Wikipedia
Polylux, the self-appointed "last/worst on the first [channel]" ("Das Letzte im Ersten"), was a weekly half-hour German television program hosted by Tita von Hardenberg. It was produced by RBB for Das Erste and was broadcast in the timeslot on Thursdays at 11:15 CET.
The show, which was concerned with politics, culture, and social trends, offered a lively blend of documentary and satirical items. Typically it began with a satirical ' report' by Carsten von Ryssen related to a current matter of public concern. The show's essential hipness, which was underlined by Hardenberg's crisp announcements and the visual and thematic backdrop of the city of Berlin, infuses the subsequent documentary pieces with a certain esprit. Thematically, their scope ran from coverage of political and social movements to current trends in underground and popular culture, whereby one piece was usually biographical in nature, setting it off from the more panoramic style of the rest of the show. Less serious segments often echoed the satire of the keynote feature. Regular items included the (usually biweekly) "Berlin for Beginners" ("Berlin für Anfänger") and the show's end note, in which Manfred Dumke, an elderly pensioner, shared his curious insights on current affairs with the rest of Germany from the comfort of his own living room.
The feature "Berlin for Beginners" was in fact a vestige from the beginnings of the program in the mid 1990s when Polylux was still called "Tip TV" and was the televised version of the Berlin city magazine Tip, then already hosted by Hardenberg, but on a regional TV station, FAB. When Tip was taken over in 1997, the new owners didn't want the show, but fortunately for Hardenberg the ORB was interested in the format, and so it was taken on under the new title of Polylux. In 2000 the ARD adopted Polylux into its late night programming on Das Erste, showing it at 04:00. However the youthful appeal of the program quickly earned it an earlier slot, which was on Mondays at midnight. It was then moved to a slot on Thursdays before it was canceled.
The Polylux was an overhead projector produced in the German Democratic Republic. It also functioned as a generic name for overhead projectors in the GDR.
The Polylux was produced in the VEB ( Volkseigener Betrieb: people’s enterprise) Phylatex-Physikgeräte DDR, in Frankenberg near Chemnitz (then known as Karl-Marx-Stadt). It was, amongst others, widespread in educational institutions in the GDR. After 2004, Polylux was a registered trademark of the company Polytechnik Frankenberg GmbH, which as a successor firm of the original Polylux producer continued to produce the device. Until the Wende in 1989, 27,000 devices were produced on average each year, and were also exported to the Soviet Union. In the year 2004, 6,000 devices were still being produced.
In 2006, the enterprise closed down.
The word Polylux (from Greek and Latin, meaning "much light") originates with Erich Schöpe, a physicist and former director of the Polylux manufacturer. Today, the word enjoys cult status as a typical GDR word and is still widespread in everyday language of the East German states.
A television show produced by Ostdeutscher Rundfunk Brandenburg (now Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg) was named after the Polylux with reference to the "enlightening" function of the device.
The body of the Polylux consisted of plastic and contained a ventilator with delayed shutdown in order to avoid a heat build-up. The light source was a halogen light bulb for a standard line voltage. It contained a switch for two different light intensity levels.
Originally, the lenses of the device were made out of glass. In order to reduce the weight, lenses made of plastic were later used. In particular, the fresnel lens with its large surface area, on which transparencies were placed, was made out of plastic.
Polylux may refer to:
- Polylux (overhead projector), produced in the German Democratic Republic
- Polylux (TV program), is a weekly half-hour German television program