Von Schönefeld in alle Welt
Zur Geschichte der Interflug

INTERFLUG was the core of civil aviation in the GDR. This showcase organization of a country in which everybody wanted to travel but hardly anyone was allowed to do so. Those who managed to travel with INTERFLUG were part of a sworn circle. Be it with Western German charter tourists on a foreign currency flight to Bulgaria or with 150 fishermen back from Montevideo to the GDR; be it on a solidarity flight to Hanoi with bicycles for Ho Chi Minh's jungle path or with eighty thousand fledglings from Budapest to Syria. INTERFLUG was a widely ramified company, always on the way in the name of socialism and yet something of a home for its employees. Pilots, flight engineers, navigators, and stewardesses formed the image of the airline. The film shows the privileges and the oddities of the aviation routine between Havanna and Heringsdorf. But also the system of surveillance. Each employee could guess that informers of the ministry of state security were on board, especially on flights abroad. But who exactly they were is what many INTERFLUG-employees only learned from their files after the fall of the wall. The film "Das Himmelreich der Interflug" ("Interflug's empire of the skies") also takes a look on the turbulent but forgotten times when INTERFLUG was still called "German Lufthansa of the GDR".