As of: January 30, 2024, 7:33 p.m
By: Rudolf Ogiermann
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The setting is new, the show (almost) as usual: Louis Klamroth in the studio of “Hart aber fair” in the first.
© Julia Sellmann/WDR
Louis Klamroth wants to emancipate himself from his predecessor Frank Plasberg.
New team, new scenery, new concept for “Hard but Fair”.
But the new political talk wasn't that different from the old one.
A first balance sheet.
New scenery, new music with more hard beats, a host with a new hairstyle, but a place for Sahra Wagenknecht.
The fresh production team (we reported) from “Hart aber fair” probably can’t do without a (charming) figure like the ex-left.
So everything is the same at the renewed political talk on Monday on the first?
Mainly controversial?
Yes and no.
The new studio in blue tones with two separate counters for politicians and citizens is intended to ensure dialogue at eye level, which is a good idea in this respect, as is the function of the moderator, who moves freely in the room and can thus control the discussion even more actively.
Louis Klamroth is predestined for this, he confidently played the arena on Monday evening in front of 2.43 million spectators.
It's just a shame that - of all things - the audience seems a little pushed into the corner, into the semi-darkness.
“The voices of citizen guests will be given even greater importance,” promised the creators.
This works as long as they are a rhetorical equal to the professionals.
The self-employed master hairdresser Zuhra Visnjic only partially fulfilled this requirement, too often formulating sentences like “I'm afraid”, “Everything is getting more expensive” and “The worker is no longer honored”.
Only once, according to the old motto, did “politics meet reality”.
When the parliamentarians present unanimously found an increase in the minimum wage charming.
“Then I have to fire someone,” she told Visnjic.
Entrepreneur Tijen Onaran, who limited herself to the only slightly varied appeal “There has to be a jolt through Germany,” was completely disappointing.
Klamroth entered into a clinch with Wagenknecht
And the politicians?
Acted as expected and according to the theme “Anger, protests, new parties – who still holds our country together?” For SPD man Carsten Schneider as a representative of a government party, what else is “the situation is better than the mood”, CDU general Carsten Linnemann signaled, what else, that he took the hairdresser's concerns seriously and, like an opposition politician, called for reforms to citizens' money and a "reduction in bureaucracy".
And saw herself in a coalition with Wagenknecht, who put it even more drastically: “A lot of people are miserable!” Who wants to contradict her?
Klamroth did so, interrupting her more often than the other two and seemed to want to ease his conscience a bit about inviting her.
In the clinch with the newly crowned party founder, the 34-year-old showed at least a few points how it's done - and he also made Linnemann look bad for a moment.
The Union wants to tighten the penalties for road blockades, said Klamroth, with a view to the farmers' protests.
“No, it's about the climate adhesives,” said the CDU man to the laughter of the audience.
Frank Plasberg can sit back and relax
Gaining knowledge?
Most likely by the sociologist Nils Kumkar and the activist Maria Fichte.
It could also be the case, says Fichte, with regard to Wagenknecht's interpretation as an uprising of those left behind, that the many demonstrators these days are not against something, but for something - for diversity, for example, for the willingness to help shape politics.
Frank Plasberg can sit back and relax - even in view of the not exactly exorbitant quota.
His successor did not reinvent the wheel, at most he redesigned it.