Werkschau Wolfgang Menge

At this moment, three candidates of "Mission: Germany", the new show on ProSieben, are being hunted by viewers who are watching on the Internet and television as they run through Germany. The sporty manhunt via the TV screen is a copy of previously successful formats such as "The Hunt” in the Netherlands, or "The Runner” in the U.S. The hunted receive 150,000 Euro, and the station promises a new television attraction: he combination of a real life agent thriller, Internet, and interactive TV. However screenplay author Wolfgang Menge developed precisely this scenario back in 1970, and triggered the biggest viewer and media feedback in early German television history to date with "Das Millionenspiel” (directed by Tom Toelle). It was the fictional live presentation of a manhunt on non-public television, which was not as harmless as the ProSieben version: the hunted was pursued by actual murderers and collected one million Marks, if he succeed to survive. Similar to the effect of the radio play "War of the Worlds” by Orson Welles in 1938, thousands of German citizens took the scenario literally, and violently protested against the wire-pullers behind the show or applied for the role of the killer themselves.

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