Thomas Gottschalk hasn’t learned anything – but hopefully we have

Opinion

Oh, how undignified it was when Thomas Gottschalk was driven out of the hall on an excavator shovel in the last “Wetten, dass…?” program, complaining bitterly. The presenter complained that he could no longer speak on television like he did at home. He had previously told Shirin David that he didn’t look like she was a feminist and managed to treat a child in a wheelchair insensitively. That was in November 2023. A lot of time has passed since then – but Gottschalk did not use it to reflect. The current headlines make this clear.

Short summary: Gottschalk complained to “Spiegel” that, among other things, he no longer dared to go into an elevator alone with a woman for fear of #MeToo accusations and claimed that he had touched female guests on TV “purely on business.” In the WDR program “Kölner Treff” he lamented that today he had to think first before saying something: “That’s bad.” Especially in the very confrontational “Spiegel” interview it was easy to see how much Gottschalk remains stuck in old structures.

Thomas Gottschalk is not just any former TV star

The statements made waves and that’s a good thing – even if the relevance of the whole thing was questioned in many places online and people complained that Gottschalk was even given a stage. Media critic Stefan Niggemeier commented on “X”: “The interviewers are usually right, but why should we keep blaming him? He’s just a former TV star.” But it’s not that simple.

Gottschalk is not just any former TV star, but with “Wetten, dass…?” a format that reached over 20 million people in front of the screens at its peak. For decades he had a public platform that simply did not exist anywhere else on this scale in Germany. Hardly a child who didn’t regularly spend Saturday evenings with him in the 90s – and watched as he unchallengedly introduced Jenny Elvers and Ariane Sommer as “bitches”, condescendingly patted Iris Berben on the knee or called for blackfacing for a bet in the room. Gottschalk had an influence on an entire generation. And if this generation now looks back and asks itself what was actually going on back then, then confrontations are not only legitimate, but simply necessary in order to come to terms with things.

The power of pop culture is often underestimated

The fact that Gottschalk doesn’t understand the whole thing seems almost helpful as an indestructible display of the absurd zeitgeist of the time. That’s just how someone who had power back then thinks. Gottschalk is therefore a different case than, for example, Jan Josef Liefers, who is currently in the media with a similar tenor. There really is no need for an unnecessary platform for old-fashioned phrases. But one cannot point out often enough how misogynistic, classist (“beer cans are Hartz IV stilts”), racist or simply invasive Gottschalk’s behavior often was. Precisely because it was so obvious and therefore formative back then. The power of pop culture is often underestimated, but an entertainment format like “Wetten, dass…?” reflects and cements the zeitgeist at the same time. Without remembering this there can be no change.

The fact that tacitly accepting and forgetting is not enough is also evident from Stefan Raab’s horror comeback with jokes from the noughties or from the fact that Gottschalk also gets a lot of support. We need public questioning and confrontation because far too often people still act as if none of this is a problem. At the “Kölner Treff” it was the actress Natalia Wörner who gave clear words to Gottschalk and the audience. “It’s just a matter of whether you’re willing to question yourself critically,” she summed up the essence.

Thomas Gottschalk doesn’t do that. He’s certainly right when he says that his behavior used to be part of the show and his role as presenter. That was the prevailing, sad idea of ​​entertainment back then. However, the fact that he doesn’t understand what was wrong with it is unforgivable. Thomas Gottschalk has learned nothing. But hopefully the audience.