PORTFOLIO

"I quietly crept up to the stage and took a peek through the wings. The room smelled of wealth, expensive cigars and good perfume." 

This is how Susanne Erichsen describes the first Miss Germany competition, where she won her first official title, in an interview from the archives. In the Kursaal in Baden-Baden on 2 September 1950, in the middle of Germany's economic miracle. The men are wearing tailcoats, the ladies evening dresses. The candidates in swimming costumes. Not too much skin, but enough, and please unmarried, that was a prerequisite. In addition to the jury, the audience is also allowed to vote and quickly finds a favourite. When the young 24-year-old Berliner finally went to the USA with her title as representative ambassador of beauty, the Americans fell at her feet. Here was no German Nazi blonde, but an elegant brunette, a clever and cosmopolitan woman.

The first beauty contests were held as early as 1909 in the German Empire, continued in the Weimar Republic, were banned during the Nazi era and revived in the western zones after 1945, until the contest finally officially culminated in the social event of the economic miracle. In the Soviet occupation zone and the GDR, the elections remained banned until the time of glasnost and perestroika.

Since the 1960s, the Miss elections have repeatedly been the focus of the new feminist movement. The new image of women was no longer at all suited to honouring the most beautiful woman in Germany. Harsh criticism, scandals about vote rigging and profiteering by the organisers shaped the image of Miss Germany in the public eye in the 1970s and 1980s. After reunification in 1990, an all-German Miss Germany was crowned for the first time in 57 years. 

The film focuses the history of the pageant in Germany, starting with the first Miss Germany pageant in 1950 and tells the story of the pageants in connection with the social change in the image of women in Germany.