It’s a strange thing to share your father with a generation of young Germans who couldn’t trust their own. To us, he was just ‘dad’, but a caravan of ‘visitors’ kept flocking to him – like a guru. We had idealists talking politics in the study, terrorists plotting kidnappings in the kitchen and a permanent camp of stoners ‘liberating’ parts of the house, the shed and the garden. The Mossad monitored everything from the street and a special unit of the British police tapped the phone. It was a strange playground of interests where we grew up. And at the center of it all was my father – a gifted toy maker and insect rescuer. A round-bellied Buddha who could fix anything with his fat fingers. A hoarder who searched the garbage bins for discarded items, which he then repaired and placed somewhere in the house. Basically, they were all things like him that had been pushed out of their usual place. I was still a teenager when my father died, but since then I’ve been collecting the pieces of the puzzle of his life and trying to put them together. I want to know what kind of portrait they might make. It’s 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 I have been unable to ask, but he has given me many clues in his poetry and the many friends and followers he left behind.

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

Berlin, Vienna, London, Baden-Baden