Charité (Season 2) (ARD) (2019)

 

 

 

 

 

Charité is a German historical drama which is inspired by real events. It is built around the most famous hospital in Berlin. So far there are three seasons:

 

** 2017 – Season 1 – six episodes – the story is set during the final years of the 19th century

** 2019 – Season 2 – six episodes – the story is set during the end of World War Two (1943-1945)

** 2021 – Season 3 – six episodes – the story is set in 1961 (the year in which the Berlin Wall was constructed)

 

Here is some basic information about season 2:

 

** Director: Anno Saul

** Writers: Dorothee Schön and Sabine Thor-Wiedemann

** Language: German

** Subtitles: German (ARD)

** Subtitles: English (Netflix)

** Run time: 6 x ca 50 minutes = ca. 300 minutes

 

The cast includes the following:

 

** Mala Emde as Anni Waldhausen – a medical student

** Jannik Schümann as Otto Marquardt – a German soldier - Anni’s brother

** Artjorn Gilz as Artur Waldhausen – a doctor - Anni’s husband

** Frida-Lovisa Hamann as Nurse Christel

 

** Ulrich Noethen as Ferdinand Sauerbruch (1875-1951) – a doctor – surgeon and chief of staff

** Louise Wolfram as Margot Sauerbruch (1905-1995) – a doctor – Ferdinand Sauerbruch’s wife

** Lukas Miko as Max de Crinis (1889-1945) – a doctor (psychiatrist)

** Hans Löw as Professor Adolphe Jung (1902-1992) – a French doctor (from Elsass-Lorraine)

** Sara Bauerett as Maria Fritsch (1901-2000) – Sauerbruch’s secretary – later married to Fritz Kolbe

** Marek Harloff as Fritz Kolbe (1900-1971) – a civil servant at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – later married to Maria Fritsch

** Peter Kremer as Georg Bessau (1884-1944) - a doctor

** Thomas Neumann as Karl Bonhoeffer (1868-1948) – a doctor

 

As in season 1, the characters are a combination of real historical persons and fictional characters. The first four characters on the chart above are fictional, while the remaining eight characters are real historical persons.

 

When you look at the chart, you can see that they all survived the war (except two: Georg Bessau and Max de Crinis).

 

I do not wish to spoil the viewing for anyone. Therefore, I am not going to reveal any details about what happens in this drama. I will merely say this:

 

The topics which are discussed and covered in this drama are highly relevant for the time and the place: Nazi Germany towards the end of World War Two.

 

What do reviewers say about this drama? On IMDb it has a rating of 78 per cent, which corresponds to a rating of (almost) four stars on Amazon.

 

On the German version of Amazon there are at the moment 172 ratings of this product. The average rating is 4.7 stars, which corresponds to a rating of 94 percent.

 

If you ask me, the former rating is quite appropriate, while the latter rating is a bit too high.

 

I think the second season of this drama deserves a rating of four stars (80 percent).

 

REFERENCE

 

Die Charité: Medizin unterm Hakenkreuz

 

A documentary film which premiered on German television (ARD) in 2019 as a companion to the second season of the historical drama.

** Director: Dagmar Wittmers

** Run time: 30 minutes

 

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