Perhaps an Open Place in the World Still Exists

Wencke Mühleisen’s Slovenian father volunteers in 1941 to join the German Wehrmacht. Wencke Mühleisen herself joins the ideological commune AAO in 1976, which is based on free sex and common property. She eventually leaves the commune and establishes herself as a researcher. Then she discovers a letter from her father, written in the 1980s while she was still part of AAO. The letter reveals that his attitudes are still dominated by racist thinking. Worst of all, he counts on her understanding him, since she herself has broken so radically with the norms of society.

This long-forgotten and repressed letter unleashes an existential crisis in Mühleisen. What had she – a feminist on the far Left – repeated that led to him – a racist on the far Right – to feel able to place them in the same category, in a single sentence? She has to know more, and starts to delve into her father’s past. At the same time, she has to confront herself with the excesses that took place in the commune, and her own role and responsibility in all this.