“This show is not a game” is the second documentary on German television history by Regina Schilling. Ironically, on ZDF, many years of “Aktenzeichen XY… unsolved” are being called into question.
ZDF is now 60 years old, 30 of them – from 1967 to 1997 – Eduard Zimmermann was the moderator and producer of “Aktenzeichen XY… unsolved”. Now the time seems to have come for ZDF to settle accounts with one of the broadcaster’s most influential faces.
A documentary by Regina Schilling questions Zimmermann (1929-2009) and its successful format, which is known for re-enacted crimes and real investigators who search for perpetrators via television, sometimes as a last hope. The essay film “This show is not a game – The uncanny world of Eduard Zimmermann” can be seen on August 10 at 11 p.m. in the second and in the media library.
Zimmermann’s reactionary view of man
As was the case after Schilling’s ARD film “Kulenkampff’s shoes” exactly five years ago, one understands the Federal Republic and its psyche better after this documentary. Actually, so the thesis goes, the whole German-speaking area was influenced by Zimmermann, whom critics early on called “Ganoven-Ede” – by his reactionary view of man, the norms, values and concepts of social order.
“Kulenkampff’s shoes” dealt with the repressed traumas of the post-war era based on the television entertainers Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff, Hans Rosenthal and Peter Alexander.
This time, Schilling (60) examines the worldview and distrust that the “world’s first true crime format” and the pioneer of interactive television conveyed in her historical work. To do this, she again arranges a lot of archive material in a very personal way and asks exciting questions. Spokeswoman is again Maria Schrader.
A show that spreads fear
“It seems as if the country had been waiting for Zimmermann,” wrote Schilling. “What fascinated our parents back then? Was it the joy of fear? Did they still feel like victims after they lost the war and faced the world as perpetrators?”
In a talk show excerpt towards the end of the almost 90-minute documentary, Johannes B. Kerner admits to being jittery: “I was always terrified of your show. I was really afraid of ‘XY unresolved’. Is that something? Do you hear it more often?” the talker asked his guest in 2002. Eduard Zimmermann replies that he heard it occasionally. “And I can only say that fear also has a very good educational effect. You become cautious.”
Schilling, who belongs to the so-called baby boomer generation, also assumes her fears as a child in the late 60s and early 70s. The horror – “The crimes really happened” – ate into many heads, including those of children who were secretly watching. How many fears that the show triggered left traces in men and especially women through the power of the images?
Crime victims are vilified
During the viewing phase, she was struck by “the image of women conveyed in the Zimmermann era,” says Schilling in the ZDF press material on the documentary. And how energetically misogyny was implemented visually and also expressed.
In the documentary, Schilling writes: “If a murder from the milieu of prostitution occurs in the “XY” episodes of the first years, it is never said.” Zimmermann once said, for example: Women who “spend their lives in bars and with many more or less random male acquaintances live dangerously”. Today one would probably speak of “victim blaming” (in German: victim accusation).
Gays are also put in a corner. Dialogue between Zimmermann and an investigator: “Murders of this kind are always particularly difficult for the police to solve.” – “Yes, that’s because the personal relationships of the victims are not as transparent as with other people in orderly civil channels.”
“Eduard Zimmermann had a clear agenda, he was the extended arm of our parents, it seems to me today,” says Schilling. “He was much more effective than the parents. He explained to us what we can and cannot do. How deviations from the norm are punished.”
The dangers of hitchhiking
A broadcast from 1973 was particularly burned in, Schilling admits in the documentary. At that time, Zimmermann even advised parents to get the children in front of the TV set. All of a sudden, when she was ten, she was supposed to be watching the banned program and saw how Lydia, who was the same age, got into a stranger’s car on her way to school and was almost beaten to death in the Black Forest.
The tragic fates of girls and women and the dangers of hitchhiking, for example, were told over and over again, as Schilling cuts. Sex criminals were often portrayed as sick sex offenders on the show. On the other hand, it was not mentioned that acts of this kind are often more about “power, possession and submission”, that there might be a more fundamental problem with many men.
Zimmermann also concealed the fact that home is not a safe place, because studies show that the majority of all women killed know the perpetrators because they are their husbands, partners, ex-partners or relatives. “Did he tell us a fairy tale for 30 years so that we women stay at home? In front of the television to look at the same pictures over and over again?”
ZDF: “This show is not a game – The eerie world of Eduard Zimmermann” – Documentary by Regina Schilling Zero One Film: “This show is not a game – The eerie world of Eduard Zimmermann”