Luise Aschenbrenner Explores Grandmother's DDR Imprisonment in Podcast 'Oma, lass reden'

Born in Bavaria in 1995, actress Luise Aschenbrenner co-hosts the podcast "Oma, lass reden" with her grandmother, examining the older woman's imprisonment in the DDR and the family's East German history. Aschenbrenner proposed meeting at a café in Berlin-Mitte, but the venue proved too loud, so the conversation moved to a nearby garden. In the interview she appears pensive and gentle, searching for the right formulations, yet is notably firm when discussing her view of the DDR. Asked by Der Freitag why she undertook the project, she said she wanted to tell the story in a way that does not deny people raised in East Germany their positive experiences while still demonstrating that the DDR was an unjust state. She framed the central challenge as how to narrate something in which everyone can find themselves. The full interview appears in the current issue of Der Freitag.