Wilhelm Pieck School
For more than forty years from 1946 onwards, thousands of young people from over eighty countries were trained at the FDJ Youth Academy "Wilhelm Pieck" at Bogensee near Wandlitz alongside local FDJ members. Named after the then President of the GDR, Wilhelm Pieck, the school was the highest-ranking training centre of the Central Council of the FDJ. A showpiece, with which all state council chairmen of the GDR adorned themselves gladly.
The task of the school was to train functionaries for youth organisations, for the "party's combat reserve", as the FDJ was called in the GDR, for example, and to set up international base stations, again with a clear combat mission. All teaching material was written in the respective languages, and each delegation had its own interpreters at its disposal. The second largest foreign language system in the GDR was installed in the large lecture hall: 18 language booths and 560 seats were lined up next to each other.
Today, twenty years later, after the end of the Soviet Union and the crisis of the left movement, the world is a different one. The youth academy no longer exists, the magnificent socialist building is decaying. But the people who once studied there – they live, distributed all over the world. Director Kirsi Marie Liimatainen meets the comrades from back then in her documentary "Comrade, Where Are You Today?" Her very personal approach to them gives the viewer an understanding of how people around the world deal with the loss of their value system. Are there still utopias for them that are worth fighting for?