The man who has too much money is called Asch. His mate, who lives faithfully after the mantra, against the bad conscience was finally invented the Kölsch, and all moral approaches simply wegprostet, is called Stüssgen. Speaking names that make you believe for a moment that the story of the "King of Cologne" is just a fairy tale, a fictional smuggling story. Until then, more and more people appear, who seem to be very familiar, in this nasty story about the typical Rhenish interpretation of the principle of networks.
Of course, everything starts in Cologne Carnival. Baudezernent Lothar Stüssgen (magnificently inconsiderate Dialektdick embodied by Joachim Król) helps his honest deputy Andrea Di Carlo (Serkan Kaya) with routine Mauschelei to a building law not hundred percent hare cultivation for his house - and makes him known with Josef Asch (Rainer Bock), the former polisher, who has long since pulled the strings in the cathedral city as a top greasing strategist - everything according to the clique claim "do you help the polisher, the polisher will help you too".
Thanks to a heart attack, Stüssgen pulls out a building-company outing to the brothel for the time being, and yes, traffic, and Asch heaves Di Carlo in his place so that he can shake the building of the new city administration. Incidentally, he wants in the service of the bank Hoppenheim still the real estate of department store heiress Valerie Dickeschanz (creepy raptured in their puppet parallel world: Judith Engel) incorporate and hires for the moral-elastic manager Tom Middeldorf (with the precisely dosed, right amount of oiliness : Jörg Hartmann).
Potential classic of German society grotesque
"Inspired by actual events" is this satire, write scriptwriter Ralf Husmann and director Richard Huber in their opening credits, and of course here they have distorted the Arcandor bankruptcy and the Karstadt-Quelle bankruptcy of 2009 for obvious visibility, the names of the real actors - Esch, Schickedanz, Middelhoff, Oppenheim - kindly negligently veraliast.
The result is a very successful narrative of the wetlands of intentional favors and shabby scrape, which illuminates her characters with precise scenes and finely carved, quotable dialogues: This little hand squeezer, with the ex-polisher Asch, after he up to the elbow in the fecal broth a clogged toilet had stirred around, finally expressed the constipation-causing sanitary napkin; the groping disgust with which billionaire Dickeschanz feels in her eyes all too cheap gloves in the assortment of her department store; the disgusted face of the boy from Hoppenheim, when surprisingly no Evian, but only tap water is served to him at the police interrogation; the comforting hum of Asch in the TV chair, when the news just announced that the construction of the new administration will probably be more expensive than previously planned - such small, extremely well-crafted moments make the "King of Cologne" a potential classic of the satirical German company grotesque. Asch be like Jesus, says the Hoppenheim son once: "Here and there a little miracle, and then you have to believe in it for the rest of your life."
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Company satire: The Klüngeltanz the yawing circlesBeautiful are also the moral shades of the characters who do not seem equally committed in their marshy machinations - some actively participate, others let only happen, some in between, at least for a short while. Here there is no morally superior hero, even the naturally non-resident and therefore still Klüngel-unverklebet investigating officer goes simple and nonchalantly their daily work. Not even a real villain is there, Asch has nothing genial-diabolical, he seems at times rather routine-bored in his manipulations and shameful.
It is precisely this casualness of the systematically immoral that draws you into this story, because its makers know that it is grotesque enough and hardly needs any further overshoot. All the better the patched, well-placed glaring moments - such as the walzerbesoffene dance of greed circles from the private bank Hoppenheim after supposedly successful department store coup.
" The King of Cologne " runs as part of the theme evening "Kölner Klüngel" on Wednesday, 11.12. at 8.15 pm in the first . This is followed by the documentary "The Billions-Mason of the Rhine" at 9.45 pm, which sheds light on the real backgrounds of satire.