In the fifth part of the series "Our Country", WDR and BROADVIEW TV take a look at NRW in the 1990s. The state is changing: Bonn loses its status as the capital city and the Revier region is transformed into a recreational area. An El Dorado for media, services, energy and creative industries emerges. NRW is fully in tune with the times - not nostalgic, but progressive. Imposing buildings rise up to the sky as symbols of the new age. Internationally renowned architects are designing unusual buildings and redefining entire cityscapes. At the same time, existing buildings are being redesigned: Mighty witnesses of the past become landmarks of the present.
Fewer and fewer people in NRW are getting dirty at work. Media, service and culture are the new employers. The profound change is changing needs, self-image and also the landscape. NRW is shedding its skin, sprucing itself up, getting ready for the 21st century. In Cologne, the Mediapark is being built, where music channels like EinsLive and Viva have their headquarters and Europe's biggest music fair, Popkomm, is based. At the same time, large film studios are springing up on the outskirts of the city: TV faces like Stefan Raab or Anke Engelke are the stars of tomorrow. But hardly anyone shaped the tone of the 90s like Harald Schmidt, who reinvented himself as a late-night talker following the American model. His irony and sarcasm fit the times when everything seems to be new and many things are questioned.
The Oberhausen Gasometer also stands for change. A museum is being built in the old industrial building, and a landscape park is growing around it, where Germany's largest shopping centre to date is being opened. Nowhere else can you see more clearly how an industrial landscape is becoming a cultural landscape. But upheaval also means that the old has not yet been completely overcome: NRW remains an energy state, entire villages have to be resettled in the Rhenish lignite mining area when the controversial Garzweiler II project is approved.
SPD Minister President Wolfgang Clement is caught between two fronts. His policies are controversial: on the one hand, he is pushing cultural change and is seen as the moderniser and motor of NRW, on the other hand, he presents himself as a combative lobbyist for the classic energy industry, the former heart of the federal state. He faces the challenge of building a bridge from the old to the new.
Between lignite dramas and media revolutions, great stories and small anecdotes unfold - an exciting journey through time that is only a small part of the diverse history of North Rhine-Westphalia brought to life by the "Our Land" series.
First broadcast: Friday, 16 September 2016, 20:15 on WDR
OUR LAND - New Beginning - THE 90s
In the fifth part of the series "Our Country", WDR and BROADVIEW TV take a look at NRW in the 1990s. The state is changing: Bonn loses its status as the capital city and the Revier region is transformed into a recreational area. An El Dorado for media, services, energy and creative industries emerges. NRW is fully in tune with the times - not nostalgic, but progressive. Imposing buildings rise up to the sky as symbols of the new age. Internationally renowned architects are designing unusual buildings and redefining entire cityscapes. At the same time, existing buildings are being redesigned: Mighty witnesses of the past become landmarks of the present.
