100 Jahre – Der Countdown

*100 Jahre – Der Countdown*
100 Jahre – Der Countdown
Starring	Guido Knopp
Country of origin	Germany
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	100
Original release
Network	ZDF
Release	1999 –; 1999

100 Jahre – Der Countdown (English - 100 Years - The Countdown) is a German documentary television series produced by Zolcer TV. It was first broadcast in 1999 on ZDF. The host of the series is Guido Knopp. Most of the 100 episodes focus on a single event in a given year. The total length of the series is about 16 1⁄2 hours. The series was first broadcast on the last 100 days of 1999, one episode after the daily news cast ZDF Heute-Journal [de]. Since New Year's Eve 1999 the full length of "100 Jahre" is broadcast several times a year by Phoenix.

Structure

Each of the ten-minute episodes begins with a title. It first shows the Earth from space. As earth comes closer into view, the series title track plays along with historic recordings. These are:

"Three, Two, One" - Apollo 11 countdown

"I Have a Dream" - Martin Luther King Jr.

"Do you want total war?" - Joseph Goebbels

"We choose freedom!" - Konrad Adenauer

"I am a Berliner" - John F. Kennedy

"The wall must go!" - Willy Brandt

"We are the people!" - Monday demonstrations in East Germany

After the opening credits three events of the year are briefly shown followed by an introduction. In this we see the Earth again before the featured year is displayed and the view through the closed hallmark of the second-ranked 9 on the respective continent zooms. After this begins the actual sequence that is about the last-mentioned event. This is used as a hook for a more detailed consideration of the topic, not limited only to the year. Several of the previously mentioned issues are addressed briefly in other episodes.

The individual effects are rotated so that when taken by itself conclusive, and the knowledge from previous episodes is not necessarily required. For example, in the wake of falling to his knees in Warsaw (1970) again reported a lot about the Warsaw ghetto, with The Boy from Warsaw (1943) having its own segment.

No known episode was made for 1902, 1904, 1905, 1908, 1910, 1915, 1921, 1931, 1935, 1950, 1952, 1957, 1971, 1973, 1984 and 1996. The year 1999 is also omitted. The years 1922, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1941, 1943, 1945, 1954, 1967, 1968, 1972, 1974, 1986 and 1991, however, had two episodes, and for 1953, three.

The zooming into the continents is usually to Europe, followed by North America and Asia. South America was rarely shown, only twice (1960 - Operation Eichmann, 1982 - The Falklands War); Antarctica and Australia are not shown at all.

Episodes

The documentary is divided into ten chapters:

Chapter 1: World on the Move

1900 - Long Live the Century
1901 - The grandmother of Europe
1903 - The Dream of Flying
1906 - The Earthquake in San Francisco
1907 - The Magician and the Empress
1909 - Votes for Women!
1911 - The Race to the South Pole
1912 - The Sinking of the Titanic
1913 - The Last German Emperor*

Chapter 2: Trench Warfare

1914 - The Assassination in Sarajevo
1916 - The Hell of Verdun
1917 - The Red Revolution
1918 - Long Live the Republic!
1919 - The Dictated Peace*

Chapter 3: Crazy Years

1920 - The Big Prohibition*
1922 - Mussolini's March on Rome*
1922 - The Grave of Tutankhamun
1923 - Hitler's Coup
1924 - Stalin's Grip on Power
1925 - Chaplin in the Gold Rush*
1926 - The Black Venus
1927 - The first Atlantic flight
1928 - The Medicine of the Century
1929 - The Black Friday
1930 - Gandhi's Salt March
1932 - Weimar at its End*

Chapter 4: Hitler in power

1933 - Hitler's Subreption of Power
1934 - Mao's Long March*
1936 - At the Moment of Death*
1936 - The Beautiful Illusion
1937 - The Zeppelin Inferno*
1937 - Stalin, the Dictator
1938 - The Bought Peace*
1938 - The Pogrom Night

Chapter 5: Total war

1939 - The Raid
1940 - Hitler in Paris*
1941 - "Operation Barbarossa"
1941 - Attack on Pearl Harbor
1942 - Crime Scene Auschwitz*
1943 - Decision at Stalingrad
1943 - The Boy from Warsaw (was not originally aired on television)
1944 - The Longest Day
1945 - The Red Flag over the Reichstag*
1945 - The Bomb

Chapter 6: New Beginning

1946 - The Tribunal of the Victors
1947 - The Struggle for Israel*
1948 - Berlin Candy Bomber
1949 - Birth of the Federal Republic*
1951 - Churchill's Last Battle*
1953 - Triumph on Everest
1953 - The Coronation*
1953 - Stones Against Tanks
1954 - Marilyn Myth
1954 - The Bombing of Bikini
1955 - The Return of the Ten Thousand*

Chapter 7: Cold War

1956 - The Hungarian Uprising
1958 - The King of Rock 'n' Roll
1959 - The Victory of Fidel Castro*
1960 - Operation Eichmann*
1961 - The Shock of Berlin
1962 - On the Edge of Nuclear War
1963 - The Murder of the Century
1964 - Cassius Clay becomes World Champion*
1965 - Beatlemania*
1966 - The Third Goal
1967 - The Death of Benno Ohnesorg*
1967 - War in the Holy Land
1968 - The Fatal Shot*
1968 - Words Against Tanks*

Chapter 8: Changing World

1969 - Departure to the Moon
1970 - Warschauer Kniefall
1972 - The Girl from Vietnam
1972 - The Munich Massacre
1974 - The Chancellor Spy*
1974 - The Watergate Scandal
1975 - Escape from Saigon*
1976 - Uprising of the Children*
1977 - The Assignment
1978 - The Test-tube Baby*
1979 - The Power of the Ayatollah

Chapter 9: Reversing years

1980 - The Strike of Gdansk*
1981 - Shots at the Pope
1982 - The Falklands War*
1983 - Hitler's Fake Diaries
1985 - Patient Zero
1986 - The Challenger Tragedy
1986 - The Meltdown at Chernobyl
1987 - The Case Barschel*
1988 - The drama of Gladbeck* (was not originally aired on television)
1989 - The Miracle of Berlin
1990 - The German Unity*

Chapter 10: Changing World

1991 - Operation Desert Storm
1991 - Coup in Moscow
1992 - The Bosnian tragedy
1993 - Debacle in Somalia*
1994 - Mandela's victory
1995 - Murder in the Holy Land*
1997 - Death of a Princess
1998 - The President and the Maiden

The series has been released on DVD. The contributions marked with * are not included on the DVD release.

External links

100 Jahre – Der Countdown at IMDb