To understand this film, one must understand the climate of 1969 West Germany:
The legendary Kommune 1 (founded 1967 in Berlin) practiced “sexual socialism.” By 1969, its remnants (including Dieter Kunzelmann, Rainer Langhans, Uschi Obermaier) promoted group sex and the destruction of bourgeois jealousy. Yet entry was exclusive: only select leftist intellectuals, artists, and journalists could join. The commune’s sexual liberation became a performance for Stern and Spiegel photographers, reinforcing a celebrity-like exclusivity. Working-class youth and conservative Germans saw this as decadent, not liberatory. freiheit fur die liebe germany 1969 exclusive
To understand the film, you have to understand the atmosphere of West Germany in 1969. The "Swinging Sixties" had arrived late in Germany due to the strict conservatism of the post-war Adenauer era. By 1969, the "68er-Bewegung" (the student movement of 1968) had challenged authority, and the Sexual Revolution was in full swing. To understand this film, one must understand the
The film capitalized on the tension between the old, conservative morals and the new, liberated youth culture. It was part of a wave of German "Aufklärungsfilme" (education films) that used the pretense of sexual education to show explicit content, thereby bypassing strict censorship laws. Working-class youth and conservative Germans saw this as
The film is structured as a documentary exploration of human sexuality. Unlike pure exploitation films, the Kronhausens attempted to analyze sex through a psychological and sociological lens.
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