That's funny, a swedish journalist did a nice report on the same topic, probably for exactly the same reason, or two reasons, really - it's a foreign correspondent, so they always need to have a new topic to report home about and, Merkel had mentioned ventilation/Lüften recently, so it was on topic.

Even if it looks like a parody to a German, it is valuable to get an outside look at your own culture to bring a new perspective - I like that too. The article I read included the fact that many renting contracts have conditions about how often it should be ventilated.