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Private Notes
The wilderness is an integral part of the German capital, it is a fascinating parallel world full of small and large natural wonders. After the winter, the peregrine falcon moves back into its territory from the Red Town Hall high above Alexanderplatz. When Berlin's more than 400,000 trees finally bear their leaves again, the city will become an urban jungle. Breeding pairs find each other everywhere. Hungry chicks are fed in gun barrels, on windowsills or in bicycle baskets. 300 mallards lay their eggs; some breed on balconies, others in flower boxes. Summer is the best time in Berlin. Sparrows and people populate the beer gardens. The shrill calls of the swifts fill the air, and bee colonies swarm out. As long as they stay away from the tentacles of the praying mantis, the city's extremely high plant diversity is a paradise for the hard-working insects. Autumn is approaching with shorter days and cooler nights.
The documentary tells of this unusual habitat, which is heavily influenced by humans and yet is close to nature. The village of Lehde, which is crossed by numerous ditches, hidden under shady trees and full of picturesque corners, is considered to be the most attractive Spreewald idyll. There are a few courtyards in this water labyrinth, many of which can only be reached by boat today. When winter arrives, ice connects the islands in the Spreewald. The canals and waterways become comfortable walking and driving routes for days or weeks - anyone who has ever laboriously loaded or unloaded a boat appreciates the help of winter. And it is an unforgettable experience to experience the extraordinary river landscapes of the Spreewald on ice skates or toboggans. Christoph Hauschild sensitively stages the unique river landscape of the Spreewald.
The water comes and goes twice a day on the coast of North Friesland in the far north of Germany. At low tide it exposes the Wadden Sea. This is 40 kilometers wide in places and is home to ten times more animals than other seabeds. Countless small animals - shrimp, sand crabs and cockles - in turn attract large flocks of birds. The Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea is part of the largest national park in Germany and has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage since 2009. The Halligen are unique in the world. There are ten of them, all located in the North Frisian Wadden Sea, often only accessible by lorry or ship. Unlike islands, Halligen are flooded several times a year and are still inhabited. The North Frisians built their settlements here on so-called mounds. These are hills that lie above the water surface even during storm surges. Life on the Halligen is more leisurely than on the mainland.
The Black Forest is known worldwide for its cuckoo clocks and Black Forest cake. But the region has much more to offer: in the mountain forests there is silver fir, up to 60 meters high - a European record. One last impressive giant tree in the northern Black Forest is the 230-year-old, so-called grandfather fir, which towers over all the treetops in the area with a trunk circumference of 1.65 meters and a height of 45 meters. The capercaillie lives hidden in sparse old growth. The extremely shy birds are threatened with extinction due to the destruction of their habitat, climate change and growing tourism. A few lynxes and wildcats from the neighboring Vosges and Swiss Alps have recently been sneaking through the Black Forest again. Eradicated here in the last century, the two cat species return to their ancestral habitat almost unnoticed. There are also alpine animals and plants in the Black Forest that survived the Ice Age at rough altitudes for thousands of years.
One of the most beautiful natural landscapes in the country lies on the Baltic Sea in north-eastern Germany. The chalk cliffs on the island of Rügen rise almost 120 meters into the sky and offer breeding opportunities for the rare peregrine falcon. In the beech forests of Jasmund on the edge of the white cliffs, badgers and fallow deer raise their young. The lagoons, known as Bodden, are among the most species-rich regions in Western Pomerania. They are only connected to the Baltic Sea by narrow straits and provide nesting and resting places for a large number of birds. In autumn, up to 60,000 cranes rest in the region where white-tailed eagles also hunt. In the Darsser Jungle, deer come to the dune belt of the beaches. There the bulls fight bitterly during the rut; a sight that can only be seen on the coast of Western Pomerania. In the shadow of the Dornbusch lighthouse on the island of Hidden sea lies one of the few colonies of little terns in the Baltic Sea.
Extreme habitats such as the karst landscapes of the Steinernes Meer, the Watzmann with the highest rock face in the Eastern Alps, the Wimbachgries with its constantly shifting streams of debris and the Königssee, one of the deepest lakes in Germany, belong to the Berchtesgaden National Park. If you want to survive in this wilderness, you have to be perfectly adapted to your environment. The documentary introduces some of the most interesting mountain people. At dizzying heights there are chamois with their newborn fawns, always on the lookout for the claws of the golden eagle, and camouflage artists such as the ptarmigan and mountain flowers such as the legendary edelweiss. Marmots tussle on the high pastures, and in the depths of the Königssee the burbot spawns - originally a sea fish that ended up in fresh water ten million years ago.
Deep river valleys and desert-like rock plateaus - Germany's "Grand Canyon" is Saxon Switzerland. Wind and water, heat and frost created the unique landscape of the Elbe Sandstone Mountains over millions of years. Rare animals such as garden dormouse, peregrine falcons and black storks have adapted to life on and between the sandstone cliffs. With extraordinary shots, this film portrays one of the greatest German natural wonders.
Lakes and hills, rivers and moors, extensive forests, fields and meadows - that's the Uckermark. In the north-east of Brandenburg, 80 kilometers from Berlin and in the direct vicinity of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Poland, it is the largest district in Germany with over 3,000 square kilometers. Best conditions for nature: 60 percent of the Uckermark is under protection - in the Schorfheide-Chorin Biosphere Reserve in the south, in the Lower Oder Valley National Park in the east and in the Uckermark Lakes Nature Park in the north-west. As if on an ark, one encounters a particularly large number of rare animal and plant species in the Uckermark: eagles breed in the Waldmark, otters hunt for trout and lampreys in clear rivers, beavers dam streams into lakes, badgers, raccoon dogs and foxes live together with deer and Deer in the field mark. Above all, however, the varied landscape, shaped by the Ice Age, is the crane metropolis of Europe.
The fifth part of the series portrays the Bavarian Forest on the border with the Czech Republic. The documentation shows how a catastrophe came about in the former commercial forest, which became known as the forest dieback. It demonstrates how the "jungle of tomorrow" is growing out of it today, how perfectly growth, growth and decay intertwine here and why the bark beetle that once triggered the catastrophe did not become a gravedigger but an obstetrician. When the number of bark beetles in the Bavarian Forest National Park increased to an exceptionally high rate in the 1980s, the national park administration deliberately failed to combat them, this had far-reaching consequences. Within a few years, several thousand hectares of old, formerly economically used spruce stands died in the high altitudes. Apocalyptic scenarios presented themselves to the visitor.
A peregrine falcon nests in the town hall, a squirrel family has settled in a bird feeder, a badger squats a yard: Berlin is rustling with animal life.
Germany's underwater world is perhaps the most mysterious habitat in our homeland. With its variety of animal and plant species and the amazing interaction of myriads of microorganisms, interesting and fascinating communities emerge.
