OUR COUNTRY

However, North Rhine-Westphalia is still at the top of the Federal Republic and wants to show it.
The tallest building, the largest exhibition center, the "fastest breeder" and the most freeways were built in this decade.
You can still discover all of this today, although some of it is quite different from what was planned.

Digging begins in the Rhineland - the opencast lignite mine in Hambach, the largest hole in the world at the time.
A globally unique educational landscape is created with almost 20 universities of applied sciences and comprehensive universities, including the distance-learning university in Hagen, now the largest university in Germany.
The Mönchengladbach football team leaves its mark on German soccer, and in 1974 the Westfalenstadion is opened in Dortmund, the largest soccer temple in the country.
Artists from North Rhine-Westphalia such as Joseph Beuys, Kraftwerk, Marius Müller-Westernhagen and Heinrich Böll become stars who have not lost their shine to this day.

Structural change has had a firm grip on the Ruhr region in recent years.
Collieries die, smelters are closed, the first smog alarm shocks.
But there is also hope: the new Minister President Johannes Rau promises to invest billions.
The biggest demonstrations the country has ever seen are successful at the end of the 1970s: Tens of thousands come to Kalkar to demonstrate against the construction of a nuclear power plant of the kind being planned and built all over Germany.
Never before has there been a larger police operation in NRW - but the demonstrators cannot be held back.
While the power plant in Kalkar is being prevented, a completely new movement is forming that makes environmental policy an important issue.

The third episode of "Our Country" is characterized by the upheavals and changes of the time.
It is the big stories and small anecdotes that bring a decade back to life.

First broadcast: Friday, September 2, 2016, 8:15 p.m. on WDR