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Germany from Above Season 4 Episodes
Season 4 Episode Guide
3 Episodes 2015 - 2015
Episode 1
Stadt
43 mins
Unique aerial images of Germany- once again as striking and beautiful as ever. The bird's eye perspective adds new light to German cities, from Roman founded Trier to former colour capital Erfurt, from the impact of train tracks back to the first settlements in the stone age. Geography has never been more intriguing and entertaining than here. People liked to settle down in big cities hundreds of years ago, like they do today. One of the oldest and biggest Roman city in the German territory is Trier. With sophisticated CGI animation, we reawaken the past and we show what is left of the Roman Trier today - and why. Erfurt too can look back at a proud history. Camp fires burnt already in the Stone Age and Germany populations settled down by the river Gera. In the Middle Ages, Erfurt was the fourth largest city in Germany, after Cologne, Nuremberg and Magdeburg. Erfurt owned the monopoly over the pigment to blue colouration. But India and America - and Indigo - were discovered and the city lost its dominant position. We show through CGI the stages of Erfurt's growth and its trade connections. Krämerbrücke, Erfurt's Merchants Bridge is still the only bridge north of the Alps to be built over entirely with houses. Its floating houses along the bridge can be seen best from above. Yet, we owe German modern cities not only to the Romans and flourishing trade in the Middle Ages. Steam engines and train stations radically transformed small villages into influential cities - or they determined their decline. The medieval city of Dinkelsbühl has been living in a time bubble since the railway cut off this once influential city. We show with CGI the amazing growth of the railway network, we follow the helicopter of the German Deutsche Bahn measuring via laser and from the air Cologne and Dusseldorf. We look at how they are building the ICE paths of the high speed trains in Thuringia, just side by side to the 90m high masts of the new high voltage power lines, where helicopters place the towing ropes of the controversial new long-distance power wires. Probably the most special network of otherwise invisible connections between two major cities is woven by the journey routes of soccer fans travelling on the Easter Holidays to see the match of all matches in Germany: Borussia Dortmund versus Bayern Munich. The CGI animation sequence on that match day was the biggest Facebook hit for ZDF Terra X.
Episode 2
Land
43 mins
Natural beauties show their most spectacular side when looked at from above. The second episode of "Germany From Above 4" takes us to the countryside - over fields, woods, and wildness. Pristine nature is quite rare since most natural environments are man-made. The "Monte Kali" near Heringen is the highest artificial German mountain for instance. The farmer-made perfect symmetry of the hop fields in Baverian Holledau reveal all their magic when you look at them from above. Hikers are charmed not only towards wild landscapes like the Höllentalklamm at the Zugspitze mountain. In 2014 a 75 meter big crop circle near the radome at Raisting in Bavaria attracted curiosity-seekers from all over the world to the Ammersee. We shot these science fiction shapes and their visitors from an adequate perspective: from above. Yet no matter how intergalactic a redesigned field can be, it is still quite an extraordinary experience when you do see the hidden, all very earthy inhabitants of meadows and woods. Near the river Main in Franconia we encounter on eye level those flying artists that dwell only in healthy forests with clean waters: the black storks. We fly with two black stork parents giving "flight lessons" to their young bird and visualise the real GPS data of the flying territory. Just like we track the route of a female wolf who was born in a military training camp near Magdeburg and wandered almost to Hamburg. The waldrapps were extinct in Germany already in the XVII century. Now their late offspring, kept in zoos and born in captivity, are brought back into the wild. Yet the funny-looking ibis have to learn the migration route from Germany to Italy from their human "parents" flying on an ultra-light aircraft. We were in the air with the young waldrapps, accompanying a few of their training sessions in the Berchtesgadener Land, one of the most spectacular nature areas in Germany.
Episode 3
Fluss
43 mins
The third episode of "Germany From Above 4" leads us to water. Germany's seas and rivers hide surprises that can be detected best from above. Nevertheless, the episode's golden thread is a steam train convention, which is held in Dresden in Saxony, East Germany. We accompany one beauty of a historic steam train "01" all the way from the Lake Constance and the Rhine River in the South West, passing the German rivers Danube and Main, and half a dozen more rivers, before we are finally reaching the big Elbe river in Dresden. A romantic train journey through the biggest part of Germany. Ferries and cargo ships cross the Baltic Sea today. Yet, a very active trading network existed there already 2000 years ago. The Baltic Sea is he world's largest underwater ship cemetery and we reveal what still lies on the sea bed in an animation. Tourists concentrate on the coasts of the Baltic Sea. Yet, its hinterland offers some of the most beautiful and wildest landscapes in Germany, especially along the Peenestrom channel. An endless number of birds nest in endless marshland. Boars and deer can be detected in the meadows - especially when you look at them from above. From this perspective the Kieler Woche, the biggest sailing event in the world in the North German Kiel is really a breath taking event. Water has always created landscapes and water still shapes them. Over 150 million years ago, the "Franconian Suisse" was building the bottom of the sea. When the waters ran off, the rocks remained, exposed to weathers in the damp air. Today these impressive rocks are very popular not only among climbers. In the rivers and creeks trouts and graylings breed naturally. The Rhine, Germany's longest river, on the contrary, has been constrained over the centuries into a new, straight river bed. There are just a few areas where the Rhine's bights can still be seen, for instance at the Rhine water meadows of the so called "Baden Jungle" From the air, it looks like paradise on earth - yet it is also the breeding ground of an annoying plague: mosquitoes. A specially developed bacteria is spread from mini helicopters to fight them, without poisoning the environment. Among the greatest beauties of Germany are the two steep and narrow gorges of the alpine rivers Breitach and Partnach in Bavaria. For "Germany From Above 4" we are filming with a drone, squeezing along the very tight escarpments and we flew with a helicopter between the vertical walls of the two gauges with their roaring and ice-cold rivers.