Markus Lanz on ZDF: Ricardo Lange and the dwarfing of Friedrich Merz

Markus Lanz presents his star guest Freidrich Merz on ZDF – in order to then demonstrate the meandering politician. It becomes relevant with nurse Ricardo Lange. The TV review.

It’s always that kind of thing with Markus Lanz. On the positive side, you can call him a calf bite that puts fingers in wounds. Who persists, repeats his questions until they are answered and has a feel for when one of his guests tries to wriggle out of it. In his best moments he then reminds of Michel Friedmann at his best – maybe a little less aggressive and also a little less in love with himself.

In other moments, the often scolded left-eater shines through, who noticeably often bites into those who dare to question conservative dogmas. Then Markus Lanz can make people angry like no other or, alternatively, conjure up a blush of foreign shame on faces.

On this evening, Lanz does almost everything right, especially in putting on the grill a protagonist of an outdated political style who is very uncomfortably convinced of himself. Such a dwarfism of Friedrich Merz was not often seen as on this evening. He was planned as a star guest. Maybritt Illner was the only one announced when she passed the verbal baton to Lanz.

Markus Lanz shrinks Friedrich Merz

And yet Merz, who considers himself so much more suitable than everyone else, shrinks in the cross-examination of Markus Lanz to such a microscopic bouquet of complacency and helplessness that one almost feels sorry for this man, who is so obviously averse to modernity can. Of course, only until he succeeds once again in reprimanding a woman with a passive-aggressive undertone, but please shut up.

Or as Friedrich Merz literally squeezes out to economist Claudia Kemfert: “Now please don’t interrupt me.” Shortly before he laughs contemptuously and denies her his respect when Ms. Kemfert is allowed to talk. The bricklayer, as Markus Lanz calls it, would be so happy to be the one who “needs renovation on all floors” (Merz), which Federal Republican politics is said to have pent up without him, the better maker.

So that Friedrich Merz finally arrives where he sees himself – that is, at the top – he will have to learn to explain himself in his later years. Would he move into the cabinet under a Chancellor Baerbock? Doesn’t he want to think about it, after all, you’re fighting for first place. If he would ban gendering? That doesn’t work at all in Germany, “at least not in our legal system”. How does he think that populist Maaßen is campaigning for the Thuringian CDU? It is unacceptable to talk into the constituency.

Friedrich Merz swims, Markus Lanz takes a bite

Markus Lanz is good at these moments. Although this Friedrich Merz swings speeches neither for the Greens nor for the Left Party, the mini-Friedmann bites. Doesn’t let Merz off the hook. Throws new coal into the grill, over which Merz stews so much that no one would have been surprised if he had started screaming. Or would he have made the pasture and gone off insulted. But Merz, you have to give him that, remains stable in his own way. He always gives the same evasive answers to the same clear questions. Consistent from this point of view.

But Lanz does not play Merz ‘game on this in parts really memorable ZDF evening. On several occasions, the talk show host makes it clear, in little subtle ways, that he simply doesn’t believe the politician. That he does not believe him, that he has no grudge against the CSU and Edmund Stoiber, who sorted him out at the supposed peak of his creative power. And that Merz, when it comes to Hans-Georg Maaßen, shows absolutely nothing of the clear edge claimed in his self-description: “You are crazy about here right now.” Lanz does the Rezo, the amazed audience experiences the destruction of Friedrich Merz .

Even if it is a shame how little Markus Lanz concedes to his female guests, that is Claudia Kemfert and the often brilliant journalist Nicole Diekmann (on vaccination: “The punctures are getting closer”), during her much too short speaking time: The real scandal is that Lanz has been squabbling with an old white man for far too long, who is not too bad to be upset about alleged discrimination (sic!), When he hears that a political veteran like him is not really like a face of modernization.

The actual star guest at Markus Lanz that evening is Ricardo Lang

Because the actual star guest of this evening is someone else. Not a politician. No journalist and no professor. But an intensive care nurse. And that Ricardo Lange Berlin, the Minister of Health Jens Spahn, had to draw attention to the depressing grievances in German clinics until he couldn’t help but offer the nurse the framework of the federal press conference. Only after Lange had to report to the press of all his helpless attempts to get this minister’s hearing, of course. To whom he wrote e-mails in vain, spoke to him on the answering machine.

It doesn’t last long because he wants to be in the spotlight. It takes a long time because he has something to say. Because he is carrying around an uncomfortable truth that “morally rapes” him by his own admission. Because he can no longer stand reproaching himself, because he cannot simultaneously dedicate three people suffering from the most severe corona symptoms in two different hospital rooms. Because politics let him down.

And Ricardo Lange’s words hurt. They are uncomfortable, depressing, touching. They make you affected and angry. And they make you helpless. And that in front of the television and not after hours of continuous use in an intensive care unit, where you have to watch alone by the system how fast the policy is in cutting billions with the bazooka, saving airlines, but nothing at all about the lack of staff Stops.

Markus Lanz would have done well to listen to Ricardo Lange longer

The toilet in your own throat swells when this bull-necked man speaks of “mom” and “dad” who can no longer hold their loved ones in their arms, who are packed in black sacks because there is no longer enough time to prepare them . To open the window for you so that your soul can escape. Saying goodbye to you as a caregiver. When he says that he has to be insulted for openly admitting how upset he is. Having to be called a garbage man who is unsuitable for his job if he has problems with packing the “garbage in black sacks”.

When he talks about letters claiming that dolls instead of people are lying in intensive care beds to simulate a pandemic. While he has to watch how beds are suddenly empty. Beds in which people had been lying the evening before. People who fought for their lives. And lost the fight. And when this Ricardo Lange reminds us all that it’s not just the old and the weak who fight for their lives. But also the 27-year-old mother-to-be, whose child has to be torn from her womb in the 25th week so that there is still a chance of survival.

This evening with Markus Lanz and his guests was in parts significant. It could have become even more important had Ricardo Lange been discussed. Or would you have asked him what he thinks of the whole political theater that the Merzens, Söders and Laschets perform with their detached intrigues. How relevant it is in the intensive care unit who of whom pushes into which office.

Ricardo Lange Markus Lanz

But after Ricardo Lange’s, quite empathetic, questioning by Markus Lanz at the beginning of the program has been ticked off, he unfortunately remains a silent observer. Lanz doesn’t ask him to speak once more. Yet he has so much to say, this intensive care nurse from Berlin. For example, how much it depresses him that “some actors” are immediately invited to a conversation by Minister Spahn, when they vent their displeasure in a caustic way about having to keep their feet still a little longer. So that the intensive care units can breathe again.

And how he thinks that a Jens Spahn only listens to him after he has put it on the front page of a newspaper with his persistence. And there is denounced unpleasantly for the minister for not listening to the man from the front. Unlike these actors, who in their cynical self-centeredness have lost sight of those who are fighting for their lives. Or that of others. But Ricardo Lange doesn’t want applause for his fight. “The clapping annoyed me,” he says, “it must be followed by action”.

Markus Lanz should have listened to him longer that evening. And we should all learn again to listen to the right people. And this does not mean narrow-minded actors who vomit pseudo-funny system criticism into the Internet. And certainly no revenants in politics who do not want to admit that March might make everything new. But definitely not the Merz. (Mirko Schmid)