The international morning pint

Television broadcast
Original title	The international morning pint
Country of production	Germany
Year (s)	1952–1987, since 2002
Production company	West German radio
Broadcasting cycle	Sunday
genre	Political talk show
Moderation	1953–1987: Werner Höfer since 2002: various, often Michael Hirz
First broadcast	January 6, 1952 (radio) / August 30, 1953 (television) on NWDR / German television

Logo until 2018

The international morning pint is a panel discussion of the West German Broadcasting Corporation . The program, originally hosted by Werner Höfer , was broadcast on Sunday afternoons on the radio program from January 6, 1952, and was also broadcast live on German television from August 30, 1953 . In December 1987 the show was discontinued and replaced by the press club .

In October 2002, the program was reissued and has been running on Phoenix under the direction of various Phoenix moderators on Sunday lunchtimes whenever the program Presseclub in the first z. B. fails because of a direct sport broadcast.

History and processes

On January 6, 1952, the international morning pint began in Germany in the FM program of the NWDR . Its American model was Meet the Press , a so-called Talking Heads format, which was also broadcast on Sundays. The chosen program format - a political discussion group of five to seven international journalists at a table with the presenter Werner Höfer sitting in the middle - was new on German radio; it was thus the first talk show in Germany (in the political talk subtype ).

After the NWDR split up, the broadcasting program was transferred to the WDR's area of responsibility in 1956 . From August 30, 1953, television broadcast the television series as a live broadcast , and the first German TV talk show had emerged. By December 20, 1987, 1,874 episodes were running. The guests at Höfer were always international journalists from different countries, who discussed current political and world affairs, drank white wine and also smoked. Werner Höfer was the central figure, he opened, led and closed the discussion. His style of moderation was sometimes criticized in the contemporary press as authoritarian and complacent, although he did not shy away from abrupt changes of subject and took up about a third of the speaking time. After the discussion rounds, the audience was allowed to ask the guests questions by phone. The program was formative for the Sunday television ritual in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1960s and 1970s.

Frequent guests were Julia Dingwort-Nusseck , Sebastian Haffner , Fides Krause-Brewer , Roshan Dhunjibhoy , Alfred Grosser , Hilde Purwin , Adolph raced , Stéphane Roussel , Gerd Ruge , Henri Nannen , Nikolai Sergeyevich Portugalov , Don F. Jordan , Peter Scholl Latour , Jens Feddersen , Rudolf Augstein or Basil P. Mathiopoulos . The program was usually announced by Egon Hoegen . Standard formulations were "... with six journalists from five countries" and "are connected ...", followed by a list of the connected radio stations, for example the Swiss telephone broadcast . With its consistently high ratings, the television series is one of the most successful television productions in the German mass media. The series had no parallels in other countries; American attempts to adopt the format failed in November 1970.

Special events

• In 1954, numerous letters of protest were received by Westdeutscher Rundfunk, as the broadcast was interrupted for several weeks because of Höfer's vacation. As a result, Höfer always interrupted his vacation at the weekend to return to the broadcast studio.
• In August 1961, the journalists who were preparing for the morning pint received the news that the Berlin Wall was being built . The discussion group then dealt with the current developments during construction.
• On October 28, 1962, Höfer showed solidarity with the Spiegel editorial team in a morning pint in connection with the Spiegel affair .
• In 1967 Höfer received the Adolf Grimme Silver Prize for the show .
• On March 21, 1971, the then Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt came to the studio for the 1000th broadcast and congratulated himself personally.
• During a live broadcast in September 1975, four protesters entered the broadcast studio. Höfer succeeded in persuading the interferers to voluntarily break off their action, so that the broadcast only lasted two minutes.
• On January 4, 1976, Höfer, who was on vacation on Sylt, was stuck there because of the Capella storm . He moderated the show by telephone from Sylt.
• In 1987 the correspondent of the television of the GDR in Bonn, Lutz Renner , was invited. The full name of the German Democratic Republic was shown on his name tag . At the time, this fact was a political issue that caused dissatisfaction among the other media, as the West German media previously only used the abbreviation GDR to deny it.

Imitators and competitors

As early as 1963, the Second German Television was obliged to do something about the program. The discussion, moderated by Reinhard Appel , went to journalists' questions - politicians responded on air from April 25, 1963. However, this so-called Appel round never reached the ratings for the morning pint and was finally canceled in 1991.

From December 8, 1963, Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler tried in the GDR to create a counterpart to the popular every Sunday discussion on German television with the broadcast Sunday talk on the German broadcaster at the same time . However, the program did not achieve the popularity of the model, since in the then international morning pint (under Höfer until 1987), journalists with actually different opinions regularly started a dispute, which did not happen in the eastern program.

The End

The news magazine Der Spiegel had discovered in December 1987 that Höfer had written an article artist - example and role model on September 20, 1943 in issue 225 of the Berliner 12 Uhr-Blatt , in which he described the execution of the - not named - pianist Karlrobert Kreiten on September 8, 1943. Höfer declined responsibility for the article - others would have edited the decisive passages into it; nevertheless, the program was immediately broadcast for the last time on December 20, 1987 with Höfer and was initially discontinued for “cost reasons”. He was succeeded by the press club on December 27, 1987 , which followed a similar process, but focused more on German topics with German journalists. In October 2002 the international morning pint was re-launched at the event and documentary broadcaster Phoenix and always runs when the press club on the first is canceled. The program was broadcast in parallel on radio (WDR 5).

Quote

“As Höfer constructed his program, the participants rarely talk to each other - at most, two are allowed to argue with one another under Höfer's mild referee gesture: 'It seems to me that the gentlemen are friends? Well then, keep arguing! ' Essentially, Höfer seeks to get into conversation with one after the other - which can (and does) only happen when Höfer repeatedly cuts the threads of the conversation hard and creates truly breakneck transitions from one topic to the other - in the Funkhaus in Cologne there is sometimes over the 'transitional courtyard' joked. "

persiflage

• Hermann Peter Piwitt : Morning pint . In: Renate Matthaei (Ed.): Trivialmythen . March, Frankfurt am Main 1970, pp. 180-184; again: March texts 1 & trivial myths . Area, Erftstadt 2004, ISBN 3-89996-029-7 , pp. 500–504. - Mocking Höfer's type of moderation using standard phrases from the broadcasts of the 1960s.

Web links

• Internationaler Frühschoppen - Homepage of the show at Phoenix
• The International brunch at the Internet Movie Database (English)
• 55 years ago: The "International Morning Pint" starts . wdr.de; review
• The international morning pint . fernsehlexikon.de
• Competition television - Contains a link to an audio document from a panel discussion on January 21, 1953

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Review of the international morning pint ( Memento of the original from January 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. WDR5, accessed March 13, 2013.  
2. ↑ The mother of all talk shows . AVIS online, January 5, 2012.
3. ↑ The Werner Höfer Show . In: Der Spiegel . No. 50 , 1959, pp. 53 ( online ).
4. ↑ Nina Verheyen: Pleasure for discussion: a cultural history of the better argument . 2010, p. 154.
5. ↑ Nina Verheyen, Pleasure for Discussion: A Cultural History of the Better Argument . 2010, p. 155, footnote 7.
6. ↑ 55 years ago: The "International Morning Pint" starts . wdr.de; review
7. ↑ Dissident in the Eifel . In: The world
8. ↑ On this matter . In: Der Spiegel . No. 45 , 1962, pp. 75 ( online ).
9. ↑ Intern.ARD, Chronicle of the ARD
10. ↑ Shots and arrests in Spain . ( Memento from July 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: Hamburger Abendblatt from September 29, 1975.
11. ↑ ^{a b} Rudolf Reddig: From Höfers Frühschoppen to Schönenborn's unit round , September 8, 2010.
12. ^ Death of a pianist . In: Der Spiegel . No. 51 , 1987, pp. 156 ff . ( online ).
13. ↑ The Werner Höfer Show . In: Der Spiegel . No. 50 , 1959, pp. 47 ( online ).