The story of the complex man and 75-year-old writer named Paul Gratzik, who worked as a Stasi informant in the GDR and was known as a “man of extremes”. However, after spying on friends and colleagues for more than 20 years, Gratzik decided to voluntarily expose himself in the 1980s.

A Stasi informant for 20 years, writer Paul Gratzik finally quit and showed his identity in the 1980s. Annekatrin Hendel’s documentary Vaterlandsverräter is at once a revealing portrait of an extraordinary individual and a tumultuous unveiling of a social history too often kept under wraps.