50 years of Maya the Bee: Dare to be more Maya

There isn't really much to be happy about after the AfD's election victory in Saxony-Anhalt. Luckily, sometimes role models can provide support, especially if they are also celebrating their birthday. For example a bee.

And this bee I'm talking about is called Maya. Small. Cheeky. Clever. Exactly 50 years ago she was first shown as a cartoon character on TV. And for exactly 50 years she has been propagating a boisterous savoir-vivre, true to the old Sponti motto “Bring on the beautiful life!” She is a Pipi Longstocking turned insect who doesn't want to be told anything and shows us what she likes.

But doesn't this cheeky bee of all people have a Nazi past? True. The author of the 1912 book on which the cartoon series is based was an ardent anti-Semite and later a National Socialist. But can you blame Maya for that?

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It's not her fault that the world is the way it is - as The Doctors once sang. It would only be so if nothing changed. And Maja is literally a role model for growing children in the TV age - also because, unlike in the original book, in the end she doesn't ruefully submit to the stubborn bee colony again in order to fight against the supposedly threatening enemies from outside. But stays outside. fledge.

Precisely because of its past, the TV bee can certainly be read as a figurative embodiment of the rebellion of the 1968 generation against their parents. That's why only one motto can apply today: Dare to be more like Maya the Bee!

To mark the 50th anniversary of the first broadcast, ZDF has put a whole series of original programs from the 1970s back into its media library - starting with the first episode "Maja is born". There are also seasons and films created later.

Because she lives and preaches tolerance towards all other animals, multiculturalism in the poppy meadow. She saves her friends from a man-made forest fire - it couldn't be more contemporary. She helps little caterpillars whose families died in the human chemo war - just as if she were the captain of the "Sea-Watch". And is therefore a symbol of an open society. Maya the Bee, Antifa, buzz, buzz, buzz and always there.