Schtonk! is a farce of the actual events of 1983, when Germany's Stern magazine published, with great fanfare, 60 volumes of the alleged diaries of Adolf Hitler – which two weeks later turned out to be entirely fake. Fritz Knobel (based on real-life forger Konrad Kujau) supports himself by faking and selling Nazi memorabilia. When Knobel writes and sells a volume of Hitler's (nonexistent) diaries, he thinks it's just another job. When sleazy journalist Hermann Willié learns of the diaries, however, he quickly realizes their potential value... and Knobel is quickly in over his head. As the pressure builds and Knobel is forced to deliver more and more volumes of the fake diaries, he finds himself acting increasingly like the man whose life he is rewriting. The film is a romping and hilarious satire, poking fun not only at the events and characters involved in the hoax (who are only thinly disguised in the film), but at the discomfort Germany has with its difficult past.
Götz George
as Hermann Willié
Uwe Ochsenknecht
as Fritz Knobel
Christiane Hörbiger
as Freya von Hepp
Harald Juhnke
as Pit Kummer
Ulrich Mühe
as Dr. Wieland
Rolf Hoppe
as Karl Lentz
Dagmar Manzel
as Biggi
Veronica Ferres
as Martha
Hermann Lause
as Kurt Glück
Martin Benrath
as Uwe Esser
Georg Marischka
as Von Klantz
Karl Schönböck
as August Strasser
