Inhalt

In the summer of 1807, Clemens Brentano – the German Romantic writer – stumbles into the most extreme love affair of his life. The woman who throws herself at him „with terrible force“ is called Augusta Bussmann. Brentano is fascinated by both her decisiveness and unusual personality. However, Brentano’s sister Bettina thinks that Augusta is a rather dreadful person whilst Banker Bethmann advises Brentano (whom he considers a bit soft in the head anyway) to go on a long journey and let the flames of Augusta’s passion ebb. But Augusta, her bundle of belongings packed, simply gets into the coach as well and, with Brentano completely taken by surprise, the two travel to his brother-in-law, Carl Jordis, in Kassel. The Bethmann and Brentano families are of course outraged. Augusta is disowned by her mother, Bethmann declares her „dead“ and an anti-Brentano announcement appears in Das Frankfurter Wochenblatt
(„The Frankfurt Weekly News“).
Though the scandal reverberates through Germany, it is a scandalous adventure that eventually leads to Brentano’s second marriage, a marriage that then develops into a fight to the finish! Augusta is determined to make of daily life what the Romantics proclaim in their poetry and novels. She is not prepared to accept that there is a permanent gulf between love and literature, art and life, utopia and the everyday of bourgeois life.
Janina Sachau, the actor who plays Augusta, said of her role that „Augusta is a figure close to my heart: she has a high degree of emotionality, yes, but she also embodies love, wrath, obduracy, tenderness and regret. She is impetuous and emancipated and wants to live her life as a woman as she wants to live it and not according to the dictates of convention. But there lie the seeds of conflict that will lead
to her tragic end — the yearning for death which people who live their feelings to the full seem to have“.
The film was awarded the Hesse Film Prize of 1998.