16 x Germany: Thuringia

What is home in Germany? Sixteen German actors, presenters and reporters travel to their federal state to discover it with the camera. Each federal state is presented in a quarter-hour portrait. Sixteen views of German everyday life, seen through the eyes of very different filmmakers who know their way around a region that has always been home to them, or has become home by roundabout routes.

At first glance Weimar is a great museum city – a transfer print of German cultural history. To attract the educated middle classes, efforts are made to preserve the image of Classicism and to rely entirely on the appeal of cultural history. But that costs a great deal of money; money that is then missing when it comes to discovering modern things or letting them come into being. Weimar’s heyday as the country’s leading city of intellectual and cultural life lies centuries in the past. For that the city now pays its price – the price of forgoing renewal. Why? Because that is exactly what tourists expect of Weimar. But what exactly do the tourists want? What are they prepared to pay for culture, and above all for which culture?

The actor, singer and director Dominique Horwitz, born in Paris 56 years ago, has lived since 2003 not far from what is probably the most German of all German cities – Weimar; city of Classicism, birthplace of the Weimar Republic, of the Bauhaus and of the Hitler Youth, an independent city, a university city and European Capital of Culture in 1999. Today just under 63,000 people live here. One of them is Gunter Grobe, a coachman by trade. With him, Horwitz experiences the city that has become his home.