Die Zweiflers  Jewish Delicacies

The award-winning series “Die Zweiflers” tells the story of the life of a Jewish family in Frankfurt - witty, warm-hearted and exceptionally honest. A six-part series that plays with clichés without falling for them - while creating complex biographies.

It happens rarely, but every now and then a production comes along that makes you forget all your annoyance with the German-speaking television landscape. Because it is so good and stands up to international comparison on all levels. And because it tells of life in Germany in such a special, specific way that you hardly ever get to see.

Award-winning mini-series

One such case is the series Die Zweiflers, which not only won the Grimme Prize and several German television awards in 2024, but also scooped a prize at the Cannes Festival. More than almost any other series, it deals with the everyday worries, generational conflicts and identity struggles of a Jewish family in Germany with a great deal of humour and truthfulness. “I wasn't primarily interested in filling a gap in German television,” emphasises David Hadda, the creator and showrunner behind the tragicomic six-part series, which he wrote together with his wife Sarah and Juri Sternburg. “In fact, I've been harbouring the idea for this project for a very long time. I just wanted to tell a story that focussed on the microcosm in which I myself grew up.” And with a view to his own childhood in Frankfurt, where Die Zweiflers is now also set, he adds in the interview: Patriarch Symcha wants to sell the family's delicatessen empire in his old age, daughter Mimi is not the least bit upset, grandson Samuel falls in love with a black, non-Jewish cook who becomes pregnant unplanned. The turbulent, colourful family portrait that Die Zweiflers brings to the screen from all these and many other elements is characterised by many things.

Frankfurt is staged as cool as if it were New York

Starting with the tone of voice, which is not afraid of exaggeration, plays with clichés and yet never seems fake. “Labels and genres have never interested me in this respect,” says Hadda, who has also been responsible for series such as Lamia and Deadlines as well as the show Freitag Nacht Jews with his company Turbokultur. “After all, life is never just drama or just comedy. Looking at things with a laughing and a crying eye is also something very Jewish.”

The visual realisation of the series, directed by Anja Marquardt and Clara Zoe My-Linh von Arnim, is also very special, and not just by German standards: it takes a lot to make Frankfurt am Main look as cool and far removed from high gloss as if you were in New York. But nothing in Die Zweiflers is as captivating as the characters and the cast that bring them to life.

Complex and ambivalent biographies

According to Hadda, he has never seen the grandparents' generation of Holocaust survivors - here in the form of the head of the family Symcha Zweifler and his wife Lilka - told in this way in Germany. There is no trace of the usual victim narrative; instead, the series creates complex, ambivalent biographies that are empowering for this very reason, as he says.

Star of the series: the cast

In the search for actors of the right age who speak authentic Yiddish, the showrunner found what he was looking for abroad: Mike Burstyn is Broadway-acclaimed and a star not least in Israel. He also recommended the multiple Tony-nominated artist Eleanor Reissa, who was responsible for the show “From Shtetl to Stage: A Celebration of Yiddish Music and Culture” at New York's Carnegie Hall a few years ago.  

The ensemble in general! Aaron Altaras as Samuel carries the show so casually on his shoulders as if the role was written for him. Sunnyi Melles is such an exciting cast member as Mimi precisely because - as Hadda reports - although she didn't have the Jewish socialisation, as the daughter of a Jewish father she had the right emotional connection: “That's probably why she played the cliché of the Jewish mame much less than some other actresses in the casting.”

Sequel announced

The cast also includes Mark Ivanir as Mimi's husband, Leo Altaras as the youngest Zweifler grandson and none other than Ute Lemper (the only non-Jew in the cast) as their daughter Tammi, who has emigrated to the USA. You can't get enough of them all - and that's another reason why it's such a pleasure that the second season of Die Zweiflers is already in the works.  

May 2025