Discourse about preserving "Railway-Romanticism" - Advocate seeks dialogue with SWR chief executive
In a move that has left many rail enthusiasts disheartened, the popular TV show Eisenbahn-Romantik is set to be cancelled by SWR. The show, which has been running since the early 1990s, has inspired countless trips to various train tracks, stations, locomotives, and carriages across the southwest and Germany.
The cancellation of the show has attracted the attention of politics, with the AfD faction of the state parliament in Stuttgart criticizing SWR for the decision. They accused SWR of "callously cancelling" the show, and argued that the broadcaster is not the mouthpiece of the spirit of the times, but is committed to the whole country.
Ulrich Klumpp, a 57-year-old businessman from Speyer, is leading the charge to save Eisenbahn-Romantik. Klumpp, who has watched the episode about the Sauschwänzlebahn in the Black Forest at least 20 times, is behind a petition to keep the show on air. As of the end of June, around 13,000 signatures have been collected on the Open Petition platform.
Klumpp has also taken the initiative to meet with SWR's director Kai Gniffke to secure the continuation of the Eisenbahn-Romantik documentary series. He hopes to convince Gniffke of the show's importance and the impact it has had on rail fans like himself.
The show, which was initially intended as a filler in SWR's program, has become a beloved staple. Its memorable theme music, "Sentimental Journey" by Les Brown, was heard at the beginning and end of episodes. Images of the old narrow-gauge locomotive of the Museumsbahn Ochsenhausen-Warthausen in Upper Swabia were typically shown at the start of an episode.
The cancellation of Eisenbahn-Romantik is particularly hard on people in the southwest, where railway tradition is deeply rooted. The show's success led to it being broadcast on other third programs of ARD and ARTE. Hagen von Ortloff, considered the inventor of Eisenbahn-Romantik, presented the show until the end of 2015 and remained the only presenter of the series. In a recently published YouTube video, von Ortloff appealed to SWR to keep the Eisenbahn-Romantik editorial team.
As SWR announced that the show will no longer be produced, with the editorial team being dissolved by the end of the year, rail enthusiasts like Klumpp are left wondering if the magic of Eisenbahn-Romantik will ever return.
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