Charité (Seasons 1 and 2)
Talking to 
makamu has reminded me I've been meaning to write about Charité, the two seasons German tv show I marathoned about two months ago. It doesn't quite fill the Call the Midwife yearning of my soul, but it's a good historical show set in and and around a hospital, with interesting characters both fictional and historical, and it tries and often achieves complexity in both its seasons.
Said seasons are set apart by several decades, in two very different eras, and thus feature a completely different ensemble. What they share is that in both cases, there are important historical characters while the main pov character is fictional and female. (In the first season, this led to one review in one of our three most famous newspapers, the conservative one, complaining about the existence of said OC and some other female OCs, because, yeah, sure, there were female nurses, but why couldn't the be exclusively focused on the three (historical) male geniuses, and who cared about problems like abortions when there was tubercolosis to discuss anyway?) Note: female scriptwriters in both seasons, though male directors. Both seasons also are ensemble stories; there are several storylines and arcs in addition to the main pov's tale.
Our main location for both seasons: the titular legendary and still existing hospital in Berlin. It was founded by Friedrich Wilhelm I. of Prussia in the 18th century, but the late 19th century was when it gained its international reputation.
Season 1: starts in 1888 (the "Year of the three Emperors"). Historical characters: three future Nobel Prize winners, Robert Koch (discoverer of the tubercolosis virus, which at the time the season takes place makes him the "star" among the doctors, so to speak, but he's about to take a (historical) fall), Emil Behring (would discover the means to heal diphteria), Paul Ehrlich (worked with both Koch and Behring, was Jewish and the target of late 19th century antisemitism, which the show thematisizes) and Rudolf Virchow (no Nobel Prize, but lots of discoveries, see earlier entry about him and Bismarck, but note the show features Virchow in his old age, decades after the earlier event).
Fictional characters: our heroine Ida Lenze, a doctor's daughter who's interested in medicine herself but as a woman can't become a physician in Germany (the only university open to women who wanted to become doctors at the time was Zurich, which is a plot point) and has fallen on hard times; due to plot reasons in the pilot, she ends up as a nurse in the hospital. Sister Therese, who befriends and later falls in love with Ida. Nurse Edith, increasingly angry about the way the nursing staff are exploited without hardly any free time; future socialist and founder of forbidden unions. Head of nursing staff Martha, old fashioned religious authoritarian, but not a hypocrite. The two male OCs of plot relevance, though not with as much screen time as the women: Georg Tischendorf, student of medicine who actually is more interested in photography (and Ida), but under pressure of his family; Heinrich von Minckwitz, frat boy who gets expelled for irresponsible behavior but ends up with the press.
Makes a (historical) cameo: Arthur Conan Doyle, who comes for Tuberkulin, the medication against tubercolosis Koch claims he's discovered and stays to witness Virchow devastatingly exposing... but that would be telling.
Ida does get that most dreaded of plot devices, a love triangle (featuring Tischendorff and Emil Behring, with whom she already has a fraught backstory), but it's solved very satisfyingly (imo, as always), since she ends up with neither guy and goes for a professional future as a doctor (and the university of Zurich) instead. Less satisfying is that while her friendship with Therese is featured very sympathetically, Therese as the sole gay character still ends up being a) in unrequited love, and b) by the end of the season, dead. (The second season, I hasten to add, will do better by its gay characters, plural.) It's not a gratitious death to make Ida sad but tied into a main plot. (Robert Koch was under pressure by the new Emperor and his own publicity to develop a cure for Tuberculosis, and claimed Tuberkulin was said cure despite as it turns out not having done enough tests or found an actual repeatable formula, with the result that many people died of the "cure". This is history; in the show, Therese after Ida has secured the supposed cure for her dies, which is of course far more devastating to the audience than if a nameless character had done.)
Ida's pov is also used to show the conditions among the nurses as a counterpoint to the doctors, and the social changes on every level. (Edith concluding that they should organize themselves, and demand better payment instead, as Martha and her generation regard it, see this as religious duty and charity work.) Her realising that what she really wants isn't to find a good husband (doctor or not) but to be a doctor herself is, as I said, of great emotional satisfaction to me, and I thought her interactions with the historical characters were all credible.
The four main historical doctors are all written three dimensionally, with flaws and virtues, with none of them always right or always wrong. (Which considering that they disagree a lot with each other is quite a feat.) And the series is good with showing what's developing in the background; old Virchow as the liberal is regarded as old fashioned and isn't really listened to anymore, whereas the students - full of admiration for the new young Emperor, Wilhelm II - are fervent nationalists, and when one of Ida's suitors starts spouting antisemitic phrases, it's shocking but not really surprising. By the end of the season, conditions for the nurses have improved and Ida has started a new life, but as for where Germany is heading...
Season 2: starts in the middle of the second World War. Which immediately made me wonder: how would the show deal with the biggest elephant in the room, i.e. the way so many doctors weren't just used by the Third Reich but actively took part in Nazi "experimentation"? Would we only get one token Nazi with the rest of the ensemble being misunderstood idealists? If not, how would the "hospital show" format fit with that? And the answer is...
Historical characters: mainly Ferdinand Sauerbruch (surgeon of legend, who basically codified the "bad tempered genius surgeon" trope in its German edition and first was idealized and whitewashed, then vilified; we're currently at a both/and stage in terms of representation - I saw an exhibition about Sauerbruch at the current day Charité in August to testify for it); Margot Sauerbruch, his second wife, also a doctor; Max de Crinis, vile Nazi extraordinaire (google him and shudder); Maria Fritsch, Sauerbruch's secretary, secret resistance fighter (not made up, she was); Fritz Kolbe, her lover and later husband (also secret resistance fighter, ditto); Adolphe Jung (forcibly drafted doctor from the Elsass). There are also cameos from the infamous (Magda Goebbels) to the related to famous (Karl Bonhoeffer, father of Dietrich, former head of the Charité and friends with Sauerbruch.)
Fictional main characters: Anni Waldhausen, our main pov character this season, student at the Charité, married, pregnant, and at the start of the show true believer in Führer and Fatherland. She's writing her doctoral thesis about self-inflicted wounds by soldiers who want to escape military service, and the vile Max de Crinis positions himself as her mentor. (This is probably the biggest narrative gamble, but imo justified, as any series about doctors in the Third Reich which had only its villains as Nazis, after already staking the odds by using more ambigous or heroic historical characters than vile ones, would be cheating. Also you can bet Anni's main arc in this show isn't a romantic one. What she learns makes her, subtly and less subtly, a symbolic figure for the nation as well.) Artur Waldhausen, Anni's husband, has already finished his studies, is a fervent believer in Führer and Fatherland as well and at the start of the season begins working not just in the main hospital but in the outlying hospital, where they've found a "purpose" for "unwanted" disabled children which you can guess. Otto Marquardt, Anni's younger brother, wounded and just back from the front as the season starts; also half of this season's gay couple. Martin Schelling, male nurse (he's not on the front due to having a bad leg), falls in love with Otto (and unlike him is already under surveillance since as a teenager he once got caught at a gay encounter), the other half of the couple. Sister Käthe, at first glance salt-of-the-earth motherly character, at second glance wilfully blind because she does know that any child sent to the outlier hospital will not be seen again. Sister Christel, at first glance young and flirtatious, at second glance firm believer in the party, reports suspected disloyalty where she finds it and remains a Nazi till the end.
Like the first season, the second is an ensemble story where several of the characters have interwoven arcs, though Anni is definitely the main character, with various events - her baby turns out to be suffering from hydrocephalus, plus she discovers her brother is gay - putting her in the position where what she has believed so far would spell death to those she loves - serving as the wake-up call from hell. Given her husband reacts to the same events by only digging in deeper, and that Anni encounters another mother who's relieved to have a disabled child taken away, the show doesn't give the impression that said wake-up call would inevitably work, and it doesn't let Anni off the hook for early in the season having identified one soldier's wound as self-inflicted (which meant death for said soldier). But there's a big historical precedent for a turnaround like Anni's; Hans and Sophie Scholl and friends, who were true believers until their late teens - Hans was representing his Hitler Youth group at a Nuremberg rally, for example, Sophie was part of the BDM, the female equivalent; they, too, were medical students coming to the conclusion that those beliefs were utterly wrong, and ended up as resistance fighters (in the White Rose), dying for this. (Anni doesn't become a resistance fighter, but she successfully hides her child, manages to save another child, helps her brother and his lover survive and at the end among the rubble of Berlin dazedly realises they've made it, and have another chance at life.)
With Sauerbruch, the show gives you both admirable actions (he stays working in Berlin until the Russians literally arrive in his medical bunker, operating under unspeakable conditions on people who'd otherwise die screaming of pain), every day diva behaviour (his introduction scene is one where he gets filmed for the weekly news and you can tell he's enjoying the hell out of it, including enjoying embarassing anyone he deems less than competent) and moral yes/but shadiness (he goes to bat for individuals he cares for like Hans von Dohnanyi, son-in-law of his friend Bonhoeffer, but really does not want to know or do something about that outlying hospital). It also has his wife Margot pointing out that due to Sauerbruch's world fame, they could and should stay in Switzerland (where he used to live for a while when younger and goes to a guest lecture for during the season); he could become an emigrant without losing his life source, he just does not want to. I don't claim any expertise on Sauerbruch, but from a laywoman's pov, I thought, fair enough.
All in all: a well-made show, available on Netflix, if you're not squeamish about the human body (both seasons feature operating scenes) and are ready for historical injustices (s1) or crimes (s2). I'll definitely watch the third season, which I hear will take place in the GDR of the early 1960s, when the Wall gets built.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1368558.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
makamu has reminded me I've been meaning to write about Charité, the two seasons German tv show I marathoned about two months ago. It doesn't quite fill the Call the Midwife yearning of my soul, but it's a good historical show set in and and around a hospital, with interesting characters both fictional and historical, and it tries and often achieves complexity in both its seasons.
Said seasons are set apart by several decades, in two very different eras, and thus feature a completely different ensemble. What they share is that in both cases, there are important historical characters while the main pov character is fictional and female. (In the first season, this led to one review in one of our three most famous newspapers, the conservative one, complaining about the existence of said OC and some other female OCs, because, yeah, sure, there were female nurses, but why couldn't the be exclusively focused on the three (historical) male geniuses, and who cared about problems like abortions when there was tubercolosis to discuss anyway?) Note: female scriptwriters in both seasons, though male directors. Both seasons also are ensemble stories; there are several storylines and arcs in addition to the main pov's tale.
Our main location for both seasons: the titular legendary and still existing hospital in Berlin. It was founded by Friedrich Wilhelm I. of Prussia in the 18th century, but the late 19th century was when it gained its international reputation.
Season 1: starts in 1888 (the "Year of the three Emperors"). Historical characters: three future Nobel Prize winners, Robert Koch (discoverer of the tubercolosis virus, which at the time the season takes place makes him the "star" among the doctors, so to speak, but he's about to take a (historical) fall), Emil Behring (would discover the means to heal diphteria), Paul Ehrlich (worked with both Koch and Behring, was Jewish and the target of late 19th century antisemitism, which the show thematisizes) and Rudolf Virchow (no Nobel Prize, but lots of discoveries, see earlier entry about him and Bismarck, but note the show features Virchow in his old age, decades after the earlier event).
Fictional characters: our heroine Ida Lenze, a doctor's daughter who's interested in medicine herself but as a woman can't become a physician in Germany (the only university open to women who wanted to become doctors at the time was Zurich, which is a plot point) and has fallen on hard times; due to plot reasons in the pilot, she ends up as a nurse in the hospital. Sister Therese, who befriends and later falls in love with Ida. Nurse Edith, increasingly angry about the way the nursing staff are exploited without hardly any free time; future socialist and founder of forbidden unions. Head of nursing staff Martha, old fashioned religious authoritarian, but not a hypocrite. The two male OCs of plot relevance, though not with as much screen time as the women: Georg Tischendorf, student of medicine who actually is more interested in photography (and Ida), but under pressure of his family; Heinrich von Minckwitz, frat boy who gets expelled for irresponsible behavior but ends up with the press.
Makes a (historical) cameo: Arthur Conan Doyle, who comes for Tuberkulin, the medication against tubercolosis Koch claims he's discovered and stays to witness Virchow devastatingly exposing... but that would be telling.
Ida does get that most dreaded of plot devices, a love triangle (featuring Tischendorff and Emil Behring, with whom she already has a fraught backstory), but it's solved very satisfyingly (imo, as always), since she ends up with neither guy and goes for a professional future as a doctor (and the university of Zurich) instead. Less satisfying is that while her friendship with Therese is featured very sympathetically, Therese as the sole gay character still ends up being a) in unrequited love, and b) by the end of the season, dead. (The second season, I hasten to add, will do better by its gay characters, plural.) It's not a gratitious death to make Ida sad but tied into a main plot. (Robert Koch was under pressure by the new Emperor and his own publicity to develop a cure for Tuberculosis, and claimed Tuberkulin was said cure despite as it turns out not having done enough tests or found an actual repeatable formula, with the result that many people died of the "cure". This is history; in the show, Therese after Ida has secured the supposed cure for her dies, which is of course far more devastating to the audience than if a nameless character had done.)
Ida's pov is also used to show the conditions among the nurses as a counterpoint to the doctors, and the social changes on every level. (Edith concluding that they should organize themselves, and demand better payment instead, as Martha and her generation regard it, see this as religious duty and charity work.) Her realising that what she really wants isn't to find a good husband (doctor or not) but to be a doctor herself is, as I said, of great emotional satisfaction to me, and I thought her interactions with the historical characters were all credible.
The four main historical doctors are all written three dimensionally, with flaws and virtues, with none of them always right or always wrong. (Which considering that they disagree a lot with each other is quite a feat.) And the series is good with showing what's developing in the background; old Virchow as the liberal is regarded as old fashioned and isn't really listened to anymore, whereas the students - full of admiration for the new young Emperor, Wilhelm II - are fervent nationalists, and when one of Ida's suitors starts spouting antisemitic phrases, it's shocking but not really surprising. By the end of the season, conditions for the nurses have improved and Ida has started a new life, but as for where Germany is heading...
Season 2: starts in the middle of the second World War. Which immediately made me wonder: how would the show deal with the biggest elephant in the room, i.e. the way so many doctors weren't just used by the Third Reich but actively took part in Nazi "experimentation"? Would we only get one token Nazi with the rest of the ensemble being misunderstood idealists? If not, how would the "hospital show" format fit with that? And the answer is...
Historical characters: mainly Ferdinand Sauerbruch (surgeon of legend, who basically codified the "bad tempered genius surgeon" trope in its German edition and first was idealized and whitewashed, then vilified; we're currently at a both/and stage in terms of representation - I saw an exhibition about Sauerbruch at the current day Charité in August to testify for it); Margot Sauerbruch, his second wife, also a doctor; Max de Crinis, vile Nazi extraordinaire (google him and shudder); Maria Fritsch, Sauerbruch's secretary, secret resistance fighter (not made up, she was); Fritz Kolbe, her lover and later husband (also secret resistance fighter, ditto); Adolphe Jung (forcibly drafted doctor from the Elsass). There are also cameos from the infamous (Magda Goebbels) to the related to famous (Karl Bonhoeffer, father of Dietrich, former head of the Charité and friends with Sauerbruch.)
Fictional main characters: Anni Waldhausen, our main pov character this season, student at the Charité, married, pregnant, and at the start of the show true believer in Führer and Fatherland. She's writing her doctoral thesis about self-inflicted wounds by soldiers who want to escape military service, and the vile Max de Crinis positions himself as her mentor. (This is probably the biggest narrative gamble, but imo justified, as any series about doctors in the Third Reich which had only its villains as Nazis, after already staking the odds by using more ambigous or heroic historical characters than vile ones, would be cheating. Also you can bet Anni's main arc in this show isn't a romantic one. What she learns makes her, subtly and less subtly, a symbolic figure for the nation as well.) Artur Waldhausen, Anni's husband, has already finished his studies, is a fervent believer in Führer and Fatherland as well and at the start of the season begins working not just in the main hospital but in the outlying hospital, where they've found a "purpose" for "unwanted" disabled children which you can guess. Otto Marquardt, Anni's younger brother, wounded and just back from the front as the season starts; also half of this season's gay couple. Martin Schelling, male nurse (he's not on the front due to having a bad leg), falls in love with Otto (and unlike him is already under surveillance since as a teenager he once got caught at a gay encounter), the other half of the couple. Sister Käthe, at first glance salt-of-the-earth motherly character, at second glance wilfully blind because she does know that any child sent to the outlier hospital will not be seen again. Sister Christel, at first glance young and flirtatious, at second glance firm believer in the party, reports suspected disloyalty where she finds it and remains a Nazi till the end.
Like the first season, the second is an ensemble story where several of the characters have interwoven arcs, though Anni is definitely the main character, with various events - her baby turns out to be suffering from hydrocephalus, plus she discovers her brother is gay - putting her in the position where what she has believed so far would spell death to those she loves - serving as the wake-up call from hell. Given her husband reacts to the same events by only digging in deeper, and that Anni encounters another mother who's relieved to have a disabled child taken away, the show doesn't give the impression that said wake-up call would inevitably work, and it doesn't let Anni off the hook for early in the season having identified one soldier's wound as self-inflicted (which meant death for said soldier). But there's a big historical precedent for a turnaround like Anni's; Hans and Sophie Scholl and friends, who were true believers until their late teens - Hans was representing his Hitler Youth group at a Nuremberg rally, for example, Sophie was part of the BDM, the female equivalent; they, too, were medical students coming to the conclusion that those beliefs were utterly wrong, and ended up as resistance fighters (in the White Rose), dying for this. (Anni doesn't become a resistance fighter, but she successfully hides her child, manages to save another child, helps her brother and his lover survive and at the end among the rubble of Berlin dazedly realises they've made it, and have another chance at life.)
With Sauerbruch, the show gives you both admirable actions (he stays working in Berlin until the Russians literally arrive in his medical bunker, operating under unspeakable conditions on people who'd otherwise die screaming of pain), every day diva behaviour (his introduction scene is one where he gets filmed for the weekly news and you can tell he's enjoying the hell out of it, including enjoying embarassing anyone he deems less than competent) and moral yes/but shadiness (he goes to bat for individuals he cares for like Hans von Dohnanyi, son-in-law of his friend Bonhoeffer, but really does not want to know or do something about that outlying hospital). It also has his wife Margot pointing out that due to Sauerbruch's world fame, they could and should stay in Switzerland (where he used to live for a while when younger and goes to a guest lecture for during the season); he could become an emigrant without losing his life source, he just does not want to. I don't claim any expertise on Sauerbruch, but from a laywoman's pov, I thought, fair enough.
All in all: a well-made show, available on Netflix, if you're not squeamish about the human body (both seasons feature operating scenes) and are ready for historical injustices (s1) or crimes (s2). I'll definitely watch the third season, which I hear will take place in the GDR of the early 1960s, when the Wall gets built.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1368558.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.