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  • Konrad Werner: Ash Over Germany – the movie

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Konrad Werner: Ash Over Germany – the movie

God has spoken. He sent out a giant cloud of poison as divine judgement – partly to promote road travel, but mainly to give us more ideas for films. Here's a brief movie treatment of Angela Merkel's crazy journey across the world.

God has spoken. He sent out a giant cloud of poison as divine judgement – partly to promote road travel, but mainly to give us more ideas for films. Here’s a brief movie treatment of Angela Merkel’s crazy journey across the world.

The setting:

We see a news reporter on TV, saying something like: “This week, there is very little to report in the world of German politics, because there is no politics.” Behind him, we see that all official government business stopped – no state visits, no meetings, no accidental masturbation suicides. In Berlin’s government district, we see tumbleweed spilling across the road, abandoned horses and carts wandering around, and lonely dogs barking in the distance.

The plot:

The cause is a giant apocalyptic column of ash in the sky, filled, they say, with huge glass particles ready to rain on people’s heads. The German chancellor is stuck in the USA, where she has been waging a war, and in her place the well-meaning but insane vice-chancellor, Guido Westerwelle, has seized his moment, overthrown the constitution and become king, complete with a privy council of sycophantic lunatics. While Merkel is racing back to regain control, Westerwelle’s plan is to abolish tax and make anyone who doesn’t have enough money do all the necessary work to keep the country going – shovelling volcanic ash from the streets, performing surgery and TEFL teaching.

Merkel then embarks on a zany race against time using different hilarious vehicles – all involving animals, with whom she learns to communicate and who teach her animal wisdom. A school of dolphins tows her across the oceans, elephants help her negotiate the tricky Iberian peninsula. At one point she is caught in an avalanche in the Alps and a group of mountain goats carry her unconscious to Vienna. Finally, some mild-mannered tapirs agree to escort her back across Germany to Berlin, all the while teaching the previously cynical politician about the beauty of life and why we need bees.

The climax:

Westerwelle has planned to destroy Merkel on her arrival in Berlin, but the Bundeswehr is so ill-led and confused by his orders that they are easily overthrown by Merkel’s unit of spider monkeys armed only with soft fruit. In the final scene, a contrite Westerwelle asks for his old job as foreign minister back and Merkel magnanimously says yes – on condition that he only travels by animal-drawn vehicle, and he lets a barn owl “do all the talking.”