"Hannes Jaenicke: In action for the wolf" (ZDF): Time of the wolves

In his multi-faceted eleventh ZDF mission, Hannes Jaenicke dedicates himself to a species that is not endangered, but highly polarized.

The wolf has a bad image. It would probably be too easy to blame the Brothers Grimm and fairy tales such as “Little Red Riding Hood”, but in our cultural treasures the animal is predominantly portrayed as frightening; the spectrum ranges from fables like “Reineke Fuchs” to Sergei Prokofiev’s musical fairy tales “Peter and the Wolf” (1936) to Neil Jordan’s fantasy cinema classic “Time of the Wolves” (1984). In this country, the animals finally fell into disrepute when, after 150 years of absence, they immigrated from Poland to Lusatia at the turn of the millennium.

For once, Hannes Jaenicke’s eleventh mission is not about an endangered species, on the contrary; The actor, who has been involved in the protection of species for many years, regards the fact that there are now around 130 packs in Germany as a success story. So far he has mostly traveled to distant countries for the ZDF documentaries to report on the dangers for orangutans, rhinos and gorillas. This time the star, who lives on the Upper Bavarian Ammersee, just had to step in front of his own door.

“In action for the wolf” (ZDF): If the fences are high enough, the wolf has no chance

In spite of this, Jaenicke traveled far: while the wolf causes a lot of unrest in our latitudes, there is a functioning coexistence in the Carpathian Mountains, where the wolf population is much larger in a much smaller area. In this country, too, by no means all owners of sheep flocks follow the attitude common to many hunters to release the animals for shooting in case of doubt: If the mobile fences are high enough and electrified, the wolf has no chance. In order to demonstrate that this is also possible in impassable mountainous terrain, Jaenicke quickly lends a hand himself. No wonder that a hunter who apparently wants to avoid the word “kill” and prefers to speak of “removal” in the context of “active wolf management” does not get off particularly well in the documentary, even if the actor is neutral towards him. Reservations only become clear when Jaenicke generalizes and describes Jäger as a small elite made up of politicians and aristocrats.

“In action for the wolf” (ZDF): This time too, spectacular images

But the conversations with animal rights activists and animal researchers or the forester Peter Wohlleben, who became famous for his forest bestsellers, are only one thing, a duty in a sense. This also includes admiration for the wolf as a master of adaptation, who survives in the arctic tundra as well as in the desert or in industrial wasteland. “In action for the wolf” is particularly worth seeing because of the freestyle. The interludes are imaginative and designed with great attention to detail, the graphics vivid and impressive. Right from the start, the films guaranteed spectacular images, and this time too. The nature shots are partly a poem, and when the wolf pups frolic with each other, it goes naturally to the heart. Other moments, on the other hand, go to the kidneys, because Eva-Maria Gfirtner and Judith Adlhoch (script and direction) do not spare their audience the gruesome side either; again and again wolves fall victim to people who act out their hatred by torturing animals to death. Most wolves, however, die trying to cross a street.

Because the series always thinks outside the box, Jaenicke addresses fundamental questions in his comment this time too. The documentaries always shed light on the dichotomy between civilization and nature. That is why the wolf film is not just about the pointed question “Shoot or protect?”. We humans, says Jaenicke, are far more voracious predators than the wolf, which in turn serves as a welcome scapegoat to cover up our completely wrong approach to nature. As an alternative, the authors use a nature reserve in Abruzzo, where wolves created a natural balance and prevented wild boars from becoming a nuisance, as well as the American Yellowstone National Park.

Here the return of the wolf has triggered an ecological chain reaction, the end of which is an increase in species diversity; And not only because there are now fewer coyotes and therefore more small animals, which is why the bald eagle, which has long been threatened with extinction, has returned to Wyoming. What would happen, asks Jaenicke, if we stopped our “deadly wasted area” and let nature run free? The film does not give an answer; probably because all three, Gfirtner, Adlhoch and Jaenicke, know that this will remain a wonderful dream for the time being. (Tilmann P. Gangloff)