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I was watching the TV series Weißensee and wanted to say to someone that every episode was a cliffhanger, i.e. the show ended with you wanting to immediately watch the next episode to see how the exciting situation was resolved.
How would a German express this?
Is there anything closer to the concept of cliffhanger than something like "es war sehr spannend"?
This word has already been absorbed into the German language: https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Cliffhaenger
Two versions exist, which only differ in writing:
Der Cliffhanger
Der Cliffhänger
The latter being how a German would write this word the way it is pronounced.
The term Fortsetzung folgt. (to be continued…) is widely known as a catch phrase.
It sometimes used as humour. The typical German deadpan one.
(her) Die Nachbarn haben sich heute ja wieder schlimm gezofft. Irgendwas mit Urlaub…
— Hmja, Fortsetzung folgt. (he doesn't look up from his newspaper)
There's even a song from the German band BAP named Fortsetzung folgt.
There is another plot device in German. It's not perfect but well ...
Offenes Ende / Offener Schluss (open end)
An offenes Ende is the end of a book/movie/etc where the author doesn't tell how the story goes on. There is no Happy or Tragic End, just uncertainty what happens next. You see, it's very similar to a cliffhanger, as both do not tell the whole story and every cliffhanger is a offenes Ende. But i don't think every offenes Ende is a cliffhanger, as a cliffhanger stops at a climax and indicates there will be another episode, another movie, another book which will tell what happens next. An offenes Ende first of all says: "That's all. Imagine yourself what will happen next." There doesn't have to be another book/movie/etc (but maybe there will ^^) and it doesn't have to stop at a climax (but maybe it does ^^).
As noted by the other answers, there is no concise truly German term for "cliffhanger", and the imported noun "Cliffhanger" is commonly used (in context - the word is probably unknown to people who are not specifically interested in storytelling techniques or the logistics of tv series production etc.).
The concept can still be expressed as a noun phrase, though, as
erster Teil eines Zweiteilers (or "einer zweiteiligen Folge/Episode", or "einer Doppelfolge")
i.e. "first part of a two-parter".
Obviously, you can adapt this as needed to match the actual episode count, e.g. "dritter Teil eines Fünfteilers", or even "einer mehrteiligen Folge" if the total number of connected episodes is not known yet.
