The ESC 2022 will take place in Turin, Italy.

Host Italy has already found its participant, traditionally this happens at the Sanremo Festival.

The Swedish preliminary round Melodifestivalen is also a national event.

Germany, on the other hand, has not found a concept for years.

This year, an "ESC expert jury" made its decision as to who could compete for Germany.

Peter Philipp Schmitt

Editor in the department "Germany and the World".

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These six participants made it to the German preliminary round, their names and songs were presented for the first time on Thursday:

Eros Atomus

(last name Isler) participates with the self-penned song "

Alive

".

The twenty-two-year-old from Flensburg, who grew up with eleven siblings, took part in "The Voice of Germany" four years ago.

In the casting show, Eros Atomus took fourth place.

His competitor at the time, Ben Dolic, was an ESC candidate for Germany in 2020, and the Grand Prix was canceled due to the corona.

The number two of the possible candidates was already in an ESC preliminary decision, in 2017:

Felicia Lu

(pumpkin).

The twenty-six-year-old from Bavaria grew up in Salzburg and now lives in Vienna.

She is a songwriter and has her own YouTube channel.

Her self-written song is called "

Anxiety

".

Also there are

Maël & Jonas

from Koblenz.

The duo have an "energetic song" about redemption, "

I Swear To God

."

Maël is 26 years old, Jonas only 20. But the two have known each other for more than ten years and got to know each other while taking guitar lessons.

Together they achieved third place in "Voice of Germany" in 2020.

The next preliminary decision finalist was in the jungle camp two years ago – with "In This Together" she contributed the title song to the reality show.

Emily Roberts

(father is English, mother German) is 28 years old, comes from Hamburg and lives in Berlin.

Her song is pure pop music and is called in a nutshell: "

Soap

".

The band

Nico Suave & Team Liebe

wants to spread positive energy with "

Hallo Welt

": Nico Suave, 43 years old, grew up in Menden in Sauerland.

The former postman has been rapping in German since he was 16 and writes his own lyrics.

Team Liebe includes EMY, the educator of Suave's children, the Berlin-born NKSN and the German-Turkish Buket, who grew up in Kiel.

Malik Harris

from Landsberg am Lech is the sixth in the group, son of the American presenter Ricky Harris.

His song "

Rockstars

" is like "a therapy session with myself," says the twenty-four-year-old about the song, which he also wrote himself and is a musical mixture of pop, rock and rap.

How did the decision come about?

An "ESC expert jury" has already made its decision without the name of an artist having become known by Thursday.

It is clear, however, that 944 applications were received - from very young and unknown, but also established artists - and that the "ESC jury" made up of "music experts" from the ARD radio programs (Antenna Brandenburg, BAYERN 3, Bremen Vier , hr3, MDR Jump, NDR 2, SR 1, SWR3 and WDR 2) and “Alexandra Wolfslast, head of the German ESC delegation”.

The German preliminary round will take place on March 4th

Finally, the audience decides: From February 28th there will be online voting - "for the acts presented on the websites of the nine ARD pop waves".

For the six, March 4th is "the big ARD ESC day" of the German preliminary round.

The pop waves will play their songs all day long, while listeners can already vote.

In the evening, all third programs of the ARD broadcast the program "Germany 12 Points - the German ESC preliminary decision" at 8:15 p.m.

The only constant of the show: Barbara Schöneberger, who will moderate again.

The fact that the NDR once again hides the comparatively important program in the third programs and does not show it after the always highly rated "Tagesschau" in the first, reveals once again how important the Grand Prix is.

It doesn't help either

One of the six can certainly cause a surprise at the ESC final on May 14, but none of them have a great chance if they can't make themselves heard beyond Germany's borders - and preferably before the final round in Turin.

Hopeful looking back into the past doesn't help either.

Turin has not been a bad venue for Germany so far: tennis player Alexander Zverev won the ATP final there in autumn, Germany was second in the medal table at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Turin, and in 1990 the German national soccer team defeated England in the semi-finals in the city ​​and later became world champion.