Narrative Structure (Detailed Plot)
Setting: 1984 East Germany.
Time span: 7 years, 1984-1991
Stasi Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, code name HGW XX/7, is ordered to spy on the playwright Georg Dreyman, who had escaped state scrutiny due to his Communist views and international recognition.
Wiesler and his team bug the apartment, set up surveillance equipment in an attic and begin reporting Dreyman’s activities.
Wiesler learns that Dreyman has been put under surveillance at the request of the Minister of Culture, Bruno Hempf, who covets Dreyman’s girlfriend, actress Christa-Maria Sieland.
After an intervention by Wiesler leads to Dreyman’s discovering Sieland’s relationship with Hempf, he implores her not to meet him again.
Sieland flees to a nearby bar where Wiesler, posing as a fan, urges her to be true to herself.
She returns home and reconciles with Dreyman.
At Dreyman’s birthday party, his friend Albert Jerska, a blacklisted theatrical director, gives him sheet music for Sonate vom Guten Menschen (Sonata for a Good Man).
Shortly afterwards, Jerska hangs himself. A grieving Dreyman decides to publish an anonymous article in Der Spiegel, a prominent West German newsweekly.
Dreyman’s article accuses the state of concealing the country’s elevated suicide rates.
When Dreyman and his friends feign a defection attempt to determine whether or not his flat is bugged, a now sympathetic Wiesler does not alert the border guards or his superior Lt. Col.
Anton Grubitz and the conspirators believe they are safe.
Since all East German typewriters are registered and identifiable, an editor of Der Spiegel smuggles Dreyman an ultra-flat typewriter with a red ribbon.
Dreyman hides the typewriter under a floorboard of his apartment but is seen by Sieland.
A few days later.
Dreyman’s article is published, angering the East German authorities.
The Stasi obtain a copy, but they are unable to link it to any registered typewriter.
Livid at being rejected by Sieland, Hempf orders Grubitz to arrest her.
She is blackmailed into revealing Dreyman’s authorship of the article, although when the Stasi search his apartment, they do not find the typewriter.
Grubitz, suspicious that Wiesler has mentioned nothing unusual in his daily reports of the monitoring, force him do the follow-up interrogation of Sieland.
Wiesler makes Sieland reveal the typewriter’s location.
Grubitz and the Stasi return to Dreyman’s apartment.
Sieland realizes that Dreyman will know she betrayed him and flees the apartment.
When Grubitz removes the floorboard however, the typewriter is gone – Wiesler having removed it before the search team arrived.
Unaware of this, Sieland runs to the street in despair and right into the path of a truck.
A shocked Dreyman runs out after her and Sieland dies in his arms.
Unable to prove his interference, Grubitz informs Wiesler that both the investigation and Wiesler’s career are over. His remaining years with the Stasi will be in Department M, a dead-end assignment for disgraced agents.
The same day.
Mikhail Gorbachev is elected leader of the Soviet Union, beginning a process that would lead to the collapse of the Soviet bloc.
November 9, 1989.
Wiesler is steam-opening letters when a co-worker hears about the fall of the Berlin Wall on the radio.
Realizing the act’s meaning, Wiesler silently gets up and leaves the office, inspiring his co-workers to do the same.
Two years later.
Hempf and Dreyman meet while attending a performance of Dreyman’s play.
Dreyman asks the former minister why he was never monitored. Hempf tells him that he had been under full surveillance in 1984: “We knew everything.”
Dreyman searches his apartment, finds the now-abandoned listening devices and rips them off the walls.
The Stasi Records Agency.
Dreyman reviews the files kept while he was under surveillance. He reads that Sieland was released just before the second search and could not have removed the typewriter.
As he goes through the files, he is confused by the large amount of contradictory information, but as he reaches the final report and sees a fingerprint in red ink, he realizes that the officer in charge of his surveillance – Stasi officer HGW XX/7 – had concealed his activities, including his authorship of the suicide article, and also removed the typewriter from his apartment.
Dreyman tracks down Wiesler, who now works as deliverer of ad brochures, but he is unsure how to thank him and decides not to approach him.
Two years later.
Last scene: Bookstore
Wiesler passes a bookstore window that displays Dreyman’s new novel, Sonate vom Guten Menschen.
He enters the bookstore and opens a copy of the book–it is dedicated “To HGW XX/7, in gratitude.”
Wiesler buys the book.
Asked if he would like the book giftwrapped, Wiesler replies, “No, it’s for me.”
