she suffered a lot of setbacks in the process. The moments of her greatest weakness are when the nun Richardis is to be taken away from her. In this situation, she behaves either like a small, abandoned child, or with fury. This conduct is all recorded in her letters. And it is precisely these moments of extreme self-abandonment that I find so beautiful, surprising, and contradictory. Hildegard von Bingen demands for herself what she usually gives to others. I absolutely did not want to portray her as a saint. Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt (2012) portrays an important segment in the life of the German-Jewish academic Hannah Arendt. In an interview with Thilo Wydra, von Trotta is asked if Arendt is similar to the women she has portrayed in past films. Von Trotta replies with an explanation about how real-life characters from her past films, Rosa Luxemburg and Die bleierne Zeit (Marianne and Juliane), fought and died for causes they found to be right: Luxemburg wanted more equality in her community, and Gudrun Ensslin (Marianne) wanted to revolutionize humanity. Von Trotta says, "Hannah Arendt is a woman who fits into my personal mold of historically important women that I have portrayed in my films. ‘I want to understand,’ was one of her guiding principles. I feel that applies to myself and my films as well. Television work The common problem that filmmakers run into is budget issues and where they get their funds; during the mid-eighties, many films went under due to money cuts by the "German subvention system." Several of von Trotta's fellow women filmmakers took the safe route and went into the education field in media. But not Margarethe von Trotta—to stay in the game, she accepted proposals for TV pieces, even if it meant losing a bit of her artistic allowances. Her first piece for television was Winterkind (1997), which was the first time she did not compose the screenplay for a work she was directing. She followed this with three more TV films: (1997), (1997), and (2000). Through her experience of working in television, von Trotta learned how to try to hold on to her stamp as an "independent filmmaker" in terms of keeping her artistic approach. Personal life In 1964, von Trotta married Jürgen Moeller and had one son, German documentary director Felix Moeller. They divorced in 1968 and von Trotta married German filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff.