{"id":140805,"date":"2026-08-05T13:30:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T13:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/140805\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T13:30:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T13:30:11","slug":"german-series-babylon-berlin-final-season-is-a-warning-for-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/140805\/","title":{"rendered":"German Series Babylon Berlin Final Season Is a Warning for Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tHenk Handloegten likes to compare Babylon Berlin<\/a> to Titanic.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEveryone knows the iceberg is coming,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Babylon Berlin, the iceberg is Hitler.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd, in the fifth and final season of the epic German period series<\/a>, he finally hits.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe series follows homicide detective Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch) and partner Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries) as they unravel underworld crimes and political conspiracies in Berlin in the fading years of the Weimar Republic, when the city was a wild mix of cutting-edge science, sexual liberation, avant-garde culture and revolutionary politics.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe final season runs from Jan. 30, 1933, the day Adolf Hitler was appointed Reich chancellor of Germany<\/a>, through March 5, when, following a violent and murderous campaign against his political opponents, Hitler held rigged elections that secured his absolute hold on power.<\/p>\n

\n\tSeries co-creators Handloegten, Tom Tykwer<\/a> and Achim von Borries, together with the show\u2019s two leads, gave a sneak peek of the finale at a private event in Berlin on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tGereon Rath (Volker Bruch) and Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries) share a last dance in the final season of Babylon Berlin.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u00a9 Christine Schroeder<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom its first season in 2017, Babylon Berlin has been adept at balancing meticulous period world-building with the engine of its noir storylines. The series is set against the historic demise of German democracy and the triumph of the Nazis. But every season also has a crime conspiracy to solve. And at least one show-stopping dance number at the Moka Efti, the show\u2019s underground nightclub.<\/p>\n

\n\tSeason five is no different. But the tone for the final chapter is considerably darker.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe roaring \u201920s have faded away,\u201d said Fries. \u201cIt\u2019s no longer dancing on the volcano. It\u2019s just the volcano.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBabylon Berlin season five.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFrederic_Batier<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the new season, the echoes of the present day, what Fries calls the \u201cabsurd parallels\u201d with the 1930s, have only become sharper. When Babylon Berlin premiered in 2017, Germany\u2019s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was polling at around 10 per cent nationally. Today it is polling close to 30 per cent and, next month, could win power in a key state election.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe parallels extend beyond Germany. An early scene in season five shows a long line of volunteers signing up for the Nazi Brownshirts, the paramilitary force Hitler used to intimidate and violently suppress political opponents. Beside them is an even longer queue of families reporting loved ones seized by those same paramilitary groups.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe wrote those scenes before ICE existed,\u201d said von Borries.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen we first started writing, the AfD hadn\u2019t even been founded yet,\u201d added Tykwer. The story of Germany in the 1920s and \u201930s, he said, has \u201csomething archaic and universal. [It\u2019s about] the struggle of a humane system [and] how vulnerable it is to radical aggression and violence. How something built up with such care over such a long time can be torn apart in an instant.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut, Handloegten insists, Babylon Berlin is not the story of the inevitable collapse of democracy and the rise of fascism. As the series draws to a close and the dark curtain falls, the focus is on the struggle.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is not a story about the downfall; it is about the fight for democracy,\u201d he said. \u201cThe entire time it was unclear whether [the Nazis] would succeed. It was a series of individual decisions that led to that end.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSeason five of Babylon Berlin premieres in Germany Sept. 10 <\/a>and in the U.S. on streamer MhZ Choice in January 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Henk Handloegten likes to compare Babylon Berlin to Titanic. \u201cEveryone knows the iceberg is coming,\u201d he says. For…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[99],"tags":[63971,112,190,762,6613,65997],"class_list":["post-140805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-berlin","tag-babylon-berlin","tag-berlin","tag-germany","tag-international","tag-netflix","tag-tom-tykwer"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/117043149561470564","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}