Series “Babylon Berlin” | Gereon Rath becomes Antifa

We already know this. Actually, all Germans were in the resistance. Photo: Frédéric Batier/X Films Creative Pool Actually, the series of murders that Inspector Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch) and detective assistant Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries) have to solve could also be lost in the noise of major historical events. The year is 1933, Hitler has just become Chancellor and Berlin is in the middle of a heated election campaign. Until it suddenly becomes clear that the various murders throughout Berlin are closely linked to the great political history of the time.

The final fifth season of the German cult series “Babylon Berlin” (this time exclusively on ARD) moves even further away from the literary original than the previous seasons. The series goes in flashbacks to 1918, where Hitler is being treated in a hospital in Pasewalk by psychiatrist Edmund Forster (Ulrich Noethen). Since the events there are in stark contradiction to Hitler's own biographical legend, they become a secret state affair in the series. The SA murders everyone who knows, one after the other, while Gereon Rath, Charlotte Ritter and a few other anti-fascist police officers want to bring the truth to light and damage Hitler's reputation. But that is not the only difference to the literary original “Märzfallene”, the fifth Rath novel by Volker Kutscher. Because at the very end the series comes up with a twist that doesn't exist in the novel either.

Is this supposed to be a homage to militant anti-fascism? Or is it about granting the German perpetrators a resistance biography, at least in fictional form?

The historical accuracy of some aspects of the series, in which each ashtray was checked for accuracy, has been a subject of repeated debate. In the second season, set in the late 1920s, there is a group of Trotskyists who call for a 4th International, which was only founded in 1938. In contrast, the Rote Hilfe, which is now monitored by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and whose membership counts make a significant contribution to the “left-wing extremism” situation, becomes in season four of the series the last democratic stronghold in times of increasing anti-democratic tendencies. They not only come from the Nazis, but are also firmly anchored in the government apparatus of the Empire.

Nevertheless, the series, and this also applies to the final fifth season, succeeds in taking the audience into a historic Berlin, which is staged in an incredibly opulent and fascinating way given the local production conditions. This time a lot of the filming was done at the RBB in the Broadcasting House, but it also goes back to the Volksbühne, to a replica of the Reichstag, which eventually goes up in flames, and of course to the Red City Hall, which, colloquially known as “The Castle,” houses the Berlin police headquarters.

The big eight-part final chord of "Babylon Berlin" also takes us to queer bars, to Gereon Rath's business trip to Paris, with a detour to the Cologne Carnival, then back to Berlin, where the Nazi henchmen harass the young inspector. A somewhat artificial side story tells of the attempt by some journalists to persuade social democrats and communists to join forces, which never happened.

Working on such a charged piece of contemporary history always involves a certain amount of risk. The storyline of the series is not really convincing. While the novels tell of Rath's slow rapprochement with the National Socialists, for example when in the seventh novel "Marlow", which is not made into a film, Rath raises his right arm at the Nuremberg party conference and shouts loudly in the chorus of the other Nazis, the series portrays the young commissioner as a seasoned anti-fascist. This happens especially in the finale, when the industrialists and Nazi greats meet for a banquet in the castle of the crazy entrepreneur Alfred Nyssen (Lars Eidinger) and a group of conspirators plan nothing less than an attack on Hitler, the industrial bosses and other big Nazis.

Is this supposed to be a homage to militant anti-fascism? Or is it about granting the German perpetrators a resistance biography, at least in fictional form? When you watch, you always get an uneasy feeling. Here, the coming fascism is staged in terms of the cultural industry, a topic that is currently booming in books and films. It is clear that most of the numerous series characters that viewers have come to appreciate or hate over the years will sooner or later be murdered or mutate into useful Nazis.

In a kind of epilogue, the series goes into exactly this and shows who of the real historical figures took part and who didn't, who had to die and who survived. The end of the series is quite surprising for everyone who knows the novels. There will be no continuation of “Babylon Berlin,” the makers have made that clear. The reason for this is that further financing is not possible after Sky's exit. For season five we had to fight and scrape together money.

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