Die Mutigen 56 - Germany's longest strike

It was different for the employees. The workers did not want to put up with this unequal treatment anymore. - The docudrama brings a unique labor dispute to life on the example of a fictional Kiel working-class family. Through the life of Emma and Alfred Freese, the challenges of that time are made tangible in all their harshness. Emma is a typical housewife and mother of that time. Through their eyes this period of hardship is seen and the struggle of the Freeses for a dignified life is accompanied. The war and its deprivation have marked this generation, but now it is going up again. When her husband Alfred collapses sick at the Kiel Howaldtswerft, Emma despairs: He has to take care of himself, but how is the family supposed to get by without the wages? It can't go on like this! For the fight for justice and dignity, up to 34,000 metalworkers in the shipyards and factories of Schleswig-Holstein finally stopped working from October 1956. Employers and politicians stand in the way of the strikers with decidedly harshness. On the employer side of the then booming shipbuilding is, among others, shipyard boss A. Westphal. Julius Bredenbeck, Herbert Sührig and Hein Wadle are well-known trade unionists to this day, who orchestrated the strike and led to success. The Berlin filmmaker Sabine Bernardi and the Hamburg documentary filmmaker and historian Ingo Helm filmed in Cuxhaven and the surrounding area, among others. They have dived into the 1950s, have sighted sources and interviewed contemporary witnesses. This includes the then 17-year-old Björn Engholm, who was brought to politics by this strike.