Twilight of the Gods (5/6)

Twilight of the Gods (5/6)

News of Robert Koch's miracle drug tuberculine travels the world. Berlin is overrun by consumption patients and doctors, who lay siege to the Charité night and day. Koch hopes his breakthrough will finally get him the finances he needs to get divorced and live with Hedwig. But the tuberculine fails to heal more and more patients. Therese dies. People start to doubt Koch. Ida blames herself for insisting her friend be treated with tuberculine.
Nevertheless, when nursing assistant Stine comes down with diphtheria, Ida calls on Behring to try his untested serum. Hospital director Spinola and his daughter Else are witnesses when Behring's remedy actually heals a patient. Admiringly, they realize he's truly a rising star in the medical world. Ida is fascinated by Behring's success, too. She reaches a decision: She will study medicine, even if it seems above her place and unrealistic to her fellow orderly nurses. It's not only her colleagues who are taken aback at Ida's plans. When Georg introduces Ida to his father to get his blessing in marriage, Ida tells them she's planning to study medicine. But a wife who "doesn't know her place" is out of the question for Georg and his father.

The Charité
Between breakthroughs in medical research and enormous social upheavals in 1888, the Charité is well on its way to becoming the most famous hospital in the world. It is a city within the city, following its own laws and rules. At the beginning of the Wilhelmine Period, up to 4,000 patients are treated annually. Along with the expected injuries caused by the booming Industrialization, patients are suffering from infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid and cholera, as well as from sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis. In addition, there are over 1000 students, taught at the Berlin University, who are being trained in this famous hospital by the eventual Nobel Prize winners and most prestigious doctors of the time: Rudolf Virchow, the founder of the modern health care systems, Robert Koch, the discoverer of the tuberculosis virus, Emil von Behring, whose work contributed greatly to the healing of diphtheria and Paul Ehrlich, who developed the first drug against syphilis.

Sönke Wortmann - The Director
Director Sönke Wortmann is one of the big names in contemporary German cinema. His epic melodrama "The Miracle of Bern" (2003) was a world-wide success and his 2006 Football World Cup documentary, "Germany: A Summer's Fairytale", ranks among the country's most successful documentaries. He has also directed the opulent historical drama "The Pope" (2009) as well as "Maybe, Maybe Not" (1994), the most successful German film of the 1990s.