The journey begins with a bowl of chicken soup, the “Jewish penicillin” as the cook calls it. Marion and Lena Brasch, the Jewish mother and her daughter, who travel across eastern Germany for Deutschlandfunk Kultur, are currently visiting Alena Fürnberg in Halle. The daughter of the poet Louis Fürnberg, author of the verse “the party, the party, it is always right”, tells how her father saw himself as a persecuted communist rather than a Jew.
The socialist state categorically rejected religion, which is why most Jewish Shoah survivors have an ambivalent relationship with their faith. “I’m Jewish, but I don’t know how to do it,” says rocker Peter Kahane, the son of Jewish-communist parents. Anti-Semitism was also hardly taken seriously in the GDR, so Jews were often left to fend for themselves.
The road trip takes place over six stages lasting an average of forty minutes. Considering that only one guest appears in each episode, the narrative is quite lengthy. Due to the family closeness of the two protagonists, this fits with the confidential atmosphere of the trip, which is as homely as the steam from chicken broth. Leonardo Kahn
The Samwer story
If you don’t know the three Samwer brothers, you definitely know some of the companies that they set up: studiVZ, Rocket Internet or Zalando. They are admired for their economic successes, but also harshly criticized – admired for their innovative spirit, criticized for their sometimes brazen approach. In the ten episodes of the podcast produced by Online Marketing Rockstars (OMR), host Florian Rinke explains how three Cologne students became billionaire entrepreneurs in the digital economy in the early noughties.
The podcast succeeds in clearly capturing the zeitgeist of the turn of the millennium and the beginnings of the Internet age. What particularly distinguishes him is the critical view of the three founders. Especially when it comes to their method of copying business ideas – mostly from the USA – and fluffing up their start-ups with a lot of investor money. The sole purpose of being able to sell these companies profitably to the actually creative competitors who do not want to have their business model torpedoed.
However, the creators also leave enough space to get to know the people and the ideas behind the name Samwer a little better. To this end, Rinke speaks to former co-founders and companions who provide insights behind the scenes of the empire. Marc, Oliver and Alexander Samwer themselves were not prepared to comment on this podcast. Leonie George
Two pages – The podcast about books
Of course, it also says something about the current shrinking importance of culture in public broadcasting that Christine Westermann and Mona Ameziane, two WDR journalists, do not do their book podcast on WDR. But for the private media company OMR. The queen of German book clubs Christine Westermann, 75, and her colleague Mona Ameziane, 29, want to get through their age gap Two sides look at books. They don’t tend to provide classic reviews there. The consequences focus on major human issues. Fear, heartache, body. In the episode on wealth, for example, there is initially lively talk about the dream of winning the lottery and the gap between rich and poor. After about a quarter of an hour we go to the books. “As rich as the king” by Abigail Assor and “Melody” by Martin Suter. The presence of the main topic then robs the room for depth in the discussion. But there’s nothing wrong with an entertaining side podcast about books. Aurelie by Blazekovic
Boudicca. The Celtic warrior
Many people in England know Boudicca. Because this queen and warrior led a bloody resistance against the Roman occupiers in the first century AD, which was ultimately unsuccessful, but did take a toll on the Roman Empire. It has gone down in history (and art history) as a symbol of the British quest for independence. Also Anne M. Keßel uses this historical figure for her eight-part radio play podcast, a WDR production. This means she has a strong-willed, principled female protagonist in a conflict in which good and evil are clearly separated. Cowardice, betrayal, humiliation, powerlessness – Boudicca has to defend herself against all of this in order to protect her people, the Iceni, and especially her two daughters, and to strengthen their self-respect. Historical accuracy is not as important as exciting twists and a rich sound atmosphere in this antiquity adventure. Stefan Fischer
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