For a long time, the image of Germany in film and television was shaped by cities like Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg and Munich or by tourist regions like the Black Forest and the Alps. But the two Netflix series “Dark” and “How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)” take the streaming service’s global audience to the German provinces: the fictional towns of Rinseln and Winden.
Tuesday, September 8. 2020
It's 'Dark' in Winden: International TV hit series go small town
For a long time, the image of Germany in film and television was shaped by cities like Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg and Munich or by tourist regions like the Black Forest and the Alps. But the two Netflix series “Dark” and “How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)” take the streaming service’s global audience to the German provinces: the fictional towns of Rinseln and Winden.
In a way, it’s logical, because the majority of Germany’s population lives in communities with fewer than 100,000 inhabitants. And that describes the imaginary towns from the globally successful series. They are smaller, medium-sized towns with between twenty and fifty thousand inhabitants.
According to Netflix, “Dark” is still the most watched “Netflix Original from Germany.” After the first two seasons were released, Netflix found that 93 percent of viewers were not from Germany. Outside of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, “Dark” is viewed most frequently in Chile and Poland. Many viewers abroad watch “Dark” in German with subtitles; in South Korea more than 90 percent, in Japan around 75 percent do. The series’ effects on the image of Germany abroad are likely to be huge. The idealized German backwoods has become an international hit.
What’s special about these two towns? Let’s compare Winden and Rinseln:
“Dark”, set in Winden, had a finale in late June that finally answered many fans’ questions. There are 26 episodes in three seasons (2017 to 2020). The series with Louis Hoffmann, Lisa Vicari, Julika Jenkins, Moritz Jahn, Maja Schöne, Jördis Triebel, Oliver Masucci is about time travel in a west German town with a nuclear power plant and a mysterious forest cave. The series takes place in 2019, 2020, 1986, but also in 1888, 1921, 1953 and 2052. It all plays with the general theory of relativity, according to which there could be temporary space-time channels, a theoretical construct also known as a wormhole or Einstein-Rosen bridge named after the physicists Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and Nathan Rosen (1909-1995).
The mind behind “Dark” is author Jantje Friese; her partner Baran bo Odar (“Who Am I”) directs. Well-known German actors including Angela Winkler, Mark Waschke, Winfried Glatzeder and Walter Kreye are seen in supporting roles.
There are several municipalities and districts named Winden in Germany, for example two in Rhineland-Palatinate and one – the most populous with almost 3,000 inhabitants – in Baden-Württemberg (Winden im Elztal). But none of them are models for the Winden in “Dark,” a town with an unspecified location in the German lowlands.
The street lights and other details reveal that “Dark” was filmed in Brandenburg and Berlin. The protagonists’ school is, for example, the Reinfeld School on Maikäferpfad in Berlin (Westend neighbourhood in the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district). A cemetery with a wooden chapel is the Südwestkirchhof Stahnsdorf near Berlin, Germany’s second largest cemetery after Ohlsdorf in Hamburg. The Waldhotel Winden is actually the Schlosshotel Berlin in Grunewald, which was the hotel of the German national soccer team during the 2006 World Cup.
Set in Rinseln, the series “How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)” – HtSDOF for short – has been running since 2019 with 12 episodes so far in two seasons. It is scheduled to continue with a third season next year. The series with Maximilian Mundt, Danilo Kamber, Lena Klenke and Damian Hardung is about the nerdy teenager Moritz, who with school friends sets up a drug delivery service on the Darknet from his bedroom and gets caught up in a whirlwind with Dutch drug dealers. It’s all loosely based on the true story of the Leipzig dealer “Shiny Flakes,” who was busted for online sales in 2015.
The main writers and minds behind the comedy and coming-of-age series are Philipp Käßbohrer, Sebastian Calley and Stefan Titze. The series is produced by Bildundtonfabrik in Cologne, which for years produced the “Neo Magazin Royale” with Jan Böhmermann for ZDF. Well-known faces such as Ulrike Folkerts, Hinnerk Schönemann, Bjarne Mädel and Maren Kroymann appear in supporting roles.
Rinseln sounds a lot like Rinteln, which is a city in the Weser Uplands of Lower Saxony. With almost 30,000, it also has roughly as many inhabitants as the fictional Rinseln. However, Rinseln is located in North Rhine-Westphalia, as, for example, Moritz’s father’s police uniform shows.
Most of the filming took place in and around Bonn, for example in the Ippendorf neighbourhood. The protagonists attend Anton-Köllisch-Gymnasium, actually shot at a school in Cologne (Georg-Büchner-Gymnasium in Weiden). The school’s namesake Köllisch (1888-1916, killed in the First World War) was, however, appropriately the first chemist to synthesize MDMA (methylene-dioxy-methyl-amphetamine, commonly called Ecstasy) in 1912.
While in the Winden of “Dark” things are gloomy and often mysterious, Rinseln – it spite of its many secrets – exudes an element of lightness. It rains a lot, if not always, in Winden. In Rinseln, the sun is more likely to shine and there are hip restaurants, like a fairy-tale-themed tavern. The residents of both cities are confronted with illness and lies, but faced with a choice, most viewers would probably choose Rinseln as their place of residence.
While most of the characters in earlier German series exports like crime series “Derrick” or the medical soap “The Black Forest Clinic” seemed to be millionaires living in big mansions with plenty of leisure time, these current series primarily portray middle class folks with everyday problems and all-too-human failings.
translated and published with permission, "Fiktive deutsche Serien-Städtchen als Exportschlager" © dpa
image: Winden photo cc Immanuel Giel
According to Netflix, “Dark” is still the most watched “Netflix Original from Germany.” After the first two seasons were released, Netflix found that 93 percent of viewers were not from Germany. Outside of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, “Dark” is viewed most frequently in Chile and Poland. Many viewers abroad watch “Dark” in German with subtitles; in South Korea more than 90 percent, in Japan around 75 percent do. The series’ effects on the image of Germany abroad are likely to be huge. The idealized German backwoods has become an international hit.
What’s special about these two towns? Let’s compare Winden and Rinseln:
“Dark”, set in Winden, had a finale in late June that finally answered many fans’ questions. There are 26 episodes in three seasons (2017 to 2020). The series with Louis Hoffmann, Lisa Vicari, Julika Jenkins, Moritz Jahn, Maja Schöne, Jördis Triebel, Oliver Masucci is about time travel in a west German town with a nuclear power plant and a mysterious forest cave. The series takes place in 2019, 2020, 1986, but also in 1888, 1921, 1953 and 2052. It all plays with the general theory of relativity, according to which there could be temporary space-time channels, a theoretical construct also known as a wormhole or Einstein-Rosen bridge named after the physicists Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and Nathan Rosen (1909-1995).
The mind behind “Dark” is author Jantje Friese; her partner Baran bo Odar (“Who Am I”) directs. Well-known German actors including Angela Winkler, Mark Waschke, Winfried Glatzeder and Walter Kreye are seen in supporting roles.
There are several municipalities and districts named Winden in Germany, for example two in Rhineland-Palatinate and one – the most populous with almost 3,000 inhabitants – in Baden-Württemberg (Winden im Elztal). But none of them are models for the Winden in “Dark,” a town with an unspecified location in the German lowlands.
The street lights and other details reveal that “Dark” was filmed in Brandenburg and Berlin. The protagonists’ school is, for example, the Reinfeld School on Maikäferpfad in Berlin (Westend neighbourhood in the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district). A cemetery with a wooden chapel is the Südwestkirchhof Stahnsdorf near Berlin, Germany’s second largest cemetery after Ohlsdorf in Hamburg. The Waldhotel Winden is actually the Schlosshotel Berlin in Grunewald, which was the hotel of the German national soccer team during the 2006 World Cup.
Set in Rinseln, the series “How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)” – HtSDOF for short – has been running since 2019 with 12 episodes so far in two seasons. It is scheduled to continue with a third season next year. The series with Maximilian Mundt, Danilo Kamber, Lena Klenke and Damian Hardung is about the nerdy teenager Moritz, who with school friends sets up a drug delivery service on the Darknet from his bedroom and gets caught up in a whirlwind with Dutch drug dealers. It’s all loosely based on the true story of the Leipzig dealer “Shiny Flakes,” who was busted for online sales in 2015.
The main writers and minds behind the comedy and coming-of-age series are Philipp Käßbohrer, Sebastian Calley and Stefan Titze. The series is produced by Bildundtonfabrik in Cologne, which for years produced the “Neo Magazin Royale” with Jan Böhmermann for ZDF. Well-known faces such as Ulrike Folkerts, Hinnerk Schönemann, Bjarne Mädel and Maren Kroymann appear in supporting roles.
Rinseln sounds a lot like Rinteln, which is a city in the Weser Uplands of Lower Saxony. With almost 30,000, it also has roughly as many inhabitants as the fictional Rinseln. However, Rinseln is located in North Rhine-Westphalia, as, for example, Moritz’s father’s police uniform shows.
Most of the filming took place in and around Bonn, for example in the Ippendorf neighbourhood. The protagonists attend Anton-Köllisch-Gymnasium, actually shot at a school in Cologne (Georg-Büchner-Gymnasium in Weiden). The school’s namesake Köllisch (1888-1916, killed in the First World War) was, however, appropriately the first chemist to synthesize MDMA (methylene-dioxy-methyl-amphetamine, commonly called Ecstasy) in 1912.
While in the Winden of “Dark” things are gloomy and often mysterious, Rinseln – it spite of its many secrets – exudes an element of lightness. It rains a lot, if not always, in Winden. In Rinseln, the sun is more likely to shine and there are hip restaurants, like a fairy-tale-themed tavern. The residents of both cities are confronted with illness and lies, but faced with a choice, most viewers would probably choose Rinseln as their place of residence.
While most of the characters in earlier German series exports like crime series “Derrick” or the medical soap “The Black Forest Clinic” seemed to be millionaires living in big mansions with plenty of leisure time, these current series primarily portray middle class folks with everyday problems and all-too-human failings.
translated and published with permission, "Fiktive deutsche Serien-Städtchen als Exportschlager" © dpa
image: Winden photo cc Immanuel Giel
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