|
|
The World Press on... Germany
Articles in English
Joint Distribution Committee: "Grandpa's Safe Haven" A Conversation with Arianna Huffington Culture Gaps and Gaffes: Perception Is Everything The Israeli Press Reacts to the Road Map: Bumpy Road Ahead The Israeli Press Reacts to the Prisoner Exchange with Hizbollah Israel’s Security Fence—Back To The Wall A Woman President in the White House? New
York Stories: New
York Stories: German
Press on Iraq: Jewish Lawyers Defending Anti-Semites? Cooperation
and Competition — American Jewry and Israel's Development 2000... And the Emperor Still Has No Clothes
People Making Headlines in...
German Media: Abendzeitung Art Berliner
Morgenpost Berliner
Zeitung Bild
der Wissenschaft Bild
Zeitung Börsen-Zeitung Der
Spiegel Der
Tagesspiegel Deutsche
Presse-Agentur Die
Tageszeitung Die
Welt Die
Zeit Focus Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung Frankfurter
Neue Presse Frankfurter
Rundschau Freitag General-Anzeiger Hamburger
Morgenpost Handelsblatt Hannoversche
Allgemeine Kieler
Nachrichten Kölner
Stadt-Anzeiger Leipziger
Volkszeitung Literaturen Münchner
Merkur Neue
Ruhr Zeitung Neues
Deutschland Rheinische
Post Rheinischer
Merkur Rhein-Zeitung Saarbrücker
Zeitung Stuttgarter
Nachrichten Stuttgarter
Zeitung Süddeutsche
Zeitung Tip Welt
am Sonntag Westdeutsche
Allgemeine Westfälische
Rundschau Wirtschaftswoche Wochenpost Zitty
|
Home Page > Articles in English > The Press On Germany
1 2
Schröder Beats Bush By
Tekla Szymanski The day after the election, fear of economic and parliamentary paralysis caused German markets to plunge to their lowest level in five years. This is not a good omen for the years to come. Economists and investors share the concern that the conservative opposition, led by Edmund Stroiber, will try to block any new initiative the chancellor will propose to jump-start the stalled economy. But one could also detect a hint of satisfaction in many German news reports. Some saw the Bush administration's harsh reaction to Schröder's criticism as a sign of American megalomania. When reports reached the White House that Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, Schröder's justice minister in the last government, had compared Bush’s political tactics to Adolf Hitler’s, the administration’s angry response only further stoked anti-American sentiments in Germany. It also cost Daeubler-Gmelin her job, as Schröder scrambled to repair what U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called “the poisoned relationship” between Germany and the United States. But Schröder seemingly knew how to tap into this anti-war sentiment by building on Germany’s pacifist mood. Schröder may be an opportunist, but he is first “a populist, who used the fears and emotions of his voters,” commented Mathias Müller in the Sept. 23 edition of Hamburg's liberal weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel. “In the end, the chancellor's re-election was a very personal one. The coalition won because Schröder came across as the good uncle. During the devastating floods, the chancellor acted as a man of deeds, rather than words, which especially in Eastern Germany was seen as an asset…. The second boon sent was Washington's bellicose grumble, which allowed Schröder to present himself as the peace-loving knight. Without mercy, Schröder exploited his voters’ fears of a new war against Iraq.” This was an election of firsts in Germany. Not only was it the first peacetime election won over foreign policy issues, it was also an election in which East German voters had cast the decisive votes. Most East Germans favored a continuation of the Red-Green coalition under Schröder and his Green Party Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. They were the most affected by the devastating floods and felt assured by the chancellor’s compassionate response. Neither candidate had missed the opportunity to show off his shiny new rubber boots to voters in the areas most affected by the high waters—but it was Schröder who got there first. He shook his fist, spoke of a national catastrophe, and promised immediate, unconditional financial assistance and humanitarian aid. Whereas after unification, the conservative Christian-Democrats were favored by East Germans, who helped re-elect Helmut Kohl as chancellor in 1990 on the promise of creating "a blooming Eastern Germany," now Schröder had given East German voters his word to keep their blooming lands dry. But there was more to it: Many East Germans are still very critical of the United States to the point of being openly anti-American. When Schröder promised Germany's "unlimited solidarity" with the United States immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, many East Germans were reminded of the empty slogans they grew up with, when their leaders pledged "anti-imperialist solidarity" with the Soviet Union. "The entire East breathed a breath of relief when Schröder changed his attitude and brusquely distanced himself from the United States," Frankfurt's conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung explained in its Sept. 23 editorial. "[But] the fact that the chancellor owes the East German voters will prove to be a heavy burden for him—and grounds for disappointments in the future." East German voters turned out in droves for the Social Democrats. But they also strengthened the Greens, who cashed in on the floods by turning global warming and environmental policies into hot election-campaign topics. In the end, the Greens’ strong showing help pull the election out of the fire for Schröder, making them Germany's third-largest party. Commentators on the left and the right agreed that the charismatic foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, came out as the true winner of the election. "Fischer's stance during the entire election campaign was honest," claimed Wolfram Weimer in the Sept. 23 edition of Berlin's centrist Berliner Morgenpost under the headline "Two Winners, Two Losers, and One Neutralized Chancellor." "Schröder's 'election campaign pacifism' was hypocritical, [whereas] Fischer was the honest pop star who gathered his fans for a concert." In other words, Schröder had won, but he wasn't the victor. Only the Greens were really victorious. The party, once dismissed as a motley assortment of radical ecologists, women, and bearded, baby-boomer pacifists, had appealed to younger voters, edging out the neo-liberal Free Democrats (FDP) and East Germany’s former communists, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). “Nobody in the new government can claim that what the voters wanted is ‘more of the same,’ ” wrote Oliver Stock in Düsseldorf's financial Handelsblatt (Sept. 23). “The government must clean up the mess it has produced in the past weeks.” Commentators across Germany the political spectrum agreed that Germany must now begin a thorough soul-searching on how to proceed. How will Germany address the U.S.-German breach without losing face? More importantly in the long run, how will the German powerhouse—the third-largest economy in the world and the largest in Europe—escape from recession, which is threatening economic stability throughout Europe? Schröder faces the daunting task of reforming a country that is stubbornly opposed to any fundamental changes. He had won his first term on the promise to overcome Helmut Kohl's “don't rock the boat” attitude. He managed to do just that during the first two years of his term. But he must convince Germans to discard long-held beliefs about the proper nature of the German economy. And he must make painful decisions on immigration policy and the question of tax-cuts. The country stands at the beginning of one of its worst economic recessions since the end of World War II, prompting the editors The Economist, a conservative London newsmagazine, to call Germany “the sick man of Europe.” The German economy is showing a meager growth rate of 0.6 percent, the worst in the European Union, more than 4 million Germans are unemployed, and the country’s education system is lagging behind. “In the near future, many Germans will receive less rather than more [from the government],” wrote Markus Zyda in his commentary for the Sept. 23 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “We have no other choice. Unfortunately, in this election, the Germans failed to make any decision at all.” Schröder's weak coalition will need to deliver what few Germans want but all agree the country needs. But at least German commentators seem fully aware of the magnitude of the challenges the government will face. “The time to paint everything in rosy colors, once and for all, is over,” was Oliver Schumacher’s assessment in a Sept. 23 article for Munich's centrist Süddeutsche Zeitung. “The old-new government awaits a long and cold winter. Economists predict an additional 300,000 unemployed by the end of the year. The coalition doesn't have a majority in the Bundesrat. The opposition can veto any economic reforms the government wants to push through….[But] the government has to do everything in its power to help the German economy grow. Otherwise, the country will take a steep dive.” “The coming term will prove to be the most volatile in history,” worried Torsten Kraul, writing for Berlin's conservative Die Welt (Sept. 23). “A narrow majority must push through immense reforms.” Berlin's left-wing Tageszeitung was even more pessimistic: “This government doesn't stand a chance,” Daniel Haufler concluded on Sept. 24. “It will be awful: reforming the health system, reforming the pension system, tackling the skyrocketing deficit. The tax reform already proved to be impossible to sell to the Germans. One really has to pity Schröder!” The chancellor has at least stirred the country from its “wait-and-see” attitude in foreign affairs to become a more independent, assertive partner in the international political arena. This last element may become more important in coming months. On Jan. 1, 2003, Germany will take over one of the rotating non-permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council and will serve as the Council's president. One of Schröder’s first acts after the election was to offer to take over command of the peacekeeping effort in Afghanistan. Whether this pans out or not, Germany will likely step up its humanitarian presence in Afghanistan and Kosovo (it now deploys nearly 100,000 troops abroad, most in peacekeeping missions). This might help smooth over relations with the United States, as Schröder possibly hopes it will, but continued German opposition to a strike against Iraq could pose a great stumbling block to the U.S.-led offensive. And early signs indicate that the United States will not be easily bought off with promises of greater assistance in Afghanistan. Secretary Rumsfeld walked out of a NATO meeting in Warsaw on Sept. 24, minutes before his German counterpart was due to speak. Though Rumsfeld denied it was an intentional snub, when asked about the incident at a news conference the next day, he told reporters, “We have a saying in America: ‘When you’re in a hole, stop digging.” Rumsfeld then paused, before adding, “Erm, I’m not sure I should have said that. Let’s pretend I never said that.” Once he patches over the damage done to Germany relationship with the United States, Schröder can avail himself of his second chance to finish what he started four years ago. He now faces the enormous task of pushing for a larger international role, and possibly of becoming the continental counterbalance to British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s unflinching support for the U.S. administration’s war plans. Even Blair admits that Schröder raised questions it made sense to ask. “Schröder
didn't question the American way but rather he criticized the way the Bush administration
deals with foreign policy issues,” wrote Jochen Siemens in Frankfurt's liberal
Frankfurter Rundschau (Sept. 24). “There is a legitimate reason for
that….[But] in spite of the differences in opinion, it is important to return
to an atmosphere of trust. That will be Schröder's immediate challenge. The
same can be said for the relationship with France and the rest of Europe. Schröder's
single-handed approach has hurt the unified European voice on Iraq. And only a
unified Europe can be a counterbalance to Washington…. Germany must safeguard
its interests—but alienating its partners is not the way to do it.”
From
the January 2002 issue of World Press Review Ex-Communists
Take Berlin By
Tekla Szymanski The Social Democrats emerged the strongest party in the October 2001 city elections, but fell short of an outright majority in the legislature. Coalition talks with the Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens collapsed after four weeks of sometimes tumultuous negotiations, leaving the PDS as the only possible coalition partner. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was not the only one to cringe at this outcome. He had hoped for the so-called "Ampelkoalition", or "traffic-light" coalition, between the SPD (red), under Mayor Klaus Wowereit, the FDP (yellow), and the Greens. Schröder still hopes for such a coalition on the federal level after his likely re-election in 2002. The strong showing of the PDS at the ballots—the party won 47.6 percent of the vote in the eastern part of the city—is likely to affect next year's federal elections as well. And it is seen as a sign that the former communists have been rehabilitated in the eyes of the electorate: "In principle it's a good thing," said 35-year-old Axel Bergmann, who works at East Berlin's Charité hospital. "One set of people will no longer see them as the red devil, and the other will no longer view them as a savior." This, however, is not the first coalition between the SPD and PDS in the united Germany. Similar coalitions function smoothly in the parliaments of eastern German Länders Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and Saxony-Anhalt. But Berlin is a different matter entirely. This is the one city that the rest of the country, and the world, have always scrutinized under a magnifying glass. Former communists are welcomed in politics elsewhere. In France, for example, the communists govern together in a comfortable alliance with the socialists, to few complaints. But Germans cannot help but regard Berlin as a special case. "The center of the Cold War is now falling into the hands of former communists," argues Constanze von Bullion in Munich's centrist Süddeutsche Zeitung (Dec. 12). And the leader of Germany's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), Friedrich Merz, proclaimed that a red-red coalition in Berlin would hurt Germany's standing in the world. Coalition talks with the Greens (a partner in Chancellor Schröder's federal coalition) and the centrist FDP took weeks. In contrast, the arrangement with PDS was finalized in days and was regarded by the German news media as a pragmatic compromise. But the speed with which matters were finalized left many commentators speechless—it took only 12 hours of negotiations to come up with a joint political program for the next five years. Such haste caused others to hint that the SPD had envisioned governing with the PDS from the start and had entered coalition talks with the FDP and Greens only to show that it tried honestly to circumvent the PDS but failed. Within a matter of days, Mayor Wowereit and PDS leader Gregor Gysi, who will become deputy mayor and will be in charge of the city's finances, were photographed arm in arm under a Christmas tree at City Hall. "Now, there will be more wishful thinking than actual governing in Berlin," smirked Lorenz Maroldt of Berlin's conservative Tagesspiegel (Dec. 21). But the same day, Berlin's left-wing taz asserted that "a governing post-communist party in this city is a sign of European normalization—and the symbolic end to Germany's special political status within the E.U." Conservative commentators, however, feared that a governing PDS would boost the party's reputation and eclipse its notorious past. Gysi, in turn, vowed to help turn Berlin into a cultural and scientific capital once again. This after his party had apologized for building the Berlin Wall in 1961. Hamburg's liberal weekly Der Spiegel, in a Dec. 6 article headlined "Santa Klaus Wowereit And His Elf Gysi," predicted that the coalition could resemble a two-man show, since both Wowereit and Gysi are known to be fond of the media, outspoken, and charismatic. "The East bloc is knocking on our doors," Der Spiegel joked on Dec. 10, calling the coalition "the biggest political experiment since reunification, which could prove risky for Chancellor Schröder." Risky because the chancellor might lose the support of the political center by turning the PDS into a viable left-wing alternative to the Greens, whose support is slipping because of their participation in the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan, leaving the PDS as the lone, stern voice speaking out against the U.S. war in Afghanistan. This could become a headache or, worse, an outright embarrassment for Schröder, who has already given an unconditional pledge of support to U.S. President George Bush and has even sent peacekeeping troops to Afghanistan. "There
is no alternative [to the PDS]," said Edzard Reuter, the former chairman
of Daimler-Benz, and son of the mayor of postwar Berlin, in a Dec. 10 interview
with Der Spiegel. "One shouldn't vilify everything that was done under communism.
Just imagine that we, in postwar Germany, had vilified everything that had to
do with our brown [as in brown shirt, or fascist] past. We should give Gysi a
fair chance." Not so fast, other commentators say. Renowned author Günter
Kunert, who fled what was then East Germany in 1979 to settle in the West, writing
in Franfurt's conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, concluded simply,
"Politics is dirty business…The victims of yesterday are long forgotten.
Now, the SPD has rehabilitated the same party that had treated the socialists
as its arch enemy to the point of imprisoning its supporters."
From
the October 2000 issue of World Press Review By
Tekla Szymanski Simultaneously, a fear of losing face in the European Union and the world has taken hold. "Imagine that representatives of the EU would visit Germany today—they would leave with the thought of immediately sanctioning Germany alongside Austria," writes Vera Gesarow in the liberal Frankfurter Rundschau (July 31). Blaming Germany's lenient judiciary system, Berlin's centrist Der Tagesspiegel (Aug. 8) lamented that "perpetrators aged 18 to 21 years are still being prosecuted under juvenile law." But liberal commentators stressed that leading politicians still downplay the effects of xenophobia on the society, despite the grim statistics. In the first half of this year, according to Hamburg's liberal newsmagazine Der Spiegel (Aug. 8), 5,223 anti-Semitic, xenophobic, or right-wing attacks were registered throughout Germany—a rise of 10 percent from 1999. Nevertheless, Munich's centrist Süddeutsche Zeitung (July 31) found time to worry about the effects on Germany's economy. "Which dark-skinned foreigner, colored student, or high-tech expert still wants to work among us [after the recent attacks], especially in the eastern part of the country? We need a climate of tolerance, not higher wages. Fear is bad for business," asserted the paper. Meanwhile, Berlin's leftist taz (Aug. 1) pointed to the growing resentment of foreigners and the rise of anti-Semitism among Berlin's police force. Hamburg's
independent Hamburger Abendblatt (Aug. 8) quoted Michel Friedman, vice
president of the Council of German Jews—speaking the minds of many—who
was flabbergasted at "how many people demonstrated against a ban on fighting
dogs, compared to the sparse numbers who took to the streets demanding human rights."
1 2
Home Page > Articles in English > The Press On Germany |
