German soaps: GZSZ, UU & AWZ

[wingwalker]

I have to say, This Roman is dying story on AWZ, as depressing as it is, it's sure bringing about a lot of really great scenes and acting. I'm enjoying it more than I thought I would. I wonder what they'll do with Deniz afterwards?

[difficultdiva]

Spoiler in white (highlight below):

Supposedly, Deniz will start up a new friendship with this new female character (a dancer) in the upcoming months.

I'm loving the acting during this storyline between Roman and Deniz. I just think that IF Roman wasn't dying, he wouldn't take his ex back.

[Huntress]

Sturm der Liebe: The "Fürstenhof" hotel explodes

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/HOkFU5YaTSE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[Skylover]

Hi there, was just wondering if someone could help me...

I'm studying German and have decided to write my dissertation on the differences between the way soap operas in Germany and England portray social issues. I was wondering if someone could tell me whether there are many academic sources on this topic, or which soaps would be best to watch in Germany to evalaute?

Thanks an advance

[Huntress]

I don't think that there are a lot of academic articles on German soaps because the genre has always had a bad reputation in the public eye. Although this has clearly gotten better over the years and they are among the most-watched shows every day, soaps are still regarded as being inferior.

I think "Unter uns" would be the one to watch for social issues this year. First of all, there's a domestic violence storyline with Nils and Bine, which has going on since their introduction in February. This storyline is also linked to Bine developing romantic feelings for her best and only friend Rebecca, who is married to Rufus. However, Rebecca and Rufus's marriage is on the rocks because Rufus was responsible for Rebecca's adoptive daughter Lili getting kidnapped.

In addition, there's also Micki's HIV story. Micki, a 16-year old teenager, moved to the apartment house in January 2009 with her father Henning. A year later, her mother Britta and her brother Moritz also arrived in town. Britta was a drug addict and relapsed shortly after her arrival. Micki also got hooked on drugs and had a one night stand with another addict, becoming infected with HIV in the process. When it all came out, Micki went through hell, for example at school where she was labelled "HIV slut" among other things. Britta on the other hand is now in an abusive relationship with Rolf Jäger who keeps her locked in his apartment.

Last year, the character of Anna Weigel received a recast for the second time. To make it more plausible, Anna had an accident where her face was badly burnt by boiling oil. After that, her face had to be reconstructed and she had huge trouble finding back into her former life. She even disguised herself as another woman and wanted to leave town with a man she met after the accident. At last, she found her happy end and married her cousin Paco.

The other soaps don't feature that many social storylines. I read that an upcoming storyline on "Alles was zählt" will deal with Marian getting deported to Turkey or something like that. I wouldn't miss him – he has been pointless since Jenny "died" last summer.

[CassieFan]

Anything new and interesting happening on Anna und die liebe and Verbotene liebe?

[Huntress]

"Verbotene Liebe" has stopped filming on Mallorca. In addition, the show will be shortened to 35 minutes starting in January. It also appears that Jan, Julia, Ricardo and Clarissa will all depart the show once the Mallorca episodes are over. Some of the characters that were introduced during the Mallorca storyline will cross over to the regular setting in Düsseldorf/Cologne. One of the producers said that they might return to the island next year (if the show is still on the air then, ratings are still bad).

On "Anna und die Liebe", a new main couple has arrived: Nina (Maria Wedig, who played Juli on "Alles was zählt" from 2008-2009) and Luca (Manuel Cortez). Anna has just married Tom and the happy couple will depart the show in a few weeks.

"Hand aufs Herz", which was cancelled a few weeks ago, is said to be continued on the internet. I doubt that this will be a success, considering most of the original actors are already booked for new projects.

[CassieFan]

Thanks for the info!

Anna is still airing here in Croatia along with "Alisa".

[Skylover]

Thanks for all the info, Huntress. It sounds like Unter Uns is the soap to watch in Germany. Are the soaps there experiencing a massive decline, Huntress? What kins of ratings do they get? I've noticed that GZSZ seems to be the only one doing well at the moment or am I wrong there?

I miss Marienhof

[Huntress]

Yes, GZSZ is still the most-watched soap, UU has had stable ratings for the past few years, only AWZ has lost some viewers since the focus change in September 2011.

Ratings for the last week (total viewers/total households/viewers 18-49/households 18-49):

Monday:

GZSZ: 4.20 m / 14.2% / 2.53 m / 22.7%

AWZ: 2.92 m / 11.3% / 1.36 m / 14.8%

UU: 2.00 m / 13.9% / 1.01 m / 20.3%

AudL: 1.67 m / 8.2% / 0.60 m / 8.5%

VL: 1.44 m / 7.9% / ??? / ???

Tuesday:

GZSZ: 3.93 m / 13.5% / 2.37 m / 22.1%

AWZ: 2.83 m / 11.0% / 1.37 m / 14.9%

UU: 2.10 m / 14.0% / 1.15 m / 21.2%

AudL: 1.68 m / 8.2% / 0.58 m / 8.1%

VL: 1.50 m / 8.3% / 0.64 m / 7.4%

Wednesday:

GZSZ: 3.88 m / 13.7% / 2.34 m / 22.5%

AWZ: 2.76 m / 10.8% / 1.35 m / 14.8%

UU: 2.13 m / 14.4% / 1.05 m / 19.8%

AudL: 1.87 m / 9.2% / 0.64 m / 8.8%

VL: pre-empted due to soccer

Thursday:

GZSZ: 3.99 m / 13.9% / 2.39 m / 22.9%

AWZ: 2.86 m / 11.3% / 1.44 m / 16.0%

UU: 1.79 m / 12.5% / 0.90 m / 19.0%

AudL: 1.78 m / 8.9% / 0.61 m / 9.2%

VL: 1.51 m / 8.4% / 0.60 m / 7.1%

Friday:

GZSZ: 3.25 m / 12.3% / 1.68 m / 18.8%

AWZ: 2.52 m / 10.8% / 1.01 m / 13.2%

UU: 1.82 m / 13.5% / 0.91 m / 19.5%

AudL: 1.55 m / 8.4% / 0.49 m / 8.3%

VL: 1.47 m / 8.8% / 0.58 m / 7.5%

In other news, Alles was zählt is bringing back the iconic character of Jenny Steinkamp.

Christiane Klimt, episodes 1 to 450

Originally played by Christiane Klimt when the show debuted in September 2006, Jenny was a key character during the show's first year, disturbing the blossoming romance between Diana (Tanja Szewczenko) and Julian (Paul T. Grasshoff). Jenny was best friends with Roman (Dennis Grabosch) and the princess of the Steinkamp family. When Julian broke off his engagement to Jenny and eventually planned to marry Diana, Jenny was furious. In addition, both Jenny and Diana were ice skaters, competing for the same team but always quarreling with each other. Jenny was jealous of Diana's success and tried to stop her. For example, she manipulated Diana's skates so that Diana was severely hurt. Jenny even hired a hitman to murder Diana. Instead, Julian attacked the hitman and hurt his head during the fight. During his wedding to Diana, Julian broke down at the altar and died. When Diana find out about Jenny's involvement, she pushed Jenny into a serving trolley. Jenny was blind for some time, until she finally recovered. She then fell in love with Maximilian Santiago de Castillo (Francisco Medina), who turned out to be her half-brother. During the summer of 2008, Christiane Klimt vacated the role after she had suffered a nervous breakdown due to work overload.

Christiane Klimt, episodes 501 to 1023

Two months later, Silvia Maleen was hired to replace Klimt. She was at first loathed by fans, especially due to her heavy Austrian accent which did not fit the character at all. Again, Jenny and Diana were at odds, fighting for the same guy: Lars Berger (Tobias Licht). In order to win Lars for herself, Jenny made Diana believe that Julian was still alive. Diana became crazy and was arrested by the police. She was written off the show a few months later because Szewczenko wanted to pursue new projects. Diana's "replacement" was Stella Coretti (Nadine Rennack) who became Jenny's new archenemy. The Diana-Julian-Jenny triangle was rehashed, now with Stella-Lars-Jenny as the protagonists. As both Stella and Lars proved to be very unpopular with the audience, both characters were eventually written out in early 2010. In order to blackmail her parents Simone (Tatjana Clasing) and Richard (Silvan-Pierre Leirich), Jenny pretended to have been kidnapped. Marian (Sam Eisenstein) saw through Jenny's game and forced her to come clean. Jenny was thrown out by her parents and found shelter at Marian's which resulted in the two becoming a couple. Both were happy for a while until Jenny returned to her scheming ways. In order to take revenge on her parents, Jenny married Axel Schwarz (Daniel Aichinger), her parents' archenemy. In September 2010, Jenny went on a business trip to Russia where her plane crashed. She had been presumed dead ever since.

Sophie Lutz, episodes 1112 to 1113

In February 2011, a video testament of Jenny's appeared in which she assigned all of her shares in the company to her sister Vanessa (Julia Augustin). For two episodes, Sophie Lutz portrayed Jenny.

Kaja Schmidt-Tychsen, episodes 1326 to present

Now, Kaja Schmidt-Tychsen has been cast as the fourth Jenny. She returns well and alive on December 8th, 2011 after Vanessa has been involved in a car accident and needs a new kidney in order to survive.

[Skylover]

Thanks for all the info, Huntress. Very interesting to read. Do you know how Marienhof rated for its final week of episodes. I wonder what Simon-Paul Wagner is up to these days, he was the hottest eye candy known to German soap, although I have to admit, the Germans do like to cast people on their looks. Some really attractive actors in those soaps.

I'm going to start watching GZSZ. It's the only one I can get access to, and I really need to improve my German. Although I would prefer to watch either Unter Uns or Alles Was Zaehlt.

I sent you a private message by the way, Huntress!

[Skylover]

I've just updated my avatar to reflect my new-found love for Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten. Not only does it feature the hot boy from my avatar, but it's got some really intriguing stories going on. I think I might start watching it full-time.

Do you know th backstory for Vince and his family (Is the dad called Leon?) They've had some really emotional scenes which has been great for me improving my German. I had to laugh at the party scenes with the teens, purely because the girl got so sick after having 5 alcopops. In England, our binge-drinking nation, we'd have had 7 or 8 ciders by the time we got like that

Loving this show, gonna keep up with it. I am also going to take up Alles was Zahlt.

Edited November 2, 2011 by Edward Skylover

[Huntress]

Vince arrived in Berlin earlier this year. He was revealed to be Leon's son, a result of a one-night-stand when Leon was in his late teens. Leon was married to Verena and the two of them have a little son named Oskar. While Leon didn't want to accept Vince at first, Verena immediately took a liking to him and tried to reconcile father and son. However, Verena died this past summer in a car accident. She was run over by Philip (the young doctor). So now Leon has to take care of two children on his own which is quite tough for him, considering he used to be a ladies' man before getting married to Verena. Leon's been on the show since 1996 (with a break between 1999 and 2001) and is the longest-running character next to Jo Gerner, who joined the show in 1993.

The current contract cast consists of:

Wolfgang Bahro – Dr. Jo Gerner (February 1993-)

Daniel Fehlow – Leon Moreno (April 1996-June 1999; April 2001-)

Felix von Jascheroff – John Bachmann (July 2001-)

Ulrike Frank – Katrin Flemming-Gerner (December 2002-April 2003; April 2004-)

Anne Menden – Emily Höfer (December 2004-)

Jörn Schlönvoigt – Philip Höfer (December 2004-)

Raul Richter – Dominik Gundlach (December 2007-)

Janina Uhse – Jasmin Nowak (January 2008-)

Tayfun Baydar – Tayfun Badak (December 2008-)

Isabell Horn – Pia Koch (March 2009-)

Thomas Drechsel – Max "Tuner" Krüger (April 2009-)

Clemens Löhr – Alexander Cöster #2 (June 2009-)

Sila Sahin – Ayla Özgül (September 2009-)

Björn Harras – Patrick Graf, Jr. (November 2009-)

Lena Ehlers – Dascha Badak, née Petrova (January 2010-)

Eva Mona Rodekirchen – Maren Seefeld (November 2010-)

Senta-Sofia Delliponti – Tanja Seefeld (December 2010-)

Iris Mareike Steen – Lilly Seefeld (December 2010-)

Vincent Krüger – Vince Köpke (February 2011-)

Jascha Rust – Zacharias Klingenthal (March 2011-)

Original cast members Frank-Thomas Mende (Clemens Richter) and Lisa Riecken (Elisabeth Meinhart) are still featured on the opening credits, but they have only appeared in 2 or 3 episodes this year, at Verena's funeral.

Edited November 3, 2011 by Huntress

[Skylover]

Thanks for all the info, Huntress. I thought something had happened to Philip because he keeps having flashbacks (obviously to Verena) so it's good to find out what did happen. I really like Vince, the actor was pretty convincing in the emotional scenes. Jascha Rust is my favourite cast member - but he doesn't seem to feature all that much? I read that he came to Berlin as an exchange student from America, but his German is perfect? Poor Lilly being sick all over him when she was drunk!

I really feel sorry for Thune<sp> after the way he was treated by that girl for his size and looks. I thought it was particularl effective when he was sitting on the pavement looking at the billboard for erotic underwear! I really love Tanja, she's one of my favourites so far.

I have also noticed that the opening titles don't feature the same cast members for every episode. I've seen two versions so far. That's quite unuual, I've never known a soap to do that before!

[Huntress]

All three RTL soaps (GZSZ, AWZ and UU) have used two different openings since last year. GZSZ has had two different versions since 1998, only for six months in 2002 and for a longer period between 2008 and 2010 they used only version because too many cast members had left and they didn't bother to do an update.

These are the two current GZSZ openings (last update was in October 2011):

Version A

Order: Katrin & Jo – Philip – Dominik – Tayfun – Ayla / Dascha – Maren, Lilly & Tanja – Alexander – Jasmin

In the previous version, Verena was seen instead of Jasmin

Version B

Order: John & Leon – Tuner – Patrick – Vince & Zac – Elisabeth & Clemens – Emily – Pia

In the previous version, a different scene of Jasmin was seen between Emily and Pia, Emily's shot was further away