit service of thanksgiving with Pastor Bell.
At the same time Ernst Simon unexpectedly returns from Russia. In spite of extensive diplomatic efforts and sympathetic reports in the media he had disappeared for two years into Soviet imprisonment. He had now been able to attach himself to a group of Russo-Germans who had been allowed to return to their reunified homeland from Kazakhstan and other former Soviet republics. The intimacy which Ernst had enjoyed among these emigrant families has turned him into a different person. He is happy to be able to offer a home and protection to a young Russian woman Galina, her newborn son, her husband and their old-fashioned extended family in his house in Schabbacher Goldbach. He says nothing about himself, his adventures and sufferings in Russian prisons. Galina, and not only in Ernst’s eyes, is an angel. With her exotic charm and natural openness she soon wins everyone’s friendship and provides for her extensive family with donations from the local people, who otherwise find it difficult to come to terms with their new neighbours. For almost fifty years they have lived alongside the generous Americans and their massive military presence. Now Russian-speaking, needy people are moving into their quarters. These new Hunsrückers are people who, a few months before, in their Soviet republics lived in the target areas of NATO’s strategic nuclear missiles. This is an aspect of the collapse of Communism which the old Hunsrückers see as an “historical joke”. Hermann and Clarissa, trying to enjoy their year’s break, are as much affected by the historical events as the other people in the region. The peace that their careers made them seek does not happen. The peace movements in which they had taken part full of idealism have lost their goals. Arms and the Cold War are not the problems now, but unemployment, the ghostly, deserted military installations across the land, and the integration of 20,000 “Russians“ into the Hunsrück. There are no clear solutions any more. Their idyllic "Günderrode House“ is unexpectedly right in the middle of the upheavals, and the pair of lovers begin to ask themselves why they cannot simply be happy. During the day unaccustomed noise rises from the valley, and at night Clarissa is afflicted with distressing noises in her head and middle ear. The site of the former Hahn airbase becomes a challenge for young and old. Hartmut Simon, who wants to free himself from his overbearing father, the patriarch and founder of the “Simon Optical Works“, sets himself up in competition with his father’s firm in one of the empty sheds. And Hermann’s daughter Lulu, the Cologne architecture student, sees the Hahn site as a place to put on modern sports like bunjee-jumping and mountain biking. While Hartmut’s wife Mara devotes herself to her passion for horses and involves herself in dressage, while the Russo-Germans move one after another into Schabbach’s houses and adapt themselves to western standards, while Galina finds work in Anton the patriarch’s household and Ernst buys a new aircraft to fly away from his loneliness, a general impulse for profit grips them all. Hermann, who had previously never been interested in making money, travels to the East to invest his money tax-efficiently with Udo’s help in Leipzig reconstruction projects. Hartmut gets involved in millions with Böckle, an asset-stripper disguised as an investor for an international company. Lulu and her friends put on charity events, giving the profits to humane causes. The only one who remains untouched by all the greed for wealth and fun is the little stammerer, Mäxchen, who confides his dream to Ernst after a flying display at Hahn. He wants to become a pilot like Ernst, whom he has chosen as his idol and model. Hartmut has fallen in love with the beautiful Galina. This is a risky development, because his family needs his attention more than ever before. His wife Mara is pregnant. She gives birth to a son without Hartmut at her side. Anton, who has never trusted his son Hartmut, gives his newborn grandson, in a public ceremony which the villagers and the Simon family find gruesome, his entire private assets, cash and securities to the tune of more than 15 million. Hartmut, his disinherited and humiliated son, flies into the arms of his Russian lover Galina. The family drama spreads. Galina is rejected by her husband and her Russian family. Hartmut gets drunk and causes a terrible accident in his Porsche on a country road, across which he was trying to take Galina to safety. In the accident Lulu’s friend, a young doctor by the name of Lutz, is killed. On that evening Lulu and Lutz had had every reason to celebrate. There successes with the charity events, Lulu’s diploma from Cologne University, and – most important – the newly-certified architect had known for the last few days that she was pregnant. She had just got engaged to Lutz when the drunken Hartmut crossed into the path of their taxi with his Porsche. When she returns to Hermann and Clarissa’s “Günderrode House“ in the dawn from the hospital in which Lutz has died, nothing is the same as it used to be for her, and also for all the others, for Hartmut, Galina, Mara, Hermann, Clarissa and Anton. |
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