Clarissa's Blog

For the Russian-speaking readers (all 3 of them), I finally figured out why I liked our German hosts Hubert and Jochen so much. Hubert is exactly like Müller in the Stirlitz TV series. And Jochen is exactly like Schellenberg.

For those who are not Soviet, this was a famous TV series about a Soviet spy in the Nazi Germany. The series was criticized for portraying high-ranking Nazis as charming, funny, complex, human, and even endearing.

I’m obviously not saying that our hosts are “like Nazis.” They are anything but. They are passionately anti-AfD and the elder host goes out at night to destroy AfD billboards in spite of his age and girth. But the affect, the intellect, and the personality are spot-on. We grew up with these characters, watched the entire series at least a dozen times, so these characters are like family members. God, I hope the hosts don’t read the post and hate me for comparing them to Nazis. Which I’m not doing! I’m comparing them to famous, talented, superstar actors.

Those were really fantastic actors who played these characters if they could do Germanness so well.

Here are the characters in the photo. The Soviet spy is the one who has his back to the camera. The series is a masterpiece, folks. It was a very risque move back in the 1970s for the genius (female) director of the series to avoid portraying any Nazi atrocities and show Germans – both Nazis and anti-Nazis in such a very human way. Plus, the most hardcore wonderful character was a pastor. A real religious Christian person. Like, when did you ever?

You can’t imagine, folks, what it meant to the Soviet people to see this series. We all grew up on a steady diet of movies about Nazis that portrayed them as piggish, ranting maniacs without a glimmer of reason or intellect. And here all of a sudden there were brilliant, profound, and sympathetic Nazis.

Just think about it, is there more glory in defeating a bunch of brainless rage machines or in outsmarting a group of very intellectually sophisticated folks?

Those who are interested can see the whole series with English subtitles here.