The fifth and final season of the German series “Babylon Berlin” has reached audiences in Germany, and its three directors say the show deliberately avoids hindsight about Hitler’s rise to power.
Writers and directors Tom Tykwer, Achim von Borries and Henk Handloegten spoke to DR Nyheder on the occasion of the season’s German premiere. The three have written and directed all 48 episodes over more than 10 years.
According to German public broadcaster ARD, the final season consists of eight episodes. All eight were made available online first in the ARD Mediathek on September 10, 2026, free to stream, with the finale also shown on Das Erste.
An ending the directors did not plan
The last season is set in the first months of 1933, when Hitler came to power. Von Borries told DR that the team had assumed the natural ending was the day Hitler was named chancellor. They then found what he called a very evil plot in the following five weeks.
As described in DR’s reporting, the Nazi party secured the loyalty of the military during those weeks and deployed thousands of paramilitary SA members as auxiliary police. It also obtained backing and money from Germany’s largest industrialists, before emergency laws and mass arrests of communists followed the Reichstag fire.
DR notes that after the November 1932 election, the Nazi party held 196 of the 584 seats in the Reichstag. Because Social Democrats and communists refused to cooperate, Hitler was able to take the chancellorship.
“Babylon Berlin” is counted among Europe’s most expensive non-English-language series and has employed more than 2,000 performers and technicians over its run. The series is built around Berlin’s nightlife of the 1920s and early 1930s, with music playing a central role, including guest appearances by Bryan Ferry and French singer Zaho de Sagazan.
Characters without hindsight
Tykwer told DR that the characters have no knowledge of how history develops and no sense of impending doom. He said adding such a sense would be filmmaker nonsense, and that the team worked throughout to show events from the perspective of ordinary people.
Von Borries said nobody at the time announced that the next 12 years would belong to Hitler. He described the reaction as closer to a shrug, with people assuming the new man would last a few months.
Tykwer said the season shows that democracy is vulnerable and lacks the means to resist authoritarian voices. He added that he believes many countries are better equipped today than they were 90 years ago. Von Borries compared society to a pendulum that tends to doubt its own progress.
All three directors were born in the 1960s in West Germany. Handloegten has said that the bubbling intelligence and biting irony of German cultural life disappeared when Jewish musicians, actors and writers were killed or emigrated.
