Everything is connected to everything else - this inner bond of all things, which Maybrit Illner recalled several times, made this program so threatening.

So far it had not been made clear to oneself: everything depends on the gas!

Whether life succeeds or fails may have anything to do with health or illness, with the emptiness that stares at us or with the abundance that doesn't want to be traded with anyone.

Christian Geyer Hindemith

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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But what is all this without gas?

Nothing in our living environment seemed to be fundamentally exempt from being drawn into Maybrit Illner's gas show, from finding itself there as a warning sign.

Whether it was about apartments that might soon become unaffordable or about pills that could run out of the small glass containers they are normally in: everything is connected in the medium of the gas.

The fact that the alert level has now been declared according to the gas emergency plan leaves the slogan "Freeze for peace" like folklore.

With Alert we have become part of a scenario where anything and everything is possible.

At Maybrit Illner, the guests spoke out of an ominous latency, in which facts and fears flowed together again and again in a way that was difficult to distinguish.

Each measure of the emergency plan became visible with regard to its various implications, until even the most casual spectator understood the question that seemed to be hiding behind all the statements: Will we narrowly miss the catastrophe or steer right into it?

The Minister of Finance showed the instruments between inflation and recession, encouraged with the 15 billion euros that he had planned early on as guarantees so that the state could now fill the gas storage tanks with additional purchases.

At the same time, however, Christian Lindner also said (and left open how this sentence would have an impact on the whole): one now recognizes “that the fiscal possibilities of this country are also limited”.

Excuse me, limited?

Had you heard correctly: going into debt had become too expensive?

Are you standing in front of a steep wall?

“With increased prices overall, the state is not in a position to be able to subsidize them in the long term.

We can no longer afford politics on credit,” said Lindner in the oath of disclosure.

The struggle for energy solutions with Putin in charge

Now that the vulnerability of existence as a whole is becoming apparent, one no longer wants to know anything about having belonged to those who wanted to reject Russian gas supplies just a few weeks ago.

Monika Schnitzer from the German Council of Economic Experts called it a stroke of luck to be able to take precautions for four months without Putin having throttled or even turned off the gas earlier.

Of course, the latter is to be feared from mid-July, when the gas pipelines are usually due for maintenance and it will then become clear whether Putin will start them up again at all, to the current 40 percent of the gas supply, to 100 percent – ​​or to the maintenance-related 0 percent would remain.

The subsequent question about the compensatory use of coal-fired power plants and the remaining nuclear reactors also remained vague.

The expert opinions differ here, the implications are in any case so far-reaching that no simple solutions can be expected.

That's not how you imagined it when you stopped by Maybrit Illner: to be subject to a gas emergency plan in a flash, the early warning level of which had secretly taken effect weeks ago, the alarm level of which has now been reached with a public bang, which in turn is only the preliminary stage for the emergency level could be, in which the gas is rationed by regulation and - because of the intertwining of the world references in the gas - everything becomes incredibly expensive.

balancing act between alarm and all-clear

Klaus Müller, the President of the Federal Network Agency, who, as the regulatory authority, plays a decisive role in the security of supply in the country, then brought peace to the television box.

Müller managed the rhetorical balancing act between the alarm and the all-clear almost to the point that the proclaimed second stage of the emergency plan could only be regarded as a preventive strategy to prevent worse things from happening, namely the emergency itself, which had not yet occurred.

"We are currently talking about avoiding the gas emergency." The situation is tense and a deterioration in the situation cannot be ruled out, says Müller.

The gas supply in Germany is stable at the moment, and the security of supply is currently guaranteed.

That grounded Maybrit Illner a little bit as a disaster cinema, if only because there was a feeling that facts and fears are basically two different things.

Either way, Müller left no doubt: Even if the Federal Network Agency is still in the mode of avoidance strategy, companies and private consumers would have to prepare for significantly rising gas prices.

It is important to save and store as much gas as possible.

In the meantime, the maintenance of NordStream1 in mid-July will be a question of fate.

During the summer inspection of the gas line, no gas flowed in previous years either, a routine technical failure, so to speak.

It's only this summer that you hold your breath.

Never before has one had the impression that Maybrit Illner's hubbub of voices reaches into the soul like this time.