Two options remain when everything goes down the drain.
We can shiver helplessly in our dark and cold apartment, the news on loop, the covers pulled over our heads.
Or we turn off the TV and escape to another world where the sun always shines with Dieter Bohlen's Instagram account.
Patrick Schlereth
Editor on duty at FAZ.NET.
Follow I follow
On the beaches of Mallorca nobody cares about war and inflation.
Bohlen feels at home here, because it's about what really counts: the sleekest sunglasses, the fastest speedsters, the sexiest women.
Where Bohlen only has eyes for his 30-year-old partner Carina.
In addition to hundreds of millions of records sold, it occupies a prominent place in Bohlen's huge trophy cabinet.
The name of the Instagram account clarifies ownership, "Dieter Bohlen with Carina".
She is his Venus
Nobody is allowed to touch, but looking and envy is definitely welcome.
Carina on the bike, Carina on the beach, Carina at the pool: bright blue sky, shimmering turquoise water, in the middle lies his goddess with a tight bikini and long legs.
One inevitably thinks of a turn-of-the-millennium commercial for a lady's shaver, in which smooth women shaved their thighs.
"I'm your venus, I'm your fire at your desire."
Times have changed for the razor manufacturer, today they advertise with transgender and plus-size models and get yelled at on social media for it.
own fault.
If you've had enough of the 'woken' zeitgeist and just want to switch off, you're living the eternal man's dream on Mallorca with Bohlen and his one and a half million Instagram followers.
That all the luxury is only borrowed, that life in the lap of luxury is just a nice Instagram filter, as the tabloid media want to have revealed?
gift.
"I own as much on Malle as most people: nothing," admits Bohlen frankly.
Except maybe Carina and the rubber boat in which Bohlen floats on the water and thinks about life.
"Happiness always comes from within, never from without," says the picture.
Money alone doesn't make you happy.
Above all, Bohlen needs to know that.
Manager Magazin estimated his fortune at 250 million euros in 2019.
The self-proclaimed pop titan always earned the money with the skills of others: Thomas Anders, Alexander Klaws, Mark Medlock, Pietro Lombardi.
The big star in this loan business was always himself.
But nobody should get the idea that the multi-millionaire spends the rest of his life in a hammock.
In 2023, the 20th and supposedly last season of "Deutschland sucht den Superstar" is coming up, and after a short creative break, Bohlen is finally back on the jury.
"Dieter", who also likes to speak of himself in the third person on Instagram, "is happy, yes Dieter is happy" that his pupil Lombardi is also there.
"We're going to have a lot of fun, and we're going to have a lot of laughs." Aspiring singing talent might take that as a warning.
For Bohlen in 18 years at DSDS, fun meant above all humiliating candidates in front of an audience of millions, either for their singing skills ("If the weather were like your voice, it would rain shit") or for their appearance ("You're a human being How God Made Him and McDonalds Shaped Him").
Anyone who is still applying now can at least not claim that they did not know beforehand.
"TV makes it, TV even breaks it," Bohlen sang with "Modern Talking" in 2003 when the first DSDS season was released.
In 2021, RTL ended its collaboration with Bohlen.
The bad uncle no longer fit the new family-friendly concept that the broadcaster had written on the flags.
But DSDS without planks, it was like Instagram without soft focus, it just didn't fit.
With the brave pop singer and dream ship captain Florian Silbereisen on the jury, the ratings plummeted.
The RTL audience seemed unable to endure the harmony.
The return campaign from Bohlen also ends a big misunderstanding.
"It's the same as with friends: sometimes a break is good," said the broadcaster.
Bad times, good times.
And in good times, even the biggest trivialities are "megahammergeil" for Bohlen.
In bad times he sometimes “really lacks the words about the war in Ukraine”, as he admits on Instagram at the beginning of March, just to get started after all.
The Ukrainians were "always really nice" at his concerts, but he also "always got along well" with the Russians.
He also knows the Klitschkos quite well, they are “fantastic people, like the ones that are working now”.
He wishes those affected on site "everything, everything, everything, love" - the superlative of the superlative of a titan who tries to solve international conflicts on Instagram.
Dieter loves you very much, Dieter is there for you.
Bohlen recently expressed more conflict willingness at an event of the "Entrepreneur University".
“If they hadn’t made these sanctions, for example, and you’d sat down at a table sensibly, then people wouldn’t have to do all this nonsense now.” Former boxer Wladimir Klitschko responded on Twitter: “You, Dieter Bohlen, don’t care When people die here?" When asked by the "Bild" newspaper, he invited Bohlen to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, which is governed by his brother Vitali: "He is welcome."
Bohlen as the king of escapism among the ruins of war?
That would be an absurdity that no Instagram filter in the world could blur.
He prefers to say hello in a polo shirt, shorts and flip-flops from the “exclusive 5-star resort Joali” in the Maldives.
His Instagram followers can win a short vacation there.
Five days in Dieter's world - wherever the sun shines.