It is a strange thing to share one’s father with a generation of young Germans who couldn’t trust their own. To us, he was just “Papa”, but an incessant stream of “visitors” came to him like to a guru. We had idealists talking politics in the study, terrorists planning kidnappings in the kitchen, and a constant camp of stoners “liberating” the garden, the shed and parts of the house. Mossad was monitoring everything from the street and a special unit of the British police was listening in on the phone. It was an odd playground of interests we grew up in. And in the middle of it all, my father – a gifted maker of toys and saviour of insects. A round-bellied Buddha whose chubby fingers could fix anything. A hoarder who would sift through the rubbish bins for discarded things that he could repair and find a place for somewhere around the house. These were things that, like him, had been forced out of their rightful place. I was still a teenager when my father died, but since then I have been collecting the puzzle pieces of his life and trying to put them together. I want to know what kind of a portrait they might yield. It is a collection of hair-raising stories and humorous anecdotes – an absurd life, but surprisingly comprehensible. He may not have lived long enough to answer the countless questions that I was never able to ask, but through his poetry and the many friends and followers he left behind, he has given me no shortage of hints.

Director: Klaus Fried Writer: Klaus Fried Camera: Ralf Ilgenfritz Sound: Matthias Kreitschmann Editor: Philip Mayer Dramaturgical consultant: Kerstin Stutterheim Producers: Gunter Hanfgarn, Ralph Wieser