The now deceased Benedict XVI. resigned as Pope at the time, “Fack ju Göhte” was number one at Germany’s box office and “Wake Me Up” by Avicii was the hit of the year: That happened in 2013. The current series world star Jenna Ortega (“Wednesday”) was only then – as well as climate activist Greta Thunberg – a ten-year-old girl. A lot has happened in ten years. Time for a little comparison of 2013 with 2023.
“Vegan for fit” was the most successful cookbook of the year at the time, and its author Attila Hildmann has since become a right-wing conspiracy teller, went into hiding and is wanted on an arrest warrant.
“House of Cards”-Hype
Netflix was not yet active in the German-speaking market at the time, but “House of Cards” was a hype among series fans (in Germany via Sky). The star of the series, Kevin Spacey, faces allegations of sexual assault and various charges today.
The dating app Tinder has only been around for a few months in 2013, while the erotica platform OnlyFans hasn’t even started yet. Tiktok also only came up in 2016. But Instagram already had 100 million users ten years ago – or even just; because today it should be 1.5 billion.
Ten years ago, abbreviations like “POV” weren’t common knowledge – POV stands for “Point of View” (i.e. “point of view” or “point of view” of a clip/person). Even “TBT” was not yet a network phenomenon (stands for “Throwback Thursday” – i.e. “Retrospective Thursday” for nostalgic memories on Insta and Co.).
Foreign Oscar for Michael Haneke
When talking about gender and sexual identities in 2013 it was mostly just LGBT, where today the longer abbreviation LGBTQIA is hip (which then stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans people, queer and intersex people and asexual people – with the plus sign as a placeholder for other identities and genders is meant – this can also be symbolized by an asterisk).
The so-called foreign Oscar for the best non-English language film went to the Austrian Michael Haneke in 2013 for his euthanasia chamber play “Love” (original title: “Amour”), which was shot in French. The material is planned as a play at the Salzburg Festival in 2023, directed by Karin Henkel.
On German television, ZDF three-part series such as “Das Adlon” and “Our Mothers, Our Fathers” were successful. In 2013, the most-watched TV film was the Münster “Tatort” – in the episode “Summ, summ, summ” Axel Prahl and Jan Josef Liefers had guest star Roland Kaiser, who mimed a hit star named Roman König.
Of the five new “Tatort” teams that started back then, only the one with Wotan Wilke Möhring is really active today. The others are gone (the short-lived Erfurt team and Devid Striesow in Saarbrücken) or at least missing (Til Schweiger in Hamburg and Nora Tschirner/Christian Ulmen in Weimar).
Beginning of the protests in Ukraine
What else happened – or not ten years ago? The practice fee has not been collected since the beginning of the year, there was no trace of Corona, the FDP failed at the five percent hurdle in the federal elections and the AfD party was only just founded. The inflation rate was only 1.0 percent in 2013, it is currently is known to be far higher (2022: 7.9).
And in Ukraine, the so-called Euromaidan protests began in 2013, the final phase of which included the Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea, which resulted in progressive destabilization. The Russian war of aggression in Ukraine has been going on for almost a year now.
Conclusion: 2023 is happening on the same planet as 2013, but in a different world, as it is often said today.
