Fatherland, at 82 minutes, is a condensed masterpiece. It focuses on a crucial and consequential episode in Thomas Mann’s life. In 1949 Mann was invited to return to Germany for the first time since 1933 in order to celebrate the bicentenary of Goethe’s birth on 28 August and receive two prizes, one in Frankfurt, where Goethe was born, the other in Weimar, where the poet spent most of his adult life. The trouble was not only that Germany was divided into four zones of occupation by the Allied powers but that its division was being confirmed by the creation on 23 May of the Federal Republic of Germany, comprising the three Western zones, and on 7 October of the Soviet-dominated German Democratic Republic. What was Mann to do? Visit the West, the East or both?

Mann stated clearly that for him there were no zones, only Germany. He set out to confront West and East. In reality Mann travelled with his wife, Katia; here, played by Hanns Zischler, he is accompanied by his eldest daughter, Erika (played with understated brilliance by Sandra Hüller), who drives their car. From the outset things are difficult. At a press conference in Frankfurt the atmosphere is largely hostile. He is accused of treachery for having left Germany (though the Nazis would have either thrown him into a concentration camp or, as they did with Richard Strauss, tried to make him a figurehead for their regime). In real life, Mann was painfully aware, though he could say it only in confidential letters, that he was surrounded by unreconstructed ex-Nazis, many with blood on their hands.

There is comic relief. In a wholly invented scene, Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner (grandsons of Richard; played by the real-life brothers Enno and Theo Trebs) smarm up to him, seeking his support for restoring the opera house at Bayreuth. Mann pretends not to know which brother is which (reducing them