By JAKE BLEED
Alumni News staff
An interest in video production combined with a high school friendship to put Wade Weichel behind bars.
Weichel spent three months in the spring of 1998 working on the set of “Hinter Gittern” (Behind Bars), a popular German television drama set in a women’s prison.
Weichel’s interest in traveling overseas, particularly in Germany, was partly the result of high school friendship. Melanie Seitz had spent a year studying at Fairbury High School with Weichel. The two became friends and kept in touch after Seitz returned to her native Berlin.
“Then I called her one day and said, ‘I’m coming to Germany,’” Weichel said.
Weichel participated in the Deutsch in Deutschland program, a Berlin-based intensive language program offered to students around the world. Program participants spend three months in intensive German language classes in Berlin and are then offered the choice of further study or an internship.
Tina Cassel at NU’s International Affairs office said students were attracted to the DID program because it did not require a language background and offered the chance for professional experience.
“We try to arrange an internship for every student,” Cassel said.
Professional experience that may not be open to undergraduate experience in the United States might be available in Europe, Cassel said.
Weichel, a broadcasting major with minors in German, English and theatre, asked to be placed in an internship in video production. He was the first DID student to ask for work in production, and finding a position took some time. After some phone calls and an interview conducted in two languages, Weichel found himself on the way to the set of “Hinter Gittern.”
His internship was through Cieneimpulse, an international production and equipment rental company. Cieneimpulse rented equipment to Grundy-Ufa, one of Germany’s major private production companies, which produces “Hinter Gittern.” Along with the rented equipment, Cieneimpulse provided a technician and an assistant, in this case, Weichel.
“If you go to Hollywood, you’re probably not going to get an internship like that,” Cassel said.
Weichel said he helped move equipment around the set, repair cables and do a lot of odd jobs.
“I was pretty much a lackey boy,” Weichel said.
All of his work was, of course, conducted in German and not in vocabulary commonly taught in the classroom.
“School vocabulary doesn’t really teach much for production sets,” Weichel said.
Weichel got a quick, hard lesson in behind the scenes German thanks, in part, to his supervisor. Hilmer Tornow grew up in East Germany where he learned Russian in school, unlike West German students who learned English.
“There was no cheating with him,” Weichel said. Weichel said Tornow was patient with him, and taking orders from his supervisor often required boiling a conversation down into easily understandable parts and roundabout explanations.
“It was rough,” Weichel said. “I almost quit after the first two weeks.”
Weichel said he worked between 50 and 60 hours a week, starting at 8 a.m. each day and ending when the shooting did. The day’s work would often stretch past 8 p.m. The set of “Hinter Gittern” was in a renovated British Army Barracks in Spandau, a neighborhood outside Berlin. From his apartment in downtown Berlin, Weichel said he had an hour-and-a-half commute to and from the studio each day.
Weichel earned $200 a month, which he said was rare; most interns in the DID program worked unpaid.
Even Weichel’s name presented him with some difficulty. Far from being a common German name, wade (pronounced vaa-daa) is the German word for a calf muscle, a source of some amusement to Weichel’s coworkers.
“It’s like your name was ‘ankle,’” Weichel said.
Weichel said many Germans also have a hard time differentiating between the letters “d” and “t” at the end of the English words. So for those Germans who had some understanding of English, Weichel’s first name was often pronounced and understood as “wait.”
“I actually got used to being called ‘wait’ at work,” Weichel said.
Despite the difficulties, Weichel said he enjoyed his work in German and became a good friend of many of the cast members. Weichel said “Hinter Gittern” was one of the most popular Monday night television shows in Germany. Some of Weichel’s friends on the cast were famous in Germany, giving Weichel some perspective on fame.
“I’m talking to people who are famous on German television, but to me they’re just normal people,” Weichel said.
After Weichel’s three-month internship ended, he traveled through Europe before heading home, visiting London, Prague and Amsterdam before arriving in Lincoln to start his fifth and final year at NU.
Although he said he would love to return to Europe, Weichel said his lack of a work permit would bar him from finding long-term employment. Weichel said he knew a number of people working in video production in Berlin and in Europe in general but that gaining a work permit would be nearly impossible.
“I have all these connections over there, but here in the U.S. I don’t really have any,” Weichel said.
Weichel worked during the past school year for the NU Information Services faculty support division. He described his work as integrating Internet and multimedia into classrooms and said his interest in computers has come in handy with the job.
Weichel graduated in May. Although he said he planned someday to return to Europe, Weichel said he would first look for work closer to home.