Phantasten

"A real tale of capitalism, a West German giant story with upswing, downswing, bankruptcy, with all the trimmings." (Der Spiegel, No. 24, 1979) This is how Manfred Krug describes one of his first works after leaving the GDR in June 1977. In the television two-part Phantasten, he embodies an unscrupulous building contractor somewhere in the West German provinces who, with the support of a banker and a corrupt local politician, plans to build a large housing estate. The project gets off to a promising start, but then problems arise. These include a citizens' movement that rebels against environmental destruction. According to the ARD program brochure, the "fictional story (...) does not intend to retell any of the actual cases, but it is fundamentally oriented to the economic development of our country in the 1970s." (cl)