The highlight of the evening?

Jamala!

The Ukrainian artist who, like so many of her compatriots, had to flee her home country with her two small children.

She left almost everything behind on February 24, when the Russian army attacked Kyiv in the morning.

Also her husband Bekir Suleimanov.

The winner of the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) from 2016 drove west in a car for four days.

On Friday evening she was on stage at the German preliminary round, which this year is more than boastfully called "Germany 12 points".

She absolutely wanted to come to Berlin to sing her song "1944", said presenter Barbara Schöneberger during a short switch in the donation special, which was included in the program of the first at short notice: "We help - together for Ukraine “.

Peter Philipp Schmitt

Editor in the department "Germany and the World".

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The war and solidarity with the people were omnipresent throughout the evening and not only ran through the program in colour, from the spectators wearing blue and yellow corona protective masks to Jamala, who of course was flying a Ukrainian flag in the national colors blue and yellow appeared.

Even the winner of the evening, Malik Harris, who could only think of one thing after his victory: he urgently needed to pee, wore an orange-yellow shirt with very dark blue, almost black jeans.

He was the first to go on stage and in the end, among the possible candidates, he was perhaps the deserved winner with his ballad "Rockstars", which is supposed to be a kind of farewell to his childhood and youth.

The children's and youth pictures of him, which were faded in large in the background while he sang, went well with this.

"Rockstars" - simple but successful

The 24-year-old, who grew up near Landsberg am Lech, started playing the guitar at the age of 13.

Malik Harris, the son of former TV presenter Ricky Harris, signed his first record deal three years ago.

In May, when the ESC final takes place in Turin, he actually wanted to go on his first solo concert tour and was scheduled to open for James Blunt and Tim Odell.

Now that might not work.

A rather improbable maybe, because even if "Rockstars" is an appealing song, it's a mixture of pop and rap.

A spark didn't want to fly over his rather simple performance, which he only performed with the guitar.

All the other five candidates tried harder than convincingly.

The Koblenz duo Maël & Jonas (Maël Brunner and Jonas Brochhausen) had at least brought a blue Bulli onto the stage for their flower power pop ballad "I Swear To God", the brightly colored landscape through which they did not drive - the car's ignition had already failed during rehearsals - would certainly bring in extra points.

Otherwise the productions were rather meager.

Eros Atomus, number three on stage, sang his "Alive" in front of a sunset, huge soap bubbles danced around Emily Roberts ("Soap"), Felicia Lu ("Anxiety") didn't know whether she was more Kylie Minogue or Lena wanted to be, and Nico Suave and his love team robbed themselves and their "Hello World", which they had specially rewrote because of the war in Ukraine, of all chances because they seemed terribly nervous.