General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Das Superweib

Das Superweib (English: The Superwife) is a 1996 German comedy directed by Sönke Wortmann, based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Hera Lind, and starring Veronica Ferres as a housewife who becomes a bestselling author after accidentally initiating her own divorce¹. It was produced by Constantin Film Produktion GmbH of Munich, with Bernd Eichinger and Martin Moszkowicz as producers, and released in German cinemas on 7 March 1996¹. With more than 2.3 million admissions it ranked among the most successful German films of 1996², and it marked the breakthrough of its lead actress².

Key fact	Detail
Original title	Das Superweib; also circulated as Hera Linds Das Superweib¹
Director / screenplay	Sönke Wortmann; screenplay Gundula Leni Ohngemach, after the novel by Hera Lind¹
Production	Constantin Film Produktion GmbH (Munich); producers Bernd Eichinger and Martin Moszkowicz¹
Shooting period	18 July to 12 September 1995, in Stuttgart and its surroundings and in Hollywood¹
Technical data	89 minutes (2,452 m), 35 mm, 1:1.85, Eastmancolor, Dolby SR¹
Release	German theatrical release 7 March 1996; FSK 12 at the censorship review of 29 February 1996; FSK 6 on later home video¹^•³
Admissions	More than 2.3 million in Germany, one of the most successful German films of 1996²
Award	FBW rating Besonders wertvoll (especially valuable), 1996³

Spoilers

Plot

Franziska Herr-Gross (Veronica Ferres) is a former actress and mother of two whose husband, the television director Will Gross (Thomas Heinze), spends most of his time traveling and is unfaithful with his leading actresses¹^•⁴. Sent to buy a house on behalf of her husband, who is abroad, she consults a "hobby estate agent" who has been warmly recommended to her. He takes her for a professional client in his actual trade: he is the divorce lawyer Enno Winkel (Joachim Król), and before Franziska can object he has initiated her divorce¹.

After the first shock, Franziska follows the lawyer's advice to write down the story of her marriage, since in a divorce every detail matters. Writing it, she finds she likes the idea of separation much better¹. Without her knowledge, Enno passes the manuscript to his mother Alma (Liselotte Pulver), who sends it to a publishing house; the Hamburg publisher brings it out under the title Ehelos glücklich ("Happily Unmarried")⁵. Under the pseudonym Franka Zis, Franziska becomes an overnight bestselling author and transforms herself from dutiful housewife into successful writer, courted both by Enno and by the publisher Victor Lange (Heiner Lauterbach), her school-days crush⁶. The film rights are then sold to her unsuspecting almost-ex-husband Will, who wants to shoot the book and meet the mysterious author "Franka Zis" in person⁶. Because Franziska has the final say over the film rights, Will has no choice but to bring his wife's marriage story to the screen exactly as she wants it².

Cast and crew

The ensemble was built around well-known German screen actors. Veronica Ferres played Franziska, Thomas Heinze her egocentric director husband Will, Joachim Król the lonely divorce lawyer Enno Winkel, and Liselotte Pulver his good-hearted mother Alma⁷. Heiner Lauterbach appeared as the editor Victor Lange, Esther Schweins as Sonja Sonne, Til Schweiger in a self-ironic guest role as a bored film star, and Richy Müller, Maren Kroymann, Burghart Klaußner, and Armin Rohde in further roles²^•¹.

Behind the camera, Wortmann worked with cinematographer Tom Fährmann, editor Ueli Christen, and musician Stoppok (Stefan Stoppok)³. Ferres slimmed down by ten kilograms specifically for the title role, an effort the filmportal review judged unsuccessful in making her convincing as the emancipated woman, while crediting Wortmann otherwise with a good hand in casting¹. For Pulver, then 73 years old, the role of the mother-in-law was her second-to-last cinema appearance².

Reception and box office

The film followed Wortmann's and Eichinger's Der bewegte Mann (1994), the most successful German cinema film of the 1990s with 6.5 million tickets sold, and filmportal's commentary noted that a filmmaker adapting a bestseller competes against the movie already in readers' heads and "can only lose"; the Eichinger/Wortmann team, it argued, managed the transition⁸.

Admissions figures differ between sources. fernsehserien.de and the film historian Stephen Brockmann both give more than 2.3 million viewers²^•⁹, a year-by-year list of successful German comedies records 2.4 million¹⁰, and an academic study of German cinema states an audience in excess of 3 million in early 1996¹¹. All agree that the film was one of the year's biggest German box-office hits²^•¹².

The Deutsche Film- und Medienbewertung (FBW) awarded the rating Besonders wertvoll in 1996. Its jury praised a very successful comedy that lives from nested story levels and a playful register, in which viewers can laugh at themselves when they recognize things from their own lives; it singled out Ferres, Król's "lonely, childlike man", the welcome reunion with Liselotte Pulver, and Thomas Heinze's portrayal of a filmmaker's egomaniacal aberrations³. A minority of the jury read the film as media criticism, pointing to the director character who wants to write his own screenplay and no longer recognizes his own life, and to a birth staged under floodlights and cameras on the Trans-Siberian Railway, which the film-within-the-film then relocates to an airplane³.

Critical opinion was divided. Rose-Maria Gropp of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote that films made from literary sources are usually measured against the book and usually come off badly, but that Wortmann had distilled an independent comedy from Hera Lind's bestseller². The reviewer Hans Schifferle in epd Film disagreed, finding the film neither a proper comedy like Wortmann's Kleine Haie nor a slapstick farce, lacking characters, atmosphere, and flavor, with its emotional scenes seeming strained¹³. The cinema.de verdict called it a career comedy trimmed for hits¹⁴.

Later availability

The film was first shown on German television on 9 May 1998 on the Premiere channel¹. It appeared on DVD in 1998 (Cine Plus), 2005 (VCL), and 2009 (Highlight), each rated FSK 6, and a Blu-ray from Pidax Film- und Hörspielverlag was scheduled for release on 19 November 2026¹⁵. In 2019 Constantin Film Verleih GmbH digitized the film under the Filmerbe (film heritage) funding program, and filmportal.de provides the film's opening minutes as evidence of the completed digitization⁶.

Context in the New German comedy wave

Film scholarship places Das Superweib within the mid-1990s wave of German screen comedies. A study of the period's female-centered comedies, which examines the film alongside Workaholic (1996), concludes that such romantic comedies fail as romances because they cannot convincingly reconcile their portrayal of female independence, solidarity, and recognition of patriarchal inadequacy with the sexual norms their genre dictates; the films expose heterosexual men as chauvinist and exploitative while foregrounding female camaraderie¹⁶. The same scholarship notes that the happy endings of New German comedies often depart from the stable heterosexual relationship typical of classic romance films¹⁶.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Films by genre, form, and subject › Adaptations of literature, stage, and other media › Adaptations of non-English-language literature

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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