TV – ARD: Once it was nice

From today’s perspective, it was golden times: Until the introduction of private television in 1984, which was forced by the then Chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU), only three public television programs existed in the Federal Republic of Germany: the first program ARD in 1950, which went on the air in 1963, and the advertising-free third regional programs (Nature documentation, cabaret, “Dinner for One”, “Telekolleg”!), Which actually belonged to the ARD. Financing through fees should secure the independence of the public broadcaster. Because they were not dependent on tax money.

While the ZDF developed into a kind of semi-officially CDU reclamic counter (“license plate D”, “File number XY”, “ZDF-Magazin”), oriented itself early on the success of RTL and SAT.1 and, with its sensationally popular kitsch productions (“The Dream Ship”, “The Black Forest Clinic”), the general trend was largely its way, the ARD was largely Commissioned not only to entertain the viewers, but also to offer sufficiently “contributions to education, information and culture”. Today you look into the partly sorted ARD media library, where you can find famous classic films in the same section (“Films”) (which are usually only accessed in the unbearable German dubbing) right next to rancid degeto snaps and it is not exactly easy for yourself to be between “Schlagerparty-the best XXXL”, home kitsch (“Dahoam Dahoam, “Odenwald up close”) and tons of deciding trash (“veterinarian Dr. Mertens”, “Reiterhof Wildenstein”), one does not get the impression that the program managers remember this order.

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A short flashback to 1980: The Internet was still in the distant future. There were neither video recorder nor home computers, neither streaming platforms nor smartphones. Many people in the German 3000-inhabitant community in which I grew up had to leave the house and go to a so-called coin spokesman. The most modern devices in my parents’ household (born in 1924) were a color television and a moss -green dial telephone.

The world was still reasonably arranged when you were sitting on the living room sofa with mother and father in the evening and was forced to watch the quiz shows in the “first program”: for example Robert Lembkes “cheerful professional council”, a traditional program that was the title “What am I?”. Their cute moderator left two men and two women who looked like they were shipped directly from the Bingo evening of the retirement home to a television studio, guessed the professions of the invited guests: vacuum cleaner representatives, herbal witch, investment fund manager. “Are I right in the assumption that you are not busy manufacturing a goods?” It was one of the most popular entertainment programs on German television: apart from a short interruption of two and a half years, she ran from 1955 to 1989 in the ARD. On Saturday evening, the same broadcaster delighted the television audience with Rudi Carrell’s “on the ongoing volume”, Joachim Fuchsberger’s “Let’s go” or Hans-Joachim Kulenkampfs QuizShow “will win”.

Already at that time you didn’t want to know anything about the Nazi past. The fact that Robert Lembke or the “Dalli-Dalli” host Hans Rosenthal (ZDF) had survived the Holocaust, while Kulenkampff and Fuchsberger were temporarily used in the Soviet Union as Wehrmacht soldiers. Now, 30 to 40 years after the end of the war, they were all met on the same television screen.

It was delighted when Kulenkampf, grand master of the excessive broadcasting time, smiled at mischievously while he announced the viewers that the following programs would probably start a little later. The question was asked which price would probably hide this time behind the cube with a large question mark, who always passed the remaining candidate at the end of Carrell’s program on the “running volume”. “A vacuum cleaner, the iron, a coffee service, a … uh … a couple of skis … and the question mark!” And you smiled satisfied when Lembke did every guests whose professions should guess the “guy team”, asked: “Which pig would like it?”

Thanks to the international system competition between capitalism (“market economy”) and socialism and the existence of the so -called Eastern Bloc, the West at that time was still forced to guarantee its citizens a minimum of prosperity, cultural participation and social care in order to prove that it was the better and fairer social model. Accordingly, the television program was based on the inclinations of those who were called the “lower middle class”: dad went maloche, Mutti meanwhile threw the household and took care of the children. In the evening you gathered in front of the screen to relax.

In the “crime scene” you could see the popular TV commissioner Veigl (with hat and tie) and Haferkamp (with trench coat and tie) when determining and to which Schimanski said every five minutes (in his tapped field jacket of the US Army) while being beaming around and having been unmistakable since the late 1980s, even a woman has been entered into the late 80s Men’s domain. In the “Lindenstraße”, the first German Soap, which was sent every Sunday from 1985 to 2020, which was to become the most durable television series in the country, the participation was taken in the everyday life of the Beimers, Zenkers and Zieglers. Or you were outraged by the first kiss exchanged on German television between two gay serial figures, which occurred in 1990.

Also as a training instance in terms of comedy, the ARD became effective at times and brought a minimum of joke and satire into the dreary living room of the rather clumsy German: thanks to Loriot and Evelyn Hamann you met the Hoppenstedt and Erwin Lindemann family, thanks to “A heart and a soul” you gained a deep look into the soul life of the post -war German. In his sketch series “Fast Wia in real life”, Gerhard Polt analyzed the racist core and the psychological deformations of the German petty bourgeois. Thanks to Gerd Dudenhöffer’s “Heinz Becker family”, you knew how the average provincial philistine ticks.

Its information about the world events were moved into from the evening “Tagesschau”, and who asked for criticism of the policy of the rulers, was well served with the left -wing social democratic magazine formats “Panorama” and “Monitor”. Not excluded that the Grumpy Old Man of Investigative Journalism, Klaus Bednarz, who reported from 1983 to 2002 as editor -in -chief of “Monitor” with a stoic expression on the mess of corporations and politicians, would be accused of “left -wing extremism” today.

If the German reality went too much to the kidneys, the children’s program was able to turn to: The “Augsburg Puppenkiste” was aesthetically new ways. The series “Master Eder and his Pumuckl” ensured that the busy goblin could never be imagined again with a different voice than that of Hans Clarin, while the pleasingly undidactic “Sesame Straße” and the smart “program with the mouse” had succeeded in giving knowledge with joke and pleasure since the early 1970s. And nobody from the population would have ever come up with the idea of ​​”broadcast” the broadcasting institution, from which these shows, sketches, children’s programs, magazines and series were “broadcast” (as one said at the time), with their correct name: “Working group of public service broadcasters in the Federal Republic of Germany” (abbreviation: ARD).