He is an institution on German television: Markus Lanz has been broadcasting in his talk show of the same name for ZDF for 18 years now. The South Tyrolean native welcomes guests from politics, culture, science and the media three times a week. Reason enough for the weekly newspaper “Die Zeit”, Germany’s “most influential talk show host”, to have his say in detail, especially before the upcoming state elections in several federal states.
The introduction to the interview in the current issue of the newspaper shows what we want to talk about: Is Lanz a man who has perhaps been doing politics himself “for a long time” instead of just being a journalist?
An assertion that the moderator then indirectly rejects in the conversation, also by criticizing the current media coverage of the AfD and the political dealings (keyword “firewall”) with the party. Lanz tells "Zeit": "The crucial question is: What went wrong, where did we (the media, editor) fail? Why are people like Trump suddenly successful? Or the AfD in Germany?"
And then concludes: “Are we as journalists perhaps also part of a bubble that has not seen how tough distribution struggles have arisen, primarily as a result of immigration: for cheap housing, for good schools, for reasonably well-paid jobs?”
The “Zeit” editors ask: “Aren’t you a kind of ringmaster yourself? Someone who helps produce exactly this division?” Lanz immediately objects. In the answer, he defends his practice of repeatedly inviting representatives of the AfD to his show. "Is it divisive if I point out grievances and ask critical questions? Should I not say things because I might be helping the wrong people?" he asks.
And: "When I sometimes listen to politicians, I ask myself how selfless the urgent warnings about the AfD really are. It is much easier to work on the AfD instead of self-critically asking yourself what mistakes you made that allowed such a radical party to become so big. As a reminder: in 2015 it was at three percent. Today it is at thirty."
“We talk to everyone first,” Lanz defends his AfD guests
When asked whether he also invites AfD politicians into his dressing room to chat after a broadcast, he answers with a clear statement: "Yes, of course. We still meet as people! I often find that AfD politicians don't even shake hands. There's something ideological, hardened about that and it alienates me. We're journalists! We talk to everyone first."
The “Zeit” editors follow up; Then they want to know whether the guests “speak differently” behind the scenes than they do on the show. Lanz answers both diplomatically and pragmatically: "Yes, but that applies to everyone who is in public: people play a role, including me. I don't know anyone whose private image coincides with the public one." This also and especially applies to the AfD, whose leaders come “from very different worlds”. “Listen to what Ulrich Siegmund in Saxony-Anhalt says about his family picture and look at how Alice Weidel lives (in a same-sex partnership, editor) – it doesn’t fit together at all.”
When asked about possible reasons for the AfD's current particularly great success in East Germany, Lanz also blocks it: It would be "presumptuous" if he of all people were to "explain" the East Germans now.
But: "I would like to mention just one argument: My son worked in Bulgaria for two summers. I visited him there often and we traveled together through this beautiful country. It made me realize something that can be seen all over Eastern Europe: the consequences of labor migration when you look at it from the other side."
In Bulgaria, but also in Moldova, you can clearly see what it does to a society when “young people go to the West to earn money.” And further: "If you ask an old woman in the market in Chișinău: 'Where are your children?', she answers: 'My daughter cleans in Greece, my son works on a construction site in England.' Then you see how her eyes get moist." East Germany also experienced a similar migration movement after the years of reunification; many East Germans no longer have their children and grandchildren in the area.
“My phone is a mobile archive with tens of thousands of pages,” says the ZDF presenter
The conversation then provides a small insight into how the editorial team works (the producer is Markus Heidemans, the production company is editorially independent of ZDF). “Zeit” wants to know how Lanz is preparing for his guests. The answer is that his editorial team would put together a dossier (i.e. a collection of data, facts and documents) for each guest. “And my phone is a mobile archive with tens of thousands of pages that I can search for keywords,” the 57-year-old then reveals.
The show - unlike "other competitors" - does not follow a "strict script", emphasizes Markus Lanz and then explains: "Sometimes it is only decided on the day of the recording which politician is coming. I often deal with people for months, even if they are not on the invitation list yet." The moderator also explains that he works independently in terms of content: “There is no one on ZDF who dictates ‘positions’,” says Lanz – neither on topics such as migration or the Middle East conflict.
