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This year everything is different with Heidi Klum's model travel group.
And not just because of Corona.
No, the 400-strong GNTM innovation team at ProSieben also reached out to the top of the cracker shelf at the ideas bingo.
Week nine therefore starts for the applicants with the task of creating a Rankin.
A Rankin?
How is that?
Made of plasticine?
From potato salad?
Made of paper mache?
Before some logic synapses make the Jens Spahn and fail completely with the irritated candidates, fortunately it is quickly specified: It is not about a Rankin (the photographer), but a ranking (the classification).
If Denglish were not the official language at GNTM, you could have saved yourself the confusion and said ranking list, but whatever.
Considered in detail, there are even two rankings, namely for “Performance” and for “Personality”.
The remaining girls have to sort themselves on a scale from 1 to 14.
Immediately you feel transported back to your school days.
Who does not remember traumatic moments in physical education when you did not have the athletic abilities of Ralf Möller during the “gladiator” times and every team choice became a public humiliation as a result?
The judgment orgy in the model loft is similar.
Heated discussions flare up, as if you could only listen to Tokio Hotel for the rest of your life if you can't make it far forward.
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Incidentally, a popular wisdom comes true that I had previously taken for insubstantial motivational platitudes of overwhelmed, contra-authoritarian anti-helicopter parents: the last will be the first.
Yes it's right!
Soulin is first in “Performance” and last in “Personality”.
Her 13 colleagues write in her yearbook: You are the best, but nobody wants to sit at your table in the cafeteria.
Luca, on the other hand, does rather modestly, although she “was good at dancing,” as her campaign manager Liliana quickly tells the debating club.
But nothing helps.
It's a shame for Luca that only personality and performance were set as criteria.
For example, if you had been looking for the best app among the candidates, she would certainly have had a chance of winning with the Luca app named after her.
Besides, Smudo would be like her father.
In Corona times, the television tower is the most exciting backdrop for the models
Source: (c) ProSieben / Richard Hübner
In line with expectations, we experience emotions in this evaluation challenge, as if the best placed in the internal personality ranking were winning immediate vaccination appointments with Biontech for their whole family.
Another insight of the evening is: Liliana has lost the horror.
If she wanted to break the legs of other candidates at random in the initial phase, her colleagues now fearlessly choose her for last place.
Linda's seventh place in the “Personality” ranking impressively demonstrates how little the candidates can foresee the later dynamic during the broadcasts.
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To get away from this excitement quickly, or actually rather quickly up again, there is the popular high-altitude shoot the next morning.
A solid element.
Panic attacks that are reliably caused by fear of heights are never missed at the feel-good diversity broadcaster ProSieben.
Even Dasha, otherwise not even bothered by Soulin, is amazed: “Dude, how high is that?” Dasha, I can tell you: Exactly 122 meters.
Sounds like a lot, but only 57 times are Dirk Nowitzki.
Luca on the rope
Source: (c) ProSieben / Richard Hübner
To hang on roofs - a nice change for the girls who otherwise only hang out in the model loft.
Today then stop at the “Park Inn” on Alexanderplatz.
A quick question at this point: Who calls a hotel without any park in the vicinity “Park Inn”?
And bonus question: What would the makers of the “Park Inn” have called their shop if it wasn't a hotel but a parking garage?
"Sleep Inn"?
Anyway, back to the shoot.
So that the girls do not float above the roofs of Berlin for no reason, they are transformed into a kind of discounter version of Cruella de Vil.
Blue dresses, blue wigs - and blue limbs, because after dark at 122 meters above Berlin, the temperature in the deep winter is quite uncomfortable than in Costa Rica last year.
Heidi brought together a few experts for the shoot.
On the one hand drag queen Katy Bähm (you know each other from the ProSieben successful format “Queen of Drags”), who diligently distributes wigs.
Hair is now called wigs, otherwise nothing changes.
And then Rolf Zacherl.
After a few minutes of intense amazement, why of all people a TV chef should be there at the altitude shoot, I notice: This is not Zacherl at all, this is Jochen Schweizer.
Obviously things are not going so well in the tandem skydiving business during Corona, so today Schweizer has at least rented its Base Fyling experience platform exclusively to GNTM.
Crashing in Berlin at night - a topic that former top model candidates in particular are very familiar with.
A good school for the year 21 at the Heidi Klum Influencer Academy.
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In contrast to the ranking, Luca is the first at the shoot.
Here, too, however, she does not deliver convincingly.
So far up the air becomes thinner, but not the language center.
At least not with Heidi Klum.
Her past perfect module continues to work flawlessly: "Luca was not afraid".
Unfortunately not a nice photo either.
Things are going better at Soulin: "It was great, I never had a palpitation".
Cardiologists find this questionable.
And I'm outraged too, because not only is there no Thomas Hayo around, but also no defibrillator.
Fortunately, Soulin survived anyway and can relax and enjoy her ultimate triumph over favorite enemy Linda.
She is the only one to break off the altitude test in panic.
Klum is still trying to calm her down and motivate her to pull it off with encouraging slogans such as "You may not make the face right away, Linda".
But it doesn't help.
And besides, if Linda could make faces, Soulin would have another one too.
One of the problem candidates of the last few weeks presented herself much more supple.
Klum screeches enthusiastically: "Liliana is in the house".
Which is not entirely true.
Liliana is actually above the house.
It's hanging over the building somewhere.
But I don't want to shit too much.
We're not on Twitter here.
Ten years ago herself a candidate, now climbed the career ladder: Rebecca Mir (right) with Heidi on shoe
Source: (c) ProSieben / Richard Hübner
Despite multiple panic attacks, the shoot also works for Romina, who is still waiting for a request from Stefano Zarrella.
Or as Germany's next top haircut Inka Bause would say when it comes to “daughter-in-law wanted”: the redheaded Romina.
The neo-redhead delivers professionally and sums up after minutes of treatment by paramedics: "Nobody can get me up, only Heidi".
Incidentally, this is also the name of Tom Kaulitz's biography.
Namesake Romy sums up similarly: "I'm glad it's dark and I haven't seen much".
A bit like my first time.
Greetings at this point to Lasse * from the history LK (* name changed by the author).
How tough the modeling business is, at least the modeling business, as Heidi "Nobody knows them in Paris" Klum imagines, is what Linda, who refuses heights, experiences.
If you do not show up for the shoot, you cannot take a photo.
As a result, no photo can be distributed.
Well, The Regels are The Regels.
Linda, the Marc Terenzi of this season, takes herself out of the race.
She has to pack her bags immediately.
While still on the roof, she celebrates her tearful farewell and manifests her maturity in character.
Sobbing, she whispers to Alex: "Promise me that Soulin won't win".
And what else was going on?
Well we'll see.
After the flight alarm, the next day the decision is taken directly and airily.
The candidates act as flight attendants.
For this purpose, an aircraft door and a playground catwalk have been built into the GNTM studio.
The girls encounter a completely normal course that stewardesses expect when they leave an aircraft: cobblestones, seesaws made of nail files, high-heeled slides and a giant rotating curler to walk through.
And as if that weren't torture enough, Heidi Klum also had a guest judge checked in, and she announced full-bodied: "Rebecca Mir is one of the most famous TV presenters in Germany".
That's true.
At least if you have lived in the USA for 30 years and besides Rebecca Mir only know Dagmar Berghoff, Frauke Ludowig and Nina Ruge.
Favorite Soulin is not entirely satisfied with the task: “I wasn't a child who played on the playground.
I was more likely to read books than a toddler ”.
Gifted at the age of three.
Her favorite books at the time are said to have been “Waiting for GNTM” by Samuel Catwalk and “Whom the Shooting Beats” by Ernest Runway.
Even Klum now seems to be slightly annoyed by Soulin's all-rounders and tries to confuse the leader of the internal performance ranking with the completely senseless sentence “You always have something of your own that you bring to the day”.
Unsuccessful.
Dasha already suspects this and predicts in the backstage area: "Soulin is about to come back as the world's best model of all time".
Psychology officer Rebecca Mir, who has known every girl for about 23 seconds, suspects envy.
That is obvious, because others do worse.
For example, the most positive thing Ana can say about her walk is: "My shoes were on".
With that she has clearly risen to become the secret favorite.
Mainly because she hasn't even unpacked some of her most impressive skills: “My teeth were brushed” and “My socks were whole”.
In the large GNTM cabinet of absurdities it becomes clear during the final bill: Today there is a homage to the megahit "Yein" by Fettes Brot.
It starts with the sentence “It's 1996” - and the image editing skills in this episode also come from the same year.
All the photos distributed during the decision look as if Photoshop-Philipp on Crack Elsa had the ice princess fly around the Berlin TV tower as a witch.
That makes for some embarrassing moments.
But not as embarrassing as the most spectacular rule change this year: The winner no longer receives a model contract.
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That only sounds strange at first glance.
The show is still called “Germany's Next Top Model” and not “Germany's Next Opel Mokka”, although Opel Mokkas are seen much more often than top models.
Viewed neutrally, this way of misleading viewers has always been very popular with television broadcasters.
With “Glücksspirale”, for example, there was no contraceptive to be won.
Keyword not winning: In the end, Mareike and Luca and Klum send the 26-year-old Mareike home.
She has little more than an accurate short haircut from the makeover and the knowledge that an entry in the Guinness Book of Records for the most frequent use of English vocabulary in German sentences is not enough for a final at GNTM.
Next week we will be heading towards the top 10. I will report.
Marie von den Benken
Source: Tristar Media / Getty Images
Marie von den Benken is on Twitter and Instagram as @Regendelfin, she is from Hamburg, model and author. In addition, she writes every week on ICONIST about the big and small dramas at “Germany's Next Topmodel”.
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