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Germany from Above Season 3 Episodes
Season 3 Episode Guide
3 Episodes 2013 - 2013
Episode 1
Stadt
43 mins
The third season of "Germany From Above" makes, as usual, very few intermediate stops. Seen from above, the viewers experience a new, magic sight of a country they believed to know. When bakers turn on the lights of their bakeries, then from the universe you can get an idea of where Germans live: German big cities are placed along the river Rhine and Ruhr; Hamburg and Bremen sparkle on the northern shores, in the east of the country we have Berlin and in the south Munich and Stuttgart. And when you look at this carpet of lights of the bakeries in small and larger cities, you get a clear idea that cities originally develop to sustain people: that's where markets were held to trade the goods produced in the hinterland, and that's where customs were paid for the goods transiting on the major trade routes. When you look down from a helicopter, you can tell: surprisingly many German cities have kept the structure and buildings of the old and wealthy cities - or they rebuilt them. Landshut on the river Isar, for instance, was much more important worldwide than Munich. The rise and fall of cities over the centuries can be observed particularly well when you look from above at their current architecture and the growth rings. "Germany From Above 3" shows from the air the success and the crises of German cities: from Frankfurt, that owes its continuous success to its geographical position, to Dusseldorf that made it to the top as the "writing desk of the Ruhr Area", to Hannover that after the war rebuilt some destroyed old buildings in a single block. From Aachen, where most German kings were crowned, to Cologne that still today crowds around the famous cathedral and that during the early Middle Ages with its 30,000 inhabitants was the biggest city of Holy Roman Empire. When we film from above the last two coal mines and the last steel plant in the Ruhr Area, or the chemical giant BASF in Ludwigshafen or the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg, then you can feel the power of German industrial cities. And you can understand why they never became administrative cities. And when you look at Leipzig, Stuttgart or Munich, you immediately understand the importance of the railway system in the development of big cities: railway stations and tracks still occupy huge areas in the inner cities. Or they have become vital lines in the cities, like the suspension railway in Wuppertal.
Episode 2
Land
43 mins
Many landscapes seem to fade when compared to the famous ravishing beauty of the Berchtesgadener Land or the Elbe Sandstone Mountains. Yet Germany's forgotten landscapes have their own special magic. From the castles to the endless woods in Pfalzen, to the "Hermann"-Monument in the Teutoburg Forests, from the gorges in Hartz to the mosaics of the 7,000 carp fish ponds in Aischgrund, from the rocks in the "Franconian Suisse", to the fairy tale charm of the hill country near the river Weser and its castles and alleys where the stories of Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel and the Pied Piper of Hameling were born. No matter if you take the landscape in Eifel or Ückermark: when you look at them from above you do understand why poets and philosophers, painters and story tellers fell under the spell of these remote regions. Only when you look a the satellite pictures, can you you realise the impact on Germany of the meteorites in the Nördlinger Ries, half way between Stuttgart and Munich, even if today it seems totally eventless from a geographical point of view. This happened 15 million years ago, but this almost circular and over 20 kilometre wide crater is still a mystery for geologists. An animation makes the impact of the meteorites visible for the first time. A modern horror story can be detected up to the universe. West of Cologne strange geometrical greyish, brown spots immediately catch our attention on satellite pictures.This is the lignite mining in he Rhine area, the largest open mining area in central Europe.
Episode 3
Fluss
43 mins
The legendary chalk rocks in Rügen, the most famous island in the German Baltic Sea, are now measured from the air. Laser scans will help to predict landslides. At the renowned Arkona Cape, the last remains of the medieval Tempelburg are slowly sinking into the sea. "Germany From Above 3" follows archaeologists at their work at the Baltic Sea. Its inland sea and its shores unfold an amazing beauty from the air: the islands and the Bodden, the swamps and the sand beaches almost have a Californian flair and during sunny days they have the turquoise of the Caribbean Sea. On the North Sea, millions of Euros are invested every year to prevent the favourite German holiday islands to be washed away by the tide. "Germany From Above 3" shows past and future changes of the shores from Borkum to Sylt, an endless fight against storm surges and drifts. "Germany from Above" also flies with the helicopter that winches down the guides on the huge cargo ships during tempests and gigantic waves. German rivers too have been tamed over the centuries - their beds have been dug out and straightened, dams were build on their shores. A flight over the original river areas shows what we lost: from the gorges at the headwaters of the river Danube to the Baden Jungle along the Rhine. In the Ruhr area, rivers were long used only as sewage for the mining industry. Today, artificial, subterranean river beds are built so that even the old cloaca of the river Emscher is now re-naturated into a clean river. Almost all major German rivers and seas - from the glacial valley rivers to the Baltic Sea were originated after the cold periods of the Ice Age when the melted water from the glaciers was looking for a way to the sea. Trough satellite animation we travel 250,000 years back when during the Saalian Stage the layers of ice were as high as the TV Tower in Berlin and the the Castle of Neuschwanstein.