“International morning pint” – mother of all political talks | free press

2023-08-30 12:03:33

Six or seven men sit at a table and discuss the world situation while smoking and drinking. For more than 30 years, this concept carried one of the most successful television programs – the “International Brunch”.

Köln.

70 years ago, on August 30, 1953, was the television premiere of the “International Brunch”. For the late-born: That had nothing to do with shopping, but referred to the custom at the time of going out for a quick drink between going to church and Sunday roast, which was called a morning pint.

The equally drunk and smoky round was led by a gentleman with a balding face and thick-rimmed horn-rimmed glasses: Werner Höfer (1913-1997). He presented the program for 35 years – the first one and a half of them exclusively on the radio, then also on television. “During the experimental period of television, I was presented as a guinea pig,” he said in 1985. In retrospect, the “International Brunch” is considered the mother of all political talks.

Minimalist studio backdrop

After the “Frühschoppen” came on television in 1953, it followed the same pattern for half a lifetime. At the beginning at twelve o’clock sharp, the sonorous voice of Egon Hoegen – also known from the traffic education series “The 7th Sense” – announced “six journalists from five countries”. Then you saw these guests sitting behind Moselle wine glasses in the minimalist studio setting, and Werner Höfer introduced the program with the following sentence, for example: “Of all Christmas joys, the joy of seeing you again is the purest and the rarest one.”

The repetition of the same thing met the need of the traumatized war generation for constants. When Höfer took the liberty of taking a few weeks’ vacation in 1954, WDR received spamfuls of protest letters. After that, Höfer never let the show fail. He only vacationed on Sylt and drove to Cologne and back every weekend. When he was unable to leave Sylt in 1962 due to a catastrophic flood, he directed the “Frühschoppen” by telephone. Visually, Höfer has hardly changed over the years.

A veil of cigarette smoke

As loriot-like as the excerpts still available on YouTube may seem, some elements of today’s talk shows are already clearly recognizable: There was a moderator, there were guests, and there was a topic that was as current as possible. As soon as there was a threat of even a halfway lively discussion within the honorable group, Höfer intervened and forced everything back into the rite of asking questions in turn. It had to stay peaceful, after all it was Sunday. On the other hand, it was tolerated without hesitation if one of the guests read off a minute-long polemic from the page – as happened in a broadcast about Beethoven.

Normally, Höfer and his guests discussed high-level political issues, and by no means only German ones. It was not unusual for the gentlemen to spend an hour exchanging views on French domestic politics. And it was simply assumed that the viewer was familiar with the basic facts. No more clips and explanatory pieces: In the end you lost perspective anyway, because then the group disappeared behind a veil of cigarette smoke.

Nazi allegations against Werner Höfer

For a long time, women appeared on the show as waitresses who eagerly refilled the men’s drinks. When Höfer was interviewed by the young Thomas Gottschalk in 1985, the 71-year-old reported: “There are always letters from feminists: “Why, always women for these serving functions? Why not men?” It was intended as a humorous comment and it was well received: the audience laughed and clapped.

The end came suddenly. In December 1987, the “Spiegel” dug up a hate article by Höfer from the Nazi era. Höfer squirmed, evaded, and indulged in excuses. Then he had to go. The follow-up program was the “Press Club”, which is still running today. The “International Morning Pint” still exists on Phoenix to this day: It’s always on there when the “Press Club” is down.

Höfer lived another ten years after his departure, but he had become shunned. One of the few who took his side was the publicist Sebastian Haffner (“Notes on Hitler”), who fled from the Nazis to England in the 1930s. He said: “If all former NSDAP members had been as committed to democracy after the war as Werner Höfer, then we would not have had to worry about the survival of democracy.

(dpa)