Der heiße Stuhl, the hot seat, first ran on RTL on 15 January 1989 and was produced until 1994. Each episode began with one guest and his or her usually very provocative thesis. The guest sat on the hot seat, facing five people who held a completely different opinion. The source that describes the show also notes its weakness. Oft wurde die sachliche Diskussionsebene schnell verlassen und es wurde laut, polemisch und zum Teil auch persönlich. The discussion often left the factual level quickly and became loud, polemical and partly personal.
television
The Critic Who Left
From 1988 to 2001, ZDF’s Das Literarische Quartett showed critics arguing about new books, dominated by Marcel Reich-Ranicki and known for his devastating verdicts. In June 2000 the critics discussed Haruki Murakami’s novel Gefährliche Geliebte. Reich-Ranicki accused the critic Sigrid Löffler of always complaining about novels about love, and said she regarded love as something anstößig Unanständiges, offensively indecent. On air, Löffler rejected this as a persönliche Unterstellung, a personal insinuation. After the episode she announced that she would leave the program.
A Petition Against Interrupting
On 16 January 2014, the ZDF host Markus Lanz interviewed Sahra Wagenknecht of the Left Party. Viewers objected that he kept interrupting her. A viewer from Leipzig started an online petition titled Raus mit Markus Lanz aus meiner Rundfunkgebühr, Markus Lanz out of my license fee, and 233,355 people signed it. ZDF’s director general, Thomas Bellut, answered her. He wrote that the insisting and the interruptions had come mit so viel Nachdruck, with so much force, that the debate on the substance was pushed into the background. ZDF kept Lanz.
The Clock in the Debate
On 9 February 2025, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his challenger Friedrich Merz met for a 90-minute television debate on ZDF and Das Erste. The broadcasters’ rules said that speaking time would be measured in the control room. If the time became clearly unequal, the moderators would raise it. In the three-way debate of 2021, Annalena Baerbock of the Greens pointed out that the clock for her rival Olaf Scholz kept running while the moderators were speaking.
Walking Out of a Talk Show
On 12 July 2017, the ARD talk show Maischberger discussed the riots at the G20 summit in Hamburg. During the broadcast, the CDU politician Wolfgang Bosbach got up and left the studio. He said that the Frankfurt city councilor Jutta Ditfurth was unbearable, persönlich, vom Verhalten und ihrer Argumentation, personally, in her behavior and in her argument. Das muss ich nicht mitmachen. I don’t have to put up with this. Afterward he named the reason. Die permanente Mischung aus Dazwischenquatschen und Grimassenschneiden von Frau Ditfurth war eine echte Zumutung. Ms. Ditfurth’s constant mix of butting in and pulling faces was a real imposition.
Overrunning on Saturday Night
Wetten, dass..?, ZDF’s big Saturday-night show, was famous for running over its airtime. Frank Elstner overran the very first show by 43 minutes, and overrunning became a hallmark of the program. Thomas Gottschalk set the record in December 1996 in Hanover, with 73 minutes. Up to the summer show of 2011, the overruns added up to 3,851 minutes. Gottschalk’s last show, on 25 November 2023, ran only five minutes over the planned end.
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Wer wird Millionär? has run on German television since 3 September 1999, with Günther Jauch as host from the first show. The first contestant to win the top prize of one million marks, on 2 December 2000, was Eckhard Freise, a professor of medieval history. Public television has its own quiz shows. Wer weiß denn sowas?, “Who knows something like that?”, reached 4.64 million viewers on Das Erste in February 2018. In Gefragt – Gejagt, contestants play against professional quiz players called the hunters.
Who Doesn’t Ask Stays Dumb
The German version of Sesame Street, the Sesamstraße, first aired on 8 January 1973. Its theme song, by Ingfried Hoffmann and Volker Ludwig, is a string of question words that ends with a rule: Wer nicht fragt, bleibt dumm! “Who doesn’t ask stays dumb!” Since 2012 the song has been sung by Lena Meyer-Landrut. When the program turned fifty, the magazine prisma used the line as its headline.
Stromberg
The comedy series Stromberg ran on ProSieben from 2004 to 2012. Bernd Stromberg heads the claims department M to Z at the fictional Capitol insurance company. German Wikipedia sums up the character: Seine fachliche Kompetenz ist mangelhaft. His professional competence is poor. As a result, he mostly ignores the work instructions he is given, does them badly or passes them on to his staff. In December 2011, one million euros was raised from the public through crowdfunding to make a Stromberg film.
Demigods in White
Halbgott in Weiß, demigod in white, is a German term for a doctor. The dictionary DWDS labels it joking, exaggerated and sometimes ironic. One of the best-known chief physicians on German television is Professor Dr. Klaus Brinkmann, of in the ZDF series Die Schwarzwaldklinik (The Black Forest Clinic). The series was first broadcast from 1985 to 1989. Up to 28 million viewers watched it each week.