Anne still had ideals when she – an eight-year-old girl – emigrated with her parents from Ireland to America at the beginning of the 18th century. She doesn’t like the new world, she complains. As soon as she landed, she witnessed two pirates being hanged and some slaves being mistreated in the port of Charles Town, today’s Charleston. That is incompatible with their sense of justice and their sense of freedom. Anne even has the courage to confront the slave trader – but is only laughed at by him and the bystanders.
Gereon Rath, Charlotte Ritter and many other figures from Volker Kutscher’s Berlin interwar cosmos are significantly more disillusioned. At best, the aspiring Nazis on the streets of the capital and in the police force believe in ideals here. The others show their composure as best they can and stand up to violence and misery. However, none of them has romantic ideas, the abysses that open up around them are too deep.
Both stories start shortly after each other as radio plays in multiple parts on WDR: both the Volker-Kutscher crime thriller “Goldstein – Fall III for Gereon Rath and Charlotte Ritter” (four episodes) and the adventure “Anne Bonny. The Pirate” by Anne M. Kessel (eight episodes). Both productions can be heard in the linear program – on WDR 3 or 1Live – as well as in the ARD audio library. Both are stories about how the social order gets into trouble and finally tips over.
In both radio plays there is a conspiracy against the state
In the case of “Goldstein” it is an order that is absolutely worth preserving that is under threat: the Golden Twenties are over in Berlin. From the extravagant parties at Café Moka Efti, which mainly appear in the first season of the winning streak Babylon Berlin have been opulently staged is out of the question. In any case, the radio adaptations of historical crime novels are much more oriented towards the plots of the novels and the investigative work described in them than the series adaptations. But above all, times have changed within this story: “Goldstein” is set in 1931, communists and national socialists are fighting each other more and more relentlessly. Capital crimes are increasingly politically motivated.
For Commissioner Gereon Rath, played by Ole Lagerpusch, it initially looks as if he is working on an ordinary gangster story: at the request of the American police authorities, he is supposed to observe a suspected murderer who is staying in Berlin. Charlotte Ritter (Alice Dwyer), with whom he is in an awkward non-relationship and who is stuck in her attempts to make a career in the police, investigates in the case of department store thefts. At the end of Benjamin Quabeck’s densely staged thriller, these threads come together in a great conspiracy against the state.
The British kingdom perceives piracy off the coasts of its colony in North America as such a conspiracy against the state. The social order on the other side of the Atlantic is based on the exploitation of slaves, so unlike in the case of the Weimar Republic, a rebellion against this system can only be seen as fair here. The heroine and opponent against the establishment is a young woman who ends up fighting this system as a pirate. The WDR advertises “Anne Bonny. Die Piraten” by Anne M. Keßel (script) and Martin Zylka (director) as a true story. But little is historically guaranteed.
That’s not important either. The important thing is that this woman actually existed. And this adventure with Lou Strenger in the leading role and Jürgen Thormann as the narrator is not only exciting, but also opens up a space in which questions of emancipation, racism, paternalism, exclusion and representation are answered on the basis of this not realistically correct in detail, but not entirely fictional CV to be debated. Ultimately, these are the central motives.
Goldstein – case three for Gereon Rath and Charlotte Ritter, WDR 3, June 24, 2022, 7:04 p.m. Episodes two to four on the following Fridays.
Anne Bonnie. The Pirate, 1Live, June 30, 2022, 11 p.m. Episodes two through eight on the following Thursdays.