ABSTRACT
In January 2000, one of the leading public TV channels in Germany, the ZDF, broadcast a fi lm that was rather unusual at that time: Die Wüstenrose (The Desert Rose), a feature-length, prime-time historical melodrama set in colonial South-West Africa, is the fi rst fi ctional fi lm explicitly depicting a German colony since the adaptation of Uwe Timm’s novel Morenga shown by the WDR, another major public channel, in 1985. But, unlike this rather elitist piece of art, Die Wüstenrose was successfully aimed at a mass audience. Its fi rst screening, in January 2000, was viewed by 12 million people, and it has since been repeated several times in both Germany and Austria.
