True Story and Fictional Protagonist as a Bestseller

Abstract

Thirty years after the collapse of communism, film productions with historical thematic references to the former GDR take up the horrors of the GDR regime with its perfidious surveillance system, reunification and the Wende period as an important historical event in fictional or documentary form and are popular internationally. GDR film and TV series, i.e. embedding the plot in a historical setting, are well received by international audiences. The article captures the potential of the film character Kleo Straub, the protagonist of the successful eight-part Netflix series Kleo (2022), for the storyline and in doing so also questions the credibility of the "true story" that did not "really [happen]" (prologue).