In the "workers' film", "Das Lied vom Trompeter" she was appearing beside established stars such as Rolf Römer, Günther Simon and Jürgen Frohriep; but it was her role alongside Gunter Schoß in the television version of "Egon und das achte Weltwunder", based on the eponymous best-selling novel by Joachim Wohlgemuth,[2] that most convincingly captured the life-style of the coming generation.
[5] Directed by her then husband, the producer and screenwriter Horst Seemann (1937–2000),[6] she became one of the nation's favourite young movie stars, featuring several times on the title pages of film magazines.
Writing in Eulenspiegel, Renate Holland-Moritz offered the scathing opinion that the film provided no evidence that the leading actress, Traudl Kulikowsky, knew how to act.
[2] The story concerns Kamp's decision to leave his home, garden and family in order to move to the Baltic coast and work on the construction of a Nuclear power plant.
[10] (The slaughter of war and sustained emigration during the ensuing decade had left the country desperately short of working age population, so "escape from the republic" was regularly condemned in official media and, for most comrades, became illegal/impossible after 1961.
[15] A few years after moving to the west, in 1989 she returned to the world of film, this time as the director of a brief documentary entitled "Agonie", but by now she was no longer able to generate significant impact.
[16][17] Those on whom she reported to her handlers include the high-profile intellectuals Walter Janka and Christa Wolf, both of whom were near neighbour's in the prestigious residential suburb of Kleinmachnow.
[18] Other potential "political dissidents" in the country's artistic establishment who get a mention in the context of Kulikowski's Stasi involvement include Peter Brasch, Heiner Carow, Franz Fühmann,[19] Stefan Heym,[19] and Rainer Kirsch.
[19] After her acting career collapsed in the mid 1970s, Kulikowsky became increasingly dependent financially on the Stasi who by this time were even paying the repair bills on her Trabant.
[20] The Stasi went to remarkable lengths to try and redirect or accommodate her ambitions: they tried to find her fulfilling work back at the national Film Studio (DEFA).
She never became a "regular member", but she did sign two of the movement's petitions calling on the government to engage in open discussion on the subject of women serving in the People's Army.
[21] The issue had risen up the political agenda following the enactment of legislation in 1982 whereby, in the event of national emergency, women aged between 8 and 50 might be conscripted for military service to defend the fatherland.