If you ask the people of Neuburg in Upper Bavaria what is special about their city, you can be sure that the following terms will come up: Danube, old town, castle festival. Perhaps one or the other will also mention the aircraft noise from the nearby NATO military airfield; or the legendary Count Palatine Ottheinrich, whose magnificent buildings gave Neuburg lasting splendor, but drove him to financial ruin and finally to exile. Yes, Neuburg is a city about which there is a lot to tell. The Lidl discounter in an industrial area was not one of them until now.
But now it has become known that the popular pop singer Helene Fischer visited that cheap market to shoot a new commercial. The 38-year-old is the face of the discounter’s 50th anniversary campaign. She can be seen on brochures, posters and also in the new TV film. “The shooting took place at the beginning of February under the highest level of secrecy,” she whispers Neuburger Rundschau to their readers: darkened windows, closed parking lot, security guards.
Anyone looking at the spot can hardly see it at first glancethat the location is Ottheinrich’s Neuburg. Not even on the second. In the few outdoor shots, the towers of his 16th-century residential palace (which turned out a bit too purple in post-production) do not rise up on the horizon. It’s a TV tower with a ball and a spire, the silhouette of which is reminiscent of the Berlin model. The capital is almost 600 kilometers away from Neuburg, but who cares.
Even so, the Fischer visit brings more attention than the old debt prince Ottheinrich could ever have drawn to Neuburg. The singer apparently liked it so much on the Danube that she stayed a whole week. The Picture, the unofficial Helene Fischer tracking organ, inflated her trip to “incognito vacation in Bavaria” and squeezed the poor boss of the hotel where the singer stayed. We learn, for example, that the musician ate her breakfast in the suite and signed autographs for the staff before she left. The singer is long gone, now the biggest superstar in Neuburg is called Ottheinrich again. However, he can no longer write autographs.