Eberhard Fechner in Person!

“Eberhard Fechner's Testimonials for Klara Heydebreck began with nothing on paper and only a fair notion as to how it would turn out. The film took a year to bring to completion and established him immediately as one of West Germany's leading TV documentarists.
“Early in 1969 Fechner received an offer from Norddeutscher Rundfunk (Productions) to make a film about a suicide. A few weeks later he sat with a cameraman and sound technician in a Berlin-Wedding police station, waiting for the night reports to come in. From the six announced suicides he took the case of Miss Klara Heydebreck: the 72-year-old lady, living alone in a small apartment for over 50 years, had taken an overdose of sleeping pills. Upon investigation into her life and background, Fechner established that she had worked at a variety of professions... was the daughter of a property-owner.... Yet her neighbors knew practically nothing about her (‘she was different than the rest of us').... Two tell-tale items spurred the search for more information on the woman: the bank account with only DM 6.49 to her credit, and a full collection of documentation - letters, photos, records, etc. - carefully saved in scrapbooks. The result was a filmed portrait of Germany as well as a testimonial to a very remarkable woman.”