In the 1970s, the series "Zur See" was created on a real East German merchant ship with a crew. She became a street sweeper and was the inspiration for "Das Traumschiff" in the West.
Three bars of the title melody and the viewer's memory of one of the greatest successes of GDR television is awake again. "Zur See" was the name of the cult series, which in the 1970s told partly true stories of seafarers on board the "MS J. G. Fichte", a cargo and training ship of the Deutsche Seereederei (DSR).
Exoticism in everyday life in the GDR and well-known actors
"Zur See" was a street sweeper. The 1st channel of GDR television broadcast nine episodes from January 1977 on Fridays at prime time. Even those who would otherwise prefer to watch western television tuned in. The secret of success? Probably also the longing for distant countries, because the series brought a trace of the exotic into the living rooms of the GDR and told of the everyday life of a crew between sea and shore leave in the socialist merchant fleet - adventure included.
At the beginning of August 1974, the who's who of GDR actors boarded the cargo ship for a filming trip from Rostock to Cuba and back. The journey took two months. In addition to the film people, the actual crew were also on board, because the ship also had a “normal” job:6,600 tons of sugar were loaded in Cuba. 166 prospective seafarers were on board, and the television crew consisted of 23 film people, including nine actors. Günter Naumann, Jürgen Zartmann and Horst Drinda shared a cabin. Drinda, the star of the Deutsches Theater, played the captain in the series and filmed himself. This is how pictures of the filming on board came about.
Reality on board finds its place in the series
The film people affectionately called the aging ship their "Johann Schrottlieb Fichte" and let themselves tan in the Caribbean sun. Many real seafarers were also seen in the television scenes. Some stories, such as the one about the machine being damaged by a piston seizure in episode 1, were based on true events. All in all, screenwriter Eva Stein collected more than 100 seafaring stories for her first television series.
Reliable sailors wanted for the GDR merchant fleet
The state-owned company Deutsche Seereederei in Rostock hoped that cooperation with GDR television would help them recruit young people. They were looking for prospective sailors, because applicants in sufficient numbers were rare and also had to be "politically reliable" for travels in the wide world. DEFA came at just the right time with its plans for the "Zur See" series.
The ship hasn't sailed the world's oceans for a long time. At the end of the 1970s, the "MS J. G. Fichte" was decommissioned, sold and handed over to a shipping company from Panama under a different name in the Rostock overseas port. In 1981 she started her last journey - to be scrapped in Pakistan.
Template for Wolfgang Rademann's "Traumschiff"
With "Zur See" the training ship of the GDR made television history. The series was the tangible socialist counterpart to the American shallow soap opera "Love Boat" and inspired the West Berlin television producer Wolfgang Rademann for another television classic:in 1981, four years after the GDR seafarer series was first broadcast, "Das Traumschiff" on air in the West.