Archiv der Kategorie: German Politics

German Politics

Give him his bike back…

It may be a plot to demonstrate the inefficieny of the increasing closed circuit surveillance and increased policing of public space – or just C/conservative terror against one of the remaining true leftists in German politics.

Last Tuesday, German MP Hans-Christian Ströbele’s bycicle was stolen from the east entry of the Bundestag, despite the presence of security cameras and police.

As Ströbele mentions on his website that he needs his bike to execute his mandate, there’s a chance Friedrich Merz, the former CDU/CSU economic policy spokesperson saw an opportunity to beef up his “street cred” by finally really stealing a bike, and not just making it up, like he did in 2002…

In any case, if you want to help Mr Ströebele get his bike back, he’s posted a very detailed description with photo here (via German MP Jakob Mierscheid’s blog).

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German Politics, oddly enough

I’m leaving the country.

You know what? A sizeable portion of Germans are probably truly mad, after all. I have just learnt of a poll result indicating that a third of Germans would support a political comeback of Oskar Lafontaine, the loony left former chairman of the Social Democrats, who blocked each and every economic reform initiative in the 1990s. Yes, *that* Oskar. The “I’m against it, what are we talking about?” Lafontaine.

Frankly, if Lafontaine had been born in the US, he would be advocating Creationism and write op-eds about the failure of science to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the earth is not flat.

I mean, has anyone ever “really” seen the entire globe?

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German Politics

Shorter IG Metall.

“You can be as flexible as you want to, work as much as you want to, earn as much as you want to – but only if we allow it.”

In a move displaying the current hipocrisy of German trade unions in all its beauty, IG Metall, the poweful metal worker union, struck a deal with Siemens AG that will increase working hours in one plant to 40 hours a week – something the union previously claimed would be the end of the world as we know it.

Apparently it’s not – as long as the union’s officials get to decide instead of the people affected…

More via Deutsche Welle.

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German Politics

She Was Not Surprised?

I’m a little confused about a statement by the Chancellor’s spokesperson, Bela Anda, as reported by Netzeitung.

As you might have heard, yesterday, an unemployed teacher was able to approach Mr Schroeder during a campaign rally in Mannheim and slap him. The Chancellor was, according to Mr Anda, not seriously injured by the “attack” and the perpetrator, who, interestingly, is – and for technical reasons will remain – a candidate for the Social Democrats in next months local elections despite immediate cancellation of his party membership, was released from police custody later in the evening. He faces charges of assault and insult.

Physical attacks on politicians are, luckily, very rare in current German politics – so there it is always surprising to hear about them. Or maybe not – apparently, Mrs Schroeder has been expecting such reactions to her husband’s politics all along – or how else is one to interpret Mr Anda’s statement that she “had been startled but was not really surprised.”

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cinema, German Politics

Mission Impossible.

It may sound a little prejudiced, but it’s true. Ethan Hunt, aka Tom Cruise, finally found an impossible mission – in Germany, of course.

Wolfgang Thierse, President of the German Bundestag made it clear that it will indeed be impossible to shoot some action scenes for the next Tom Cruise star vehicle, Mission Impossible 3, in the glass dome of the Bundestag. After Cruise had visited the dome in April, the studio’s location manager had asked for permission to shoot there but was turned down because of concerns regarding the “dignity” of Parliament.

Dignity? On which planet do Mr Thierse and his advisors live (although I have a hunch this was Thierse’s decision. It sounds just like him…)? Turning down such a huge PR opportunity for German Democracy with the alleged “dignity” of the Bundestag is beyond me. What’s undignified about visualing the new Reichstag, a symbol of German Democracy, to a billion people, many of whom will probably have only seen images of the building with Hitler or the Kaiser parading in front of it. What’s undignified about raising people’s interest in Berlin? What’s undignified about shooting a movie? It’s certainly inconvenient, but I am rather sure overlapping schedules were not a fundamental problem. Sure, most films set in, say, The White House, aren’t actually shot there – but does that matter for the “dignity of the institution”? Besides, what was more undignified – Denzel Washington’s “Murder at 1600” or the questionable election procedures and results in Florida?

To be at least a little balanced here, I haven’t read the screenplay – and if I had, I would not tell you for free. So maybe it is indeed objectionable with respect to some concept of dignity. But I don’t think so. Quite honestly, I have a feeling the decision to keep Cruise out of the Bundestag is telling more about the way representative Democrcacy is understood by senior German politicians – including Wolfgang Thierse – than anything else. Must dignity always mean distance? Remember cosy Bonn? And would Thierse have declined the request to use the dome for a Yo-Yo Ma documentary? A video for Herbert Groenemeyer? I’m sure there’s a line somewhere, but does it exclude action movies?

The rejection is a little reminiscent of the extremely embarrassing debate preceding Christo and Jean Claude’s wrapping of the Reichstag in 1995, which was later hailed as impressive art and an opportunity for Germans to re-embrace the Reichstag building as a cornerstone of their Democracy.

But at least some politicians seem to have learned this lesson. Walter Momper, former Mayor of Berlin, and currently President of Berlin’s state Parliament has offered his chamber as an alternative to the producers. His bid might be successful as the film will be shot in the Babelsberg studios just outside Berlin, where – suddenly – more and more “Hollywood” movies are being shot – predominantly because studios in Los Angeles are far more expensive.

Mr Momper therefore rightly grasped the opportunity to benefit from supporting this kind of “reverse outsourcing” without undignified excuses. But then, he doesn’t have a dome…

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German Politics

Me, And The Party.

Gentle Readers,

I know some of you have been following my rants from the early days back in Summer 2002, some have joined in the heydey of political blogging, back in Spring 2003, and some may not have followed the blog at all, and just clicked the wrong button on their mouse.

Well, for those of you who know my writings, and who know the German party system, I have a question: Which party, if any, do you think, should I be a part of?

Weiterlesen →

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compulsory reading, German Politics

He won’t give quite the Horst.

Sich zum Horst machen – loosely translated “to give the Horst” – is a rather old fashioned, 1970s way to express that someone has seriously embarrassed himself. The German idiom had sudden hopes for a revival last week when CDU, CSU and FDP announced that Horst Köhler, then still managing director at the IMF, would accept their nomination for the almost exclusively ceremonial German presidency.

Not that this specific Horst did not have the most outstanding professional merits and, moreover, commanded the trust of Helmut Kohl, who had nominated him – a few years ago – to run the East European Development Bank. Surprisingly, this fact was never really mentioned in the explanations of yet another defeat of Mr Schäuble, the long-time frontrunner for the nomination but for several years now a veritable enemy of his former mentor, Helmut Kohl, who, by all means, can still pull some strings in the CDU.

But the fact that Mr Köhler was completely unknown to the wider German public made the nomination certainly a little bit more risky than it would have been in the case of a nomination of Mr Schäuble. There was – and there still is – a tiny chance that his candidacy could turn out to give the Horst, quite literally.

But there are also advantages. He can start from scratch, building on the enormous advance of trust that those that know him, professionally, and personally, have injected into the German discourse after the nomination.

Today was his Coming Out. After an interview with Der Spiegel it was time to get on the bigger stage and show his face to the people he will likely soon represent: He was given an unsurprising warm welcome by the conservative lead print medium Bild (that has recently been scorned by the chancellor” )
before going on tv tonight for a one hour interview.

Before, when his supporters tried to explain why he would be the right President in times of change, most arguments focussed on his professional and international background. But even after being only briefly introduced into Mr and Mrs Köhler’s life by an only slightly gifted and scarcely briefed interviewer I am far more confident than before that he is indeed not just intellectually the candidate we need: He is not the early capitalist IMF monster as which some will try to paint him in the coming months. But hailing from the poor background of a large refugee family that lost everything three times until he was ten, he is someone who knows first hand that sometimes, change may be for the better. And he seems like an exemplary father even in light of a tragic illness of his daughter and a certainly unpleasant teenage fatherhood of his son.

Despite evidently carefully crafted questions and answers on these personal issues, both Mr and Mrs Köhler showed an understandable, visible uneasiness. There certainly is a difference between theoretical readiness for an office and the practical torment that he – and to some extent his family – will go through in the next months. Some things in Germany did change since he left six years ago. For one thing, the government has moved to Berlin, and so has much of the “political” media. The cosy interaction of politicians and journalists back in the good old days in Bonn are certainly gone. There may still be a bit more of an informal consensus banning overly extensive, certainly unethical reporting about politicians’ families, but that consensus is certainly wearing thinner and thinner. So this aspect will take some time to get used to.

I am almost certain the new “first family” will get used to it. I suppose they will see this as just one more challenge and feel the obligation to serve – out of a sense of duty. In the Bild-interview he said he felt deep gratitude and the need to give something back to the country that let a farmer’s son rise to President by giving him the opportunity of education. Now that’s what I call a “German Dream!”

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German Politics

Hamburg. Quite Spontaneous.

What’s happening to my blogging spontaneity? Whenever I try to write about something important I end up writing an almost finished 1500 word article which is to academic and dry to read. I hope that’s just a phase.


So today I will briefly say something about last week’s Hamburg election that I wanted to say last Sunday but have not since. I actually started a post at fistful but guess what, it became longer and longer, and wasn’t actually finished when I had to leave. The poor unfinished article is still saved as draft…


OK, I know this will be counterintuitive and contrary to many of the analyses you may have read or seen with respect to Ole von Beust’s stunning victory in Hamburg. I argue, and I think this is backed by some early demographic analyses I have seen, that the election is not simply good for Mr von Beust or the CDU but also – to some extent – for the Chancellor.


To be sure, Gerhard Schroeder would have preferred an SPD victory, but this defeat is, in my opinion, actually strenghthening his political agenda within the party. The demographic election analyses will show (I assume they will in the end, some preliminary numbers broadcast did indicate this) that – to the extent that federal politics influenced this election – the SPD’s worst enemy was not, as suspected, the people’s general reform fatigue, but rather the public’s disappointment about unprofessional legislation and lack of real leadership. The latter, of course, is a straightforward consequence of the SPD’s internal struggles between reformers and those old style loony lefts whose constituency is leaving the party in scores.


Thus, a dissection of the Hamburg election will show that the cahncellor was right in his claim that much of the SPD’s difficulties lie in the communicative realm, which was politico-parlor for internal disputes. These quarrels, alongside sloppy execution, less so the SPD’s policies, were the main culprits for this defeat.


He will certainly make the loony left feel it. And rightly so.

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German Politics

Odd Negotiations. Weird People.

I actually wanted to comment on the way the chancellor will finally get his proposed tax break in an all party round-table talk at least slightly reminiscent of the post communist round-tables, when there was no stable old government left and no new one in sight. That’s not quite the case in Germany, one would tend to think, but as tonight’s decision making process indicates – maybe it’s just not as easy to see.


But they haven’t decided yet and I can’t be bothered to wait. So instead, my gentle readers, I have decided to regale you with a little story from the wacko department.


Today, I stumbled over another indicator that the internet’s lowering of “market entry barriers” is definitely helping all kinds of bizarre fringe opinions to see the light of the day. You know, I’m all with Voltaire with respect to free speech, but sometimes I just can’t help but wonder if too low transaction costs also mean that a lot of people are carelessly giving up their chance of remaining a philospher by not opening their mouths…


The victim of the day is a nineteen year old American, David McNamara, who calls himself the “Anti-Porn-Guy“. I’m still not sure if he is real, as his website has not been updated in a while – but some quick googling suggested he might be. Now I don’t mind people being for or against pornography, but for a nineteen year old male, being against the depiction of undressed females is a bit reminiscent of the “fish are friends”-sharks in “Find Nemo”… So, without further delay, here’s an excerpt from the diary of an American Taliban –

I believe in a national dress code. The National Dress Code (NDC) will be as follows:


    All persons must wear clothing from their neck to three inches below their knees when in public or in the presence of children.

    Women MUST wear dresses. Trousers are NOT lady-like and therefore, women ought not to wear them.

    Jeans are to be banned.

    Any profanity or sexual references on clothing will be banned.

    Businesses must comply with the NDC. Failure to do so will require business owners to sell their operation to the highest bidder.

    Failure to obey the NDC will be subject to a fine NOT exceeding $10,000 and/or up to 30 days imprisonment.


Well, a lot more could be written about this, and it would certainly start with my impression that Mr McNamara’s problem is not that he sees too many girls in trousers… but I’ll leave you with your own thoughts tonight. However, he’s certainly earned himself a position in my personal wacko top-ten – just behind the Japanese actress who told me that the Nazis were in fact alien manipulated robots…

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German Politics, Political Theory, quicklink

What’s Left On the Left?

Joschka Fischer has suggests that ten years after the end of the Cold War, a renewed debate about the meaning of “left” policies, is “important, and overdue“.

He’s right. The victory of Ronald Coase over Karl Marx (in battle not very m any people ever identified as such) has only grudgingly accepted by many whom I would classify in the loony left and left them with nothing but structural conservatism defending redistributive systems mostly benefiting people who don’t actually need them. Fischer’s right – the classic continental left has become increasingly unsexy, in the economic as well as in any possible postmodern sense of the term.

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