The BEST episodes of Line Of Separation
Every episode of Line Of Separation ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Line Of Separation!
Tannbach attempts to encompass the history of divided Germany in the years following the Second World War by dramatising the fate of the inhabitants of a small village on the border between the two Germanys.
#1 - My Land, Your Land
Season 1 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/7/2015
In Part 3, “My Land, Your Land”, Anna and Friedrich are living on their small farm, which is barely capable of supporting them and their child. Lothar contributes significantly to the family’s subsistence through his cross-border smuggling and as a black marketeer. Four years later, in 1952 and during the Cold War, the East German Stalinists build a fence running across the whole of Germany. It goes through the middle of Tannbach, which lies within the five-kilometre protected area behind the fence. The entire population of the eastern part of the village is subjected to stringent security regulations. At this point, Liesbeth visits Tannbach from America, enthusiastically praising New York, where everyone can say what he or she wants and it “doesn’t matter whether anyone is a Jew or a Catholic”. She denies that anyone wants a new war: “You’ve all just talked yourselves into believing that.” No one watching Tannbach would know that the US had just initiated a bloody war against North Korea and China that claimed three-four million lives, that the American ruling elite was engaged in the ferocious, anti-democratic McCarthyite witch-hunts and that African Americans were subject to brutal apartheid conditions in the US South. A young East German border guard in Tannbach is shot and killed by West German border guards, leading to a tightening of border security. All people suspected of not being one hundred percent loyal to the Stalinist regime are forced to relocate away from the immediate border area or face prison if they oppose the evacuation order.
#2 - The Expropriation
Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/5/2015
Part 2, “The expropriation”, deals with land reform in the Soviet occupation zone. Landowners who possess more than 100 hectares [247 acres] of property, or who were members of the Nazi party and committed war crimes, are expropriated without compensation. The land is then divided into five-hectare [12-acre] portions and allotted to the so-called “new farmers”. The film fails to explain the brutal and reactionary role played by the Junker class (Prussian nobility) during the Wilhelmine Empire (1871-1918), the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) and the Nazis’ seizure of power in 1933. Instead, Count von Striesow (convincingly played by Lauterbach) is presented as not such a bad fellow, although he reacts to the expropriation of his estate as the worst injustice imaginable. After returning from POW incarceration in France, he refuses to accept that his daughter Anna has married Friedrich and is working with him to cultivate five hectares of land allocated to them from the Striesow family’s former estate.
#3 - The Morning After the War
Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/4/2015
Part 1, “The Morning After the War”, begins in the last days of World War II. Just before US troops break into the estate of Count Georg von Striesow (Heiner Lauterbach), a young SS officer (David Zimmerschied) has the Countess (Natalie Wörner) shot because she refuses to betray her husband who has returned from the war as a deserter. The count was denounced by Franz Schober (Alexander Held), a prosperous farmer and fanatical Nazi, who immediately offers to serve the Americans with his meticulously recorded insider knowledge of Nazi members and their activities. The SS officer, Schober’s illegitimate son, is exposed to the Americans by his own mother, Hilde (Martina Gedeck). In any event, the US occupation is brief. Thuringia is assigned to the Soviet occupation zone, while Bavaria remains under American control. Soviet troops take over the village. Following a later revision of demarcation lines, US troops return to the western side of the village, which is divided down the middle. The Soviet soldiers are portrayed as violent thugs, taking revenge for the atrocities of the German military through rape and plunder. What the German troops have done in the east is not revealed until the third part of the trilogy. Schober’s firstborn son, returning late from the war, shouts into the count’s face that he himself had ordered massacres before deserting his command. In retaliation for the killing of German soldiers, entire village populations—men, women and children—were shot as partisans. One of the most powerful scenes in the first part includes the screening of a film recording the Americans troops’ liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp, which the Tannbach villagers are made to watch. Further plot developments focus on the count’s daughter, Anna (Henriette Confusius), and Friedrich Erler, the working class youth from Berlin. The young couple fall in love, hoping to find fulfilment in a new and better world, where there are “no top and no
#4 -
Season 2 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/8/2018
Tannbach 1960. The Cold War claims its victims. In the West, a child dies from a grenade, the East enforces collectivization by all means. Unrest is growing in the village. In the divided town of Tannbach, East and West face each other armed to the teeth. The families of Striesow and Schober suffer from the separation, but Berlin still offers a loophole through the border. Will class enemies become neighbors again? West-Tannbach, 1960: While playing in the forest, children find a grenade. Emil, the eldest of the Schober children, is killed.
#5 - Peace of Stone
Season 2 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/10/2018
Summer 1961. In the divided village of Tannbach, no one suspects that these are the last days before the Wall is built and Germany is divided into East and West for the coming decades. In the West, the economic miracle is flourishing. In the east, the party is fighting against scarcity and sabotage. Mistrust is growing on both sides, and cross-border commuters are coming under suspicion. Will reconciliation across the border still succeed? After Friedrich's death in the flames, Anna mourns. She tries to tackle her life alone with her three children in Ost-Tannbach. She finds comfort in faith and emotional support from Pastor Wolfgang Herder. The two become closer, which Anna's colleague from the LPG, Adolph Herrmann, in particular, jealously observes. The party is also critical of Anna's involvement in the church. Is her faith compatible with her leading position in the LPG?
Watch Now:Amazon
#6 - Dream of spring
Season 2 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/11/2018
1968. The Prague Spring brings hope for a world without walls. But in the divided village of Tannbach, fear is growing. And those who do believe in a new beginning will be bitterly disappointed. In the charged political situation, the people of Tannbach in East and West are making difficult decisions and revealing long-kept secrets. But betrayal and the opening of old wounds also hold the chance for sincerity and reconciliation. Summer 1968: Tannbach has set up shop behind a high wall. The East as well as the West. The Prague Spring seems like a liberation. But Anna's eldest son Felix is a soldier in the National People's Army (NVA) and suspects what is to come. He was not prepared to march into Prague, fled the barracks and appeared at night in East Tannbach.
Watch Now:Amazon