OUR COUNTRY 1975

In 1975, other women simply did "their thing", as it was called at the time: schoolgirl Vera Brandes landed a coup and lured the world-famous jazz pianist Keith Jarrett to a concert at the Cologne Opera.
It almost didn't take place because the promised grand piano wasn't available and the keys of the completely out-of-tune replacement piano were stuck.
How the young Vera Brandes persuaded the maestro to play after all, and how it became one of the most successful jazz records of all time, is what she told documentary author Martin Herzog at the scene of the event.
For her, the Cologne Opera became a place of destiny, and 1975 was the fateful year that would determine the rest of her life.

This year was even more drastic for 14-year-old Tu Phuong Le, who arrived at Cologne-Bonn Airport in spring 1975.
Her destination was the Peace Village in Oberhausen, which had been taking in war-disabled children from Vietnam since the end of the 1960s, providing them with medical care and carrying out necessary operations and physiotherapy.
Phuong was supposed to stay there for six months and then return to her family in Saigon.
But as soon as she arrived in Oberhausen, the Vietnam War came to an end and the new government refused to allow Phuong and 100 other children to return home.
They were stranded in NRW and had to fear that they would never see their families again.

The state elections were much less dramatic: three parties and, as always, the SPD won.
Minister President Kuhn can continue to govern with the help of the Liberals.
The FDP sends Burkhard Hirsch to Düsseldorf.
As NRW Minister of the Interior, he is now allowed to deal with the problem cases of the long-planned local government reform, which is implemented in 1975.
A whole series of towns and municipalities throughout the state resist being forced to merge or break up: Wesseling in the Rhineland does not want to belong to Cologne, Meerbusch in the Lower Rhine region is resisting being split between Krefeld and Düsseldorf, and in the Ruhr region, Kettwig is struggling with its new affiliation to Essen.

There is a lot to do in NRW, especially as the economy is stumbling and unemployment is rising, for which many blame the two and a half million guest workers in the state.
After decades of luring tens of thousands into the country, they now want to get rid of them as quickly as possible.
But they became more self-confident: "We're still here!" was the motto of the first congress of foreigners in the Federal Republic in Bochum, where Italians, Portuguese, Greeks and Turks showed their colors.
But it's not all gloomy in 1975: the German national team from Remscheid shows what it can do at the first World Championships in Formation Jumping in Warendorf, Münsterland; the Scout school satchel is a big hit with NRW's I-Dötzen, and a young student from Leverkusen wins the national "Exemplary Female Driver" competition - if that's not a success in the Year of the Woman...

The film about the year of the woman is narrated by a man, of course.
Lutz van der Horst is the inspiration for 1975.
The comedian and notorious outside reporter for the Heute Show was born in Cologne in August of that year, at the end of a week-long heatwave in western Germany - and this despite the fact that he, like his mother and his entire family, can't stand hot weather.
But at least dad is on hand with his newly acquired Super 8 camera and gives a foretaste of his offspring's future screen career.

First broadcast: Friday, September 15, 2017 at 8:15 pm on WDR