That too “TV comeback” announced here the man who once became famous as the “beautiful TV judge” beyond the Sat.1 afternoon lasted exactly three minutes and eight seconds, and it was scary too. Because instead of in a courtroom, where Alexander Hold passed judgments every weekday until 2013 about insulin killers, lottery king torturers and tennis coach killers, he can be seen every Wednesday evening on the special-interest broadcaster TLC on a, Hui Buh, cemetery in Wiesbaden since February. It’s always a ghostly night there, gravestones glow in the moonlight, fog drifts past, but Alexander Hold, this devil with a state exam, boldly fights his way through his moderation in “Grave Secrets – Dead Witnesses Don’t Lie”.
It is one of those True Crime formats Made in USA that the Discovery subsidiary TLC uses to liven up its late-night programming. In other words, the horrors of real criminal cases that are recreated in scenes. Intermediate German celebrities provide the local touch as “hosts”. Particularly popular with TLC: “Tatort” commissioners like Ulrike Folkerts (“Your worst nightmare”) and Andrea Sawatzki (“Deadly Sin”). Veronica Ferres has also taken part (“Married with Secrets”). With Alexander Hold, a real judge from Kempten in the Allgäu is now there. For the “Grave Secrets” premiere, he was dealing with the violent death of a mother of three in Grand Rapids, Michigan. A dictation machine reel offs her supposed last will in the American original sound, whereupon the question from Hold’s Bavarian-Swabian mouth looms: Does Sandra Dyst’s lively-sounding voice lead to a solution to the case? Uiuiui, really exciting.
After 47 minutes you are in this murder business from 1999 (spoiler alert: it was the husband!) smarter, but also a bit perplexed: What can a German lawyer contribute to investigations into an ancient case from the USA besides his well-known television face? Is that kind of thing at all appropriate for someone who four years ago wanted to move into Frank-Walter Steinmeiers instead of Schloss Bellevue and ended up as a member of the Free Voters in the Bavarian state parliament in autumn 2018? Has the little one in parliamentary business possibly become too boring for the politician Alexander Hold, so that he seeks the thrill between graves?
-Exactly at eight thirty in the morning, his face pops up on the screen to discuss all these questions. There are still a few hours left before it will be used in the 74th plenary session. A “Corona Question Time” is scheduled in the state parliament. And Vice President Hold – he is the third of a total of six in the executive committee of Ilse Aigner (CSU) – is the first to make it clear that he is satisfied with his previous record in politics. Of course, when he was still on the city council in Kempten, where he is still deeply rooted with two boys and the second wife, it was easier to drill thick boards than in state politics. But what, for example, was decided on Wednesday evening in Berlin at the latest Corona summit with the Chancellor, well, that corresponds quite clearly to what his free voters in Bavaria had been propagating for weeks: “We call it the ‘Bayernplan’,” explains Hold “The Prime Minister was initially against it and is now calling it the ‘opening matrix’.”
Leaving the political banter aside: Markus Söder and Alexander Hold have something in common. They both love being on TV. But not everyone loves being on TV. Söder, for example, who was still home minister in Bavaria at the time, got in a lot of trouble when he played himself in the BR soap “Dahoam is dahoam”. Discussions arose as to how long and whether a politician was allowed to appear in a fictional plot at all. And with Hold, too, it wasn’t long after the first episode of the cemetery that the political opponent came up via Local Press foamed: With the “highly respected office” of the Vice President in the state parliament, such a “rather bizarre and sensational” appearance is “not easily compatible”.
At least the compatibility with the scolded sees this in principle. Can regular filming dates be reconciled with my professional political commitment? “Of course not!”, Alexander Hold replied to his own rhetorical question, “my days and weeks are more than full.” But with “Grave Secrets” the circumstances would have been right: First of all, he is a curious person who is happy about it have that after various “crime scene” commissioners, a judge has now also been asked for a true crime format. His professional experience as a criminal lawyer would of course also help in terms of the credibility of the moderation, even if only in one or the other comment on the differences between the legal systems in Germany and the USA. Second, last year, big vacation trips were out of the question due to the corona. And so it was possible to shoot these 20 episodes in a night in August in the cemetery. “Quasi as a vacation job,” says Hold.
It’s a bit scary where some people spend their vacation, right? Hold acknowledges with a shrug that other people, especially those in his Allgäu homeland, see his latest TV project with a question mark, “because something like that can quickly sink to a bad level”: “You can do whatever you want on TV . You will always find someone who has not seen your show but thinks it is fundamentally bad. ”That has been with him all his television life. “And if you then also work for private television, that is viewed critically per se.” Almost defiantly, he adds the sentence afterwards: “Power Judith Rakers exactly the same as me, only in the ARD, nobody gets the idea that it could be level. “
A level problem? There was already that in Alexander Hold’s TV résumé. What were the arguments about these staged judicial battles on afternoon private television in the noughties: real judges, lawyers and public prosecutors negotiated invented cases in front of a court setting. The witnesses and accused, all represented by laypeople, howled, barked and made a noise. Barbara Salesch was the first German judge to venture onto this terrain in 1999. Alexander Hold, then a judge at the Kempten District Court, followed her two years later on the same station with youthful, sporty vigor (for the eight-second opening credits to “Richter Alexander Hold”, where he lightly pokes up the stairs with a briefcase, they shot a whole in the Berlin Superior Court Night long!). Both shows took off to a permanent high-altitude flight, which surprisingly continued after the TV cut-off, both in linear repetitive loops and meanwhile on Youtube With each with its own channel. If that’s not surprising: Alexander Hold.
“More than busy in politics”
With all the exaggerations and exaggerations that such a format should have, he believes that his court show “Richter Alexander Hold” has an “inner strength” that some initially did not recognize or underestimate: “It is not limited to solving a case , as it is usual in crime thriller, but it classifies a criminal offense: What is the correct reaction of the rule of law? What is a just punishment? ”In a court hearing, these questions could be“ examined from different perspectives ”. In this way, the audience would have the opportunity to “adjust and align their value system”. Well, this pedagogical impetus is no longer necessarily remembered. After all, during the peak phase, six different court programs were shown on television at times, which turned the spiral upwards and became unrealistic to the point of pain. However, Hold emphasizes that he did not participate, and Sat.1 and the production (Constantin Entertainment) also quickly recognized “that this was not the right way in the long run”.
The retired television judge describes the greatest professional coup of his life as the fact that he had judicial independence written into the very first contract for “Richter Alexander Hold”. Whenever requests are made to him, you can shorten your judgment or you can ask the witness this and that, he insisted on his contract: No, I’ll do it here on the show just as I would in the judiciary . I ask questions that are relevant and not that satisfy a sensationalism. Whether on television or in politics, what he says must bear his signature, “otherwise I could not be authentic”. In the more or less scripted improvisational theater “Richter Alexander Hold”, this sometimes led to him ultimately making completely different judgments than the editors had imagined beforehand.
© Discovery-In recent years he has been asked repeatedly for similar formats. Alexander Hold is convinced that a renaissance of court shows on television is imminent, but no longer with him. And then he points out his advanced age, next week he will be 59 and oh, all the gray hair. . . Speaking of which, where did you go? Until last week, which is immediately noticeable in these times, the gray was still growing on his head. Hold’s hair is now beautiful again. On March 2nd at eight in the morning, the happy early bird explains, he was sitting in the salon. But back to the subject of law and order on television: Age cannot be an argument, after all, lawyer Ingo Lenßen is a year older and newer present again with its own Sat.1 broadcast? The difference between Ingo Lenßen and him is: “Ingo has the time for it, I’m more than busy in politics.”
Basically, Stefan Raab’s five-time “Wok World Cup” participant Alexander Hold wants to be recorded at this point, and he does not rule out jobs on TV today either. In the case of parliamentarians, it is “downright desirable that they stand with both feet in their previous lives and do not completely disappear into a political bubble”. Anyone who stands behind the counter in their own butcher’s shop on Saturdays after a plenary week does not have to put up with the accusation of having distanced themselves from the people. The decisive point: Any activity outside of politics should not lead to conflicts of interest and must be compatible in terms of time with the commitment to the common good. Hold considers five days of filming during the parliamentary break to be “completely unsuspicious”.
Whether he, who has been a member of the BR Broadcasting Council since 2019, categorically excludes any television careers, is still to be known from him. “A regular engagement is certainly not compatible,” says Hold, “by the way, it depends on what you give yourself up for.” He was not open to slapstick then as now: “I am a lawyer, not an actor. Anything related to it can be done with me at any time. ”Hold can imagine that like Norbert Blüm happily taking part in quiz shows. “This way people can see that we politicians are not all just paper-eaters and speech-holders.” And a politician on “Beat the Star” – why not? “As long as he is fit.” For him – as I said, age! – Unfortunately, this question no longer arises. Since he can no longer keep up “purely sporty”. “Politicians are not innocent of that.”
–
