Alias Springer

The writer F. Springer was the last Dutch ambassador in the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, from 1985 until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. To gather material for his new book, he went back in 2000. One of the things he recalls is the moment when he had to present his credentials to Erich Honecker. He also tries to retrieve his own Stasi file. In the meantime, Springer reads out passages from earlier work. Director Machteld van Gelder also spoke with people that know Springer well, like writer Hella Haasse. His childhood in the Netherlands East Indies, his stay in a Japanese internment camp and his diplomatic years in countries like Bangladesh, Angola and Iran have made him into a perpetual outsider, who considers 'lost illusions' as a major theme in his work and calls himself, somewhat ironically, a 'paid escapist'.