In September 1992, something extraordinary happened at the Venice Film Festival: the festival audience from all over the world enthusiastically celebrated a quality German series.
Don't worry, there's no mistake, even though HBO wasn't supposed to start with the "Sopranos" until 1999. Edgar Reitz consciously conceived his "mini-series" as a long feature film in 13 individual films and, like eight years before with "Heimat", essentially invented the streaming of quality series.
THE SECOND HEIMAT accompanies Hermännche (Henry ARNOLD) from the Hunsrück village of Schabbach, which we had already gotten to know in HEIMAT, to study in the million-dollar village of Munich. And we were able to see how the good-looking village boy sleeps his way through many beds and gradually matures into a composer. We met fellow students of his who had so many talents that they were unsuccessful, and others who very gradually slipped into terrorism. The nights in Munich were filmed in color, while the gray everyday life appeared in black and white.
Six months after the sensational success in Venice, the German television station ARD broadcast the 13 films of this extraordinary film experiment on 13 evenings during prime time with unusually low ratings. And those responsible for the ARD committee really stuck with it, but after that the great era of television experiments on German television was almost finally over. For me personally, DIE ZWEITE HEIMAT was a very important viewing experience at the time. At around the same age as the protagonists in the film, I was still stuck in my small town due to lack of money and was saving up for my long-awaited studies.
Edgar REITZ knew exactly what he was talking about.
