TV review: Maischberger: A lyrical evening in the middle of the election campaign

This Bundestag election campaign now also has its lyrical note.

She brought in Sandra Maischberger with the question of the German favorite poem, which she asked Marco Buschmann (FDP) and Tino Chrupalla (AfD).

Buschmann then recited a stanza from the 1848 poem "What is freedom?" By the Austrian poet Friedrich Halm.

The lecture could not be called reliable in the text, but it cannot be assumed that German poetry has an influence on liberal party-political prose.

After all, Buschmann was able to pull himself out of an affair with a poem that would undoubtedly have overwhelmed most living members of an earlier nation of “poets and thinkers”.

During the recitation, Ms. Maischberger dared to comment that she had to be careful "which questions she asked."

"Night Thoughts"

You didn't get that impression, after all, Chrupalla still had to give an answer. It turned out as expected. He had nothing to offer, except for a reference to Heinrich Heine's famous verse: "If I think of Germany at night, then I will be deprived of sleep." The title "Nachtgedanken" did not occur to him, nor did another verse. It was just a phrase born out of necessity. However, the presenter wanted to show him off as a cultural bastard afterwards. The poem my Heine's mother, at least that is what her fragmentary memory of the “Night Thoughts” is. With this attempt to drive Heine out of even the political context, Ms. Maischberger made it even worse. Probably the Germanists among the spectators will have pulled the hair that was thinning from time to time.

It goes without saying that the majority of Germans have always considered the roaring deer on the living room wall to be art rather than Heine's largely unknown poetry. Now you could remember Erich Kästner's warning “Whatever happens”: “You should never sink so deeply from the cocoa that you are pulled through.” Ms. Maischberger even pulled herself through her own cocoa, which not everyone succeeds. But above all, this scene made clear the madness of wanting to portray an AfD politician as a banausen under all circumstances. It wasn't even necessary. It is true that there was agreement between Buschmann and Chrupalla on individual factual issues, but that would not have to upset anyone under normal circumstances. The programmatic differences, however, in migration policy, for example, became clear to every viewer.

In return, the AfD chairman got into the swim without cocoa when he was supposed to explain the AfD's change of political position. Of course, everyone changed their assessments based on new knowledge, argued Chrupalla. But the AfD had the same problem as all the other parties: How does it deal with the different assessments of its own electorate about the risk associated with the pandemic? And here, too, the AfD was dominated by the political calculation of the factual issue. The mouse doesn't bite off a thread, to put it that way on this lyrical evening. However, Buschmann wasn't convincing either. So he suddenly made a high vaccination quota a prerequisite for the repeal of the epidemic emergency of national scope by the Bundestag.Only the FDP had rejected the recently decided extension, at that time without reference to the vaccination quota. Why he did not make this clear remained a mystery.

Bundestag elections in West Berlin

Dieter Hallervorden could not solve that either, although he will vote for the FDP on September 26th. He did find clear words against vaccinators, but otherwise he sometimes spoke in riddles. Ms. Maischberger tried her hand at not only poetry, but also contemporary history. She asked Hallervorden how he would have felt about the first federal election after fleeing the GDR in 1961. He described this very vividly, including the contrast program for voting in the GDR. All of this had only one problem: until 1990, West Berliners were not allowed to participate in federal elections because of their four-power status. In addition, the founder of the Berlin cabaret “Die Wühlmäuse” suggested “asking Chrupalla” with a few questions. For example, what the AfD politician would do if some Germans were violent against foreigners.Probably the latter did not answer as Hallervorden expected. We remember Erich Kästner, whose advice is known to suit every situation in life. Ultimately, however, the deep frustration that can be seen in the cultural sector after eighteen months of fighting the pandemic became clear at Hallervorden. His theater would only have an occupancy rate of thirty percent, despite a program that was highly acclaimed by critics and a convincing hygiene concept.His theater would only have an occupancy rate of thirty percent, despite a program that was highly acclaimed by critics and a convincing hygiene concept.His theater would only have an occupancy rate of thirty percent, despite a program that was highly acclaimed by critics and a convincing hygiene concept.