Cordt Schnibben

Every evening at 6:45 p.m. sharp, a prominent guest takes a seat on the red sofa—and DAS! provides daily updates on what's hot in the north.

Annual awarding of the Grimme Awards.

The TV documentation reconstructs the incidents between May and November 1989 from the point of view of the Politburo of the GDR (German Democratic Republic). The incidents include the fraud of local elections, the opening of Hungary's borders towards Austria, the ensuing tide of East German refugees to Hungary and Czechoslovakia for transfer to West Germany, the pompous ceremonies at GDR's 40th anniversary, the inept transactions the Politburo took to salvage the situation, the resulting dismissal of their leader Erich Honecker, the international press conference in East Berlin on 9th November 1989, at which Politburo member Günther Schabowski erroneously announced the immediate opening of the 'Iron Curtain', which finally led to the collapse of socialism in the GDR and the other East Bloc countries.

On April 11, 1968, Rudi Dutschke is assassinated in West Berlin. He is regarded as the spokesman and symbolic figure of the socially critical, left-wing student movement. As a hate figure of right-wing media and neo-Nazis, he stands like no other for the radicalization of an anti-authoritarian movement. The assassination triggers the biggest political unrest in the still young Federal Republic of Germany. Alongside contemporary witnesses such as Knut Nevermann, Rainer Langhans, Stefan Aust, Barbara Sichtermann, Peter Wensierski, Thomas Giefer, Bahman Nirumand and Gretchen Dutschke, Rudi Dutschke himself provides the most important description of his person.