On 15 August 2006, the channel VOX broadcast the first episode of Goodbye Deutschland! Die Auswanderer, Goodbye Germany! The Emigrants. The docu-soap follows Germans who leave the country to start a new life abroad. It has now run for twenty years. In an anniversary article, the news agency dpa listed what regular viewers see when an emigration goes wrong: Grandiose Selbstüberschätzung, Einfältigkeit, gänzlich fehlende Sprachkenntnisse, ein äußerst löchriger Businessplan, grandiose self-overestimation, simple-mindedness, a complete lack of language skills, a business plan full of holes. The article went on: meist sieht man das Unheil als Zuschauer schon aus weiter Entfernung heranrauschen, as a viewer, you usually see the disaster rushing toward them from far away. One emigrant, Claudia from Swabia, wanted to move to the United States and sell teddy bears of her own design. The narrator noted that the trained bank clerk brought hardly any qualification for the new job. Claudia tried to brush the doubts aside: Ich habe mal ein Kleid für mich genäht, I once sewed a dress for myself. Then she added: Das ist nichts geworden, it didn’t turn out.
television
Sixteen Years in the Cellar
In September 2019, Wer wird Millionär? celebrated its twentieth anniversary. In the special show, the lawyer Jan Stroh from Hamburg answered the final question and won one million euros. Afterward, the press reported how he had got there. For almost sixteen years he had replayed the show at home, at his own quiz desk, with all the sound effects. In his cellar he had his personal heißer Stuhl, hot seat. Over the years he built a large archive of questions, some from the show and some of his own. He told Bild he had not missed a single episode. His own summary: Richtig ‚durchgelernt‘ habe ich keine Fragen. He had not really crammed any questions.
Watch Out, Trap!
Vorsicht, Falle! – Nepper, Schlepper, Bauernfänger (Watch out, trap! Swindlers, touts and con men) is a ZDF program about fraud. Eduard Zimmermann, who also created Aktenzeichen XY, first put it on the air in 1964. He presented 180 episodes until 1997. His daughter Sabine presented it until 2001. The program showed viewers the tricks that fraudsters use on trusting people. In November 2018, ZDF brought it back with Rudi Cerne as presenter. The fraudsters had changed. In the past they were Nepper, Schlepper und Bauernfänger. Now they are false police officers and online criminals. Cerne described the aim of the program: Wir versuchen mit unserem Format, die Sinne zu schärfen. With our format, we try to sharpen the senses.
The Fall on Wetten, dass..?
On 4 December 2010 Samuel Koch, then 23, made a bet on ZDF’s live show Wetten, dass..?. He would jump over five oncoming cars of growing size, one after another, in forward somersaults wearing spring boots. At the fourth car he fell. He has been paralyzed since. ZDF ordered a review of how the accident happened and of the safety measures. On 26 January 2011 the German Sport University Cologne presented an independent expert opinion. It found weder bei der Wettvorbereitung noch bei der Umsetzung ein Fehlverhalten, no misconduct either in preparing the bet or in carrying it out. A feasibility check had been made. The risk assessment was nachvollziehbar und für die Bedingungen adäquat, understandable and adequate for the conditions. The biomechanics expert Gert-Peter Brüggemann named the cause: ein bewegungstechnischer Fehler, an error in the jumping movement. ZDF still dropped high-athletic bets from the show.
The Safety Level
Wer wird Millionär?, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, has run on RTL since 3 September 1999. The game has two Sicherheitsstufen, safety levels. The first is 500 euros at the fifth question. The second is 16,000 euros at the tenth question. At the start, each contestant must choose between two versions of the game. In the classic version, a wrong answer after the tenth question still leaves the contestant with 16,000 euros. In the Risikovariante, the risk version, the second safety level is dropped. In exchange, the contestant gets four jokers instead of three. A wrong answer then drops the winnings to 500 euros. In October 2025, a contestant from Darmstadt chose the risk version. He had already won 16,000 euros. He failed the next question and went home with 500 euros.
The Tour Off the Air
In 1997 Jan Ullrich won the Tour de France. He is still the only German to have done so. In 2003 his duel with Lance Armstrong drew more than nine million viewers on ARD. Then the doping cases came. On 18 July 2007 a positive test of the German rider Patrik Sinkewitz became known. That same day ARD and ZDF stopped their live coverage of the Tour. ZDF’s editor-in-chief Nikolaus Brender said: Wir wollen einen sauberen Sport. We want a clean sport. After 2011 both public broadcasters dropped the race altogether. ARD only announced its return in January 2015. In November 2023 Ullrich admitted it outright for the first time: Ich habe gedopt. I doped.
Script Acceptance in Public Television
German public broadcasters formally accept the productions they commission. In 2016 the courts of audit of the states served by MDR, the public broadcaster for central Germany, examined its commissioned productions. Thuringia’s court led the audit. They found that MDR had accepted the script in every case they examined before the cost negotiations. The production contracts ran bis zur Endabnahme durch den MDR, until the final acceptance by MDR. The auditors noted a consequence. In one production, the script acceptance and production release in March 2013 had bound MDR legally to the producer.
Hurz!
In July 1991, Radio Bremen’s comedy show Total normal aired a hidden-camera prank by Hape Kerkeling. Kerkeling played a Polish tenor, and Achim Hagemann played his pianist. Before an audience that suspected nothing, they performed an excerpt from a so-called progressive opera. A recited text with atonal piano was broken again and again by a squeaked Hurz! Some listeners could not hide their amusement. Others then sought, seriously and with feeling, a dialogue with the fake artists about the meaning of the work.
The Minister on Insolvency
In September 2022, during the energy crisis, Economics Minister Robert Habeck was asked on the ARD talk show Maischberger whether bakeries and other small firms faced insolvency. He answered: Und dann sind die nicht insolvent automatisch, aber sie hören vielleicht auf zu verkaufen. Then they are not automatically insolvent, but they may stop selling. The trade paper Deutsche Handwerks Zeitung wrote of the Unkenntnis, the lack of knowledge, that the minister partly showed. Two days later the president of the Leipzig chamber of crafts said the minister was not familiar nicht einmal mit dem kleinen Einmaleins der Betriebswirtschaftslehre, not even with the basic times table of business administration. The chamber offered to put together a training course in insolvency law for him.
Paid to Make Contacts
In 2022 Patricia Schlesinger, director of the public broadcaster rbb, was accused of nepotism, Vetternwirtschaft. Among the allegations was an adviser paid at a daily rate of 1,000 euros to connect her with important figures in the capital. She resigned in August 2022, and the rbb board then dismissed her without notice.