You can’t choose your admirers, but these fans of your hit series “Babylon Berlin” the directors Tom Tykwer, Achim von Borries and Henk Handloegten and their production company X-Filme could have done without the magazine classified by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as “certainly extremist”. Compact dedicates an entire special issue to “Babylon Berlin”. It’s a strange environment.
Other editions of “Compact History” aim with titles such as “Crimes against Germans – expulsion, bombing terror, mass rape” at a readership that considers Germany primarily a victim of the Second World War. The target group of the magazine ranges from the broad field of corona deniers (“vaccination dictatorship – boosters until death”) to right-wing extremists and racists (“sexual offenders: immigrants 20 times more common”). The editor-in-chief makes it unmistakably clear where the magazine positions itself politically: “All together in great unity: Pegida, Identitarian Movement, AfD, One percent, Compact!” The Office for the Protection of the Constitution attests the magazine to spread “anti-Semitic conspiracy myths and Islamophobic motives”. Even admirers of Putin get their money’s worth. A special edition is dedicated to his “original wartime speeches”: “Understanding Putin”. Now it wants to be shrill Magazine use the popularity of “Babylon Berlin” for themselves and at the same time spread their own crude world view.
One can roughly imagine the jaws dropping as the producers and directors leafed through the special. When asked by the SZ, the production company responded clearly: “We expressly distance ourselves from the content of the Compactmagazine.”
A nude photo of Liv Lisa Fries was probably copied from the trailer
The main characters of the series, Commissioner Rath (Volker Bruch) and his assistant Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries) look from the cover of the special issue, in the background SA troops are marching with swastika flags. The title promises “historical background of the great series of successes”. It looks as if the series makers had published the booklet or at least authorized it. On the other hand, a spokeswoman for the production company X-Filme said that there were no talks or other contacts between the “Babylon Berlin” makers and the Compact-editing given.
X-Filme is now taking legal action against the appropriation of “Babylon Berlin”. The booklet makes extensive use of the image material from the series. At least one picture, a nude shot of the Actress Liv Lisa Fries, however, does not come from the promo material, but was obviously copied from a trailer of the pay-TV broadcaster Sky. The station’s logo can still be seen in the upper right corner of the picture. Of the CompactThe editor-in-chief, who likes to portray himself as a resistance fighter, oracles that “the regime” is behind the warning about copyright infringement. After “defamation, hate speech and secret service digging,” they are now trying to “crack us with the financial crowbar.” The magazine let the deadline for signing the warning pass. The next step is to apply for an injunction to stop further distribution of the magazine.
X-Filme confirms that the company is taking legal action against the magazine, but is otherwise very tight-lipped: “Other than that, we cannot comment on any further details with regard to the ongoing proceedings.” For the production company, the trouble is extremely inconvenient. The fourth season of “Babylon Berlin” will start broadcasting on Sky in autumn. The fact that the magazine from the milieu of corona deniers uses “Babylon Berlin” is unpleasantly reminiscent of the lateral thinker aberrations of the actor Volker Bruch, who Compact– Spreads the booklet with relish: Bruch is stylized as a resistance fighter against “the propaganda media” and “mainstream zombies”.
The “temptation” and the “new beginning” of the 1920s are glorified
The other actor portraits are also infamous but not clumsy, all obviously written with liberal use of googled sources and a lot of press material. With quotes taken out of context, the proximity of the stars to the weird worldview of the Compact-Editors indicated, for example when quoting from an interview in which Martin Wuttke moans briefly about unpleasant “crime scene” filming. Sure – all public service system television! Or when Lars Eidinger, who, along with other celebrities, signed an open letter to the Federal Chancellor, is praised for positioning himself “against the majority opinion on the Ukraine question.”. On the next page, one ad informs about another Compact-Product on the “enemy image of Russia”: “How NATO unleashed the war”.
In their articles, the misguided historians combine 1920s folklore (“The sweet smell of mold and blood”) with daring interpretations of history and oracles about the “lure of the 1920s, which at least promised some hope and a new beginning compared to the 2020s”. It remains to be seen whether the swastika flags on the cover are meant. Not only for their penchant for historical revisionism, but also for their own resentment CompactThe editors of the “Babylon Berlin” makers claim without being asked: “The time of artificial auteur cinema”, such as Jean-Luc Godard or Pier Paolo Pasolini, is “over”. In contrast, Tykwer delivers “sophisticated, exciting entertainment”. There are nicer compliments for filmmakers.