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Heimat 3 - Part 5 - The Heirs (12A)
- Consumer Advice: Contains suicide references
- Run time: 1 hour 45 mins
- Language: German
- Genre: Drama
- Release date: 1st January 2005
- Starring: Jorg Altmeyer, Jutta Altmeyer, Casper Arnhold
- Directed by: Edgar Reitz
- Distributor: Artificial Eye
Plot Synopsis
1997. Seven years have passed since the fall of the Wall, enough time to have realised many of the plans and hopes of 1989. Everyone, be it the childless Ernst now approaching his 70s or the 14 year old Matko, is trying to wring a little personal happiness out of life. Matko is the son of a Yugoslav woman who had left him behind with a friend in Schabbach years ago in order to protect him from the war in her own country. Matko yearns for his mother and feels abandoned by her. Ernst has taken poignant interest in the young waif with his moped and American flying jacket, even though Ernst is currently busy with an ambitious project. He is seeking immortality with the building of a museum at Goldbach and a new foundation to which he wants to bequeath his impressive expressionist collection. The plans have already been drawn up and the financing has been arranged. Ernst knows, however, that he will remain a lonely man without his own family, without intimacy and love. Matko would be able to fill this vacuum in his soul if only Ernst were not so indecisive. Meanwhile Hermann and Clarissa seem to have found each other again, but they have to pay a very high price for being together. Clarissa’s cancer turns into a painful odyssey through operating theatres, hospitals, risky therapies. Hermann's daughter Lulu and her son Lukas now live with him at the Günderrode-House. Lulu has taken over the task of site manager as assistant to Delveau, the architect commissioned to build Ernst’s museum. She very efficiently installs herself on the property – despite the opposition from the citizens of Schabbach.
A lot has changed in the village and it seems that the village’s community spirit has given way to an individualistic profit orientation. There are also the new Schabbachers, living in their opulent weekend villas and they are exerting an ever greater influence upon local politics. They want the peace and quiet of the country, an idyllic natural landscape and not streams of visitors to a museum in the village. They have started a campaign against Ernst and the whole of the Simon clan whom they call the bane of Schabbach.
In one respect the new Schabbachers are right and that’s why the locals join forces with them: the Optical Works have lurched from crisis to crisis after Anton’s death under his successor Hartmut. He has fallen into the clutches of Mr Böckle who is only interested in squeezing him out of the market as a competitor.
In his battle to realise his vision of the museum Ernst also argues that he can save Schabbach from its financial troubles. In his growing isolation Ernst gets the notion of engaging a Frankfurt detective, Mr Meise, to look for an heir. He actually imagines that, during his erratic life as an aviator, he has unknowingly fathered a child somewhere in the world. When the community refuses him planning permission, Ernst gets into his light aircraft and crashes to his death on the Lorelei rock.
His death only complicates the problem. The relatives enter into a greedy scramble for his estate. Hermann and Lulu plead for the realisation of the museum project and the retention of the art collection; Hartmut, who is unable to keep up with his interest payments, wants to see the money in order to save his company from bankruptcy.
In the meantime Meise comes up with the idea that Matko, of whom Ernst was so fond, is his son. As the alleged heir to millions he becomes the target of jealousy and hate. Hermann takes the youngster in to protect him. But Meise has brought Matko’s mother out of Bosnia and she and her son are dragged off at the Mainz hospital where a DNA analysis is intended to clarify the question of his descent. Matko runs away, not least from his mother. He climbs up the Lorelei Rock where Ernst met his death. When his pursuers and his estranged mother track him down there, he jumps off. The tragedy happens at the very moment that Hermann brings the convalescent Clarissa back home to the Günderrode-House. The DNA analysis reveals that Matko was not Ernst Simon’s son.