Karlowna
19:00 min, HD video,
Karlowna, a patronymic, means in Russian the daughter of Karl. My father, Karl, is 50 years older than me. During the Second World War, he served as a soldier on the Russian front. Throughout my entire childhood, he frequently spoke about the war - particularly his day of desertion to the Russian side of the front and his experiences as a prisoner of war. He was also a member of a Russian propaganda department, where he produced leaflets and addressed German soldiers over a microphone at the front. After the war, he made a living in East Germany through smuggling until he managed to return to Southern Germany. In my youth, I recorded his stories on tape. The film comprises these older tape recordings and new audio and visual recordings that I captured during my trip to Latvia, as well as at his home and in his workshop. This results in a collage of diverse narrative voices from various times and situations. The focal point of the film is his workshop notebook, which we discovered during filming. This notebook dates back to his apprenticeship and was mandated by the NSDAP. Every apprentice had to document their training in it, including construction drawings and weekly reports with sayings that apprentices were required to transcribe from the factory's bulletin board into their workshop notebook.
