The weekly Youtube series “Germania” paints a portrait of Germany today through the eyes of young people – often celebrities – all of whom have what Germans refer to as a “migration background” (Migrationshintergrund). The German public service network “funk,” which works across all digital platforms, commissions “Germania,” and the production company Hyperbole TV produces the videos. Because the production companies work for the public service, both are tied to the regulations of public TV in Germany; “funk” and its executive producers Florian Hager and Sophie Burkhardt strive to produce content that is relatable to as many of the 15 million 14- to 29-year-old Germans as possible. Choosing to address migration backgrounds and integration into German culture in a dedicated Youtube series, “Germania” brings the issue of multiculturalism to the young generations who will have grown up in an increasingly colorful Germany.
In her “Germania” video, Germany’s Next Top Model season four winner Sara Nuru shares her positive experience of growing up as one of five families with dark skin in rural southern Germany. Nuru’s parents fled Ethiopia during the civil war, traveling to East Germany to get to West Germany and settling in the rural Bavarian town of Erding. The first black baby to be born in Erding’s hospital, her birth was reported in the local newspapers, and she describes her experience of growing up with dark skin as feeling like an “exotic rarity.” She has never felt that her skin color affected her opportunities as a young woman in Germany and could not relate to the journalists who assumed she was being judged by her skin color while taking part in Germany’s Next Top Model. Nonetheless, she exclaims that there is definitely more the beauty industry needs to do to move away from the stereotypical blonde-blue beauty, to include dark-skinned models and represent much better “Germany’s beautiful diversity.”
Julia Alcamo
Source: funk, and Hyperbole TV. “GERMANIA.” YouTube, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOo3JIchvD0 (28 June 2017).
Multikulti Germania | Sara Nuru by Julia Alcamo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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