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Endless savannah steppes.
Impenetrable jungle.
Dreamlike South Sea beaches.
This is the German Empire a hundred years ago.
At the end of the 19th century, the imperial battle flag fluttered over the fourth largest colonial empire of its time.
Between 1884 and 1918, the German protectorates became a destination for settlers, missionaries and soldiers of fortune.
But after the defeat in the First World War, the dream of a global German empire was over.
The three-part series focuses on the stories and experiences of German settlers, Schutztruppe soldiers and locals who experienced the decisive events first-hand - and left accounts for posterity.
Based on these personal fates, BROADVIEW TV reconstructs the history of the German colonies and presents the key experiences of these protagonists in elaborately staged scenes.
State-of-the-art CGI is used to stage mass scenes such as the Herero uprising with the decisive battle on the Waterberg in South West Africa or the bloody clashes between Germans and Africans in East Africa.
There are also exciting stories of cannibal villages in German New Guinea, the odyssey of a mother and her newborn child through the steppes of southwest Africa and a sect of nudist sun worshippers in the South Seas.
On behalf of ZDF, BROADVIEW TV explores for the first time the question of what the Germans were looking for in the colonies of German South West Africa, German East Africa and the protectorates in the South Seas.
Who were the people who went to the colonies and what dreams did they pursue?
What conflicts arose between the "masters" and the "colonial peoples" and what traces did the Germans leave behind?
First broadcast on ZDF: Tuesday, April 13, 2010, 8:15 p.m.
