The first German production of Disney+ revolves around the real life of the East German black ex-cop Samuel Meffire.
Malick Bauer plays the “first black policeman”
It's a small revolution on German television: “Sam: Ein Sachse” reported of the life of black people in Germany. The series is based on the life of Samuel Meffire, who became the first black policeman in East Germany in 1990.
Meffire was born near Leipzig in 1970 to a Cameroonian father and a German mother fell of the Berlin Wall, but before German reunification, joined the German People's Police.
How do black people live in Germany?
For a short time in the early 1990s, he became the figurehead for a new, tolerant and multicultural Germany, the face of a PR campaign that showed a different side of the former GDR should.
The campaign, which was supposed to report on the multiculturalism of the GDR after the reunification, is also coming in of the series
From poster boy to refugee
But his rise to the top was followed by a dramatic fall: frustrated by police bureaucracy and political corruption, Meffire resigned from the police force and changed sides: by the end of the decade he was wanted by the police for a series of armed robberies. On his escape he ended up in what was then Zaire – today the Democratic Republic of the Congo – where he was involved in a civil war.
After being extradited to Germany and convicted, Meffire spent seven years in prison.
The Disney+ version does take some artistic liberties – changing names, combining certain events and inventing situations and characters to create a seven-part TV mini-series can be filled with enough material – but the real events of Meffire's life determine the plot.
The series reflects the fate of East German-born blacks
“When I first heard about Sam's story years ago, I immediately thought it would be a great TV series,” says Jörg Winger, producer and co-creator of “Sam: Ein Sachse”.
“But back then, that was in 2006, every TV station we approached gave us the same answer: 'I personally love the story. But I don't think the [German] audience is ready for it.'”
The real Samuel Meffire
What the editors meant, Winger said, was that German audiences would not accept Samuel Meffire's reality: that of an East German-born black man whose personal history sheds a different light on shared political history.
Unexplored fate non-white guest worker in the GDR
When the Berlin Wall fell, there were almost 100,000 non-white guest workers in East Germany, most of them from so-called sister socialist states such as Cuba, Vietnam, Angola and Mozambique.
Meffire's father, an engineering student from Cameroon, grew up with a “largely positive” view of Germany, says Meffire.
“In the region of Cameroon where he came from, the German colonial era was seen as a Kind of golden age.”
Meffire never knew his father. He died under mysterious circumstances on the day his son was born.
In the Disney+ series and in his memoir Ich, ein Sachse, which he co-wrote with German historian and playwright Lothar Kittstein, Meffire put forward the theory proposed by his mother that his father was poisoned by officials who chemically poisoned him wanted to castrate.
The autobiography Samuel Meffires, on which the series is based, will also be available in English in June
Neo-Nazism intensified after the fall of the Berlin Wall
Life as a black boy in East Germany wasn't easy, Meffire admits. But after the collapse of East Germany, things got much worse as right-wing thugs and neo-Nazis exploited the power vacuum.
“It's almost impossible for Westerners to imagine what it was like, but the neo-Nazis just marched through the streets of Dresden, hundreds of them,” says Meffire. “When they spotted a black man, they would chase, attack and beat him.”
In his book, Meffire, a big fan of fantasy films, calls these marauding hordes “orcs” and “vampires”. .
But surprisingly, Meffire says the police force has been “a place of solidarity, of camaraderie” for him. “I personally have not experienced any racism or hatred. We were a brotherhood.”
A story that goes beyond clichés
The Disney+ series, the streaming provider's first German production, moves through several genres – political thriller, crime thriller, coming-of-age story – while telling the story of Meffire .
Malick Bauer plays Meffire as part of a predominantly black German cast that includes cast members Tyron Ricketts, Nyamandi Adrian, Paula Essam, and others.
Diversity was also ensured behind the scenes: the team of authors included the Afro-German actor and author Toks Körner, who was born in East Germany, and the Austrian-Nigerian screenwriter Malina Nwabuonwor.
The result is almost revolutionary for German television: one Mainstream series, aimed at a wide audience, telling a complex story about black Germans without falling into clichés or generalizations.
Malick Bauer stars in “Sam: a Saxon”
A new look at German History
“We showed the film in the Saxon State Chancellery in Berlin,” says Winger. “Former Interior Minister Heinz Eggert, who was then Chancellor Helmut Kohl's right-hand man, said the film gave him a new perspective on history that he himself experienced.”
“Sam: Ein Sachse” is not Mefire's story as it actually happened, says the 52-year-old. But it captures “the feeling, the emotional truth” of his extraordinary life story.
Meffire now lives in Bonn with his wife and two daughters, where he works as a social worker, author and security specialist.
Afro.Germany
“Sam: Ein Sachse” can be accessed worldwide on Disney+. It can be seen on Hulu in the US.
Adapted from English by Christine Lehnen.