by VICTOR GROSSMAN
Things in Berlin are all really up in the air! No, cancel that! Just the opposite; they are grounded — indefinitely! That giant new hub airport for Berlin, named after Willy Brandt, was due to be opened last June after weeks and months of ballyhoo. But it wasn’t. Something was not quite OK with the fire emergency system, it was announced. The postponement cost a host of retailers and bus companies all kinds of trouble and expense. Before long, rumors of other building botch-ups made the rounds — instead of planes! One postponement followed the other. All work was halted but a fifth opening date was promised for October 2013.
Then — big news at last! What was up? No, only that Berlin’s Mayor Klaus Wowereit, who had chaired the Supervisory Committee, finally resigned. It was found that the committee had known of the coming calamity for months but stayed mum and kept vainly dreaming. Wowereit, his popularity figures in a crash, passed on the chair to the head of the neighboring state of Brandenburg, Matthias Platzeck, also a top Social Democrat. And the great opening day was again postponed, with no date this time — except perhaps what Germans call “Sankt Nimmerleinstag” — translated as “Never-Never Day” or “When Hell Freezes Over.”
The Pirates and the Greens, parties in opposition in Berlin, are now calling for Wowereit to resign as mayor, which would cause no end of turmoil. There’s plenty of that already at pleasant little Tegel airport, which was to have been replaced but is instead hopelessly overloaded. For nearby residents this means a big increase in the roar of ascending or descending planes. Those due to be hit by the ear-deafening progress of a new airport (and battered in home value) are the only ones rejoicing at every delay. As for taxpayers — the original cost was set at two billion euros. It’s now over four billion — and ascending skywards.
There was also turmoil at Germany’s other end in southwestern Stuttgart where every January the Free Democratic Party holds its Drei-Königs-Treffen or “Three Kings’ Meeting.” Though named for the wise magi — or maybe kings — in the Bible, there was little wisdom and even less Christmas spirit as the select audience in the ornate opera house reacted to current party boss Philipp Rösler with reluctant applause and a taste of highly unusual heckling. Rösler, born not quite forty years ago (in Saigon, where he was adopted as a baby by a German couple) and dapperly-clothed as ever, looked toothlessly pathetic. Despite ties to big business, his party just can’t seem to regain its one-time (if limited) voter base. Poor Rösler has done almost everything but stand on his head to regain prestige and a corner of power, but opposing a minimum wage, any job protection, or a rise in taxes on the very wealthy has not even won back much of big biz or the prosperous professionals who used to like his party. Too many now prefer to put their eggs in the twin baskets of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party or its Bavarian sister party. For Rösler, a countdown has begun: if his Free Democrats fail to win the needed five percent in state elections in Lower Saxony on January 20th, Rösler’s day is done with his party — or what is left of it. Not many would regret the loss, aside from Ms. Rösler and their daughters of course. But maybe he could return to his old job as army doctor. And his party might finally be shoved to the gloomy wings of the political stage.
But halt. What if Rösler and his Free Democrats drop through the stage trapdoor like Don Giovanni in the opera (but without any hellfire, for he is at least a good Catholic)? That would deprive Angela Merkel’s “Christians” (and she at least, as a pastor’s daughter, should be a good Lutheran) of their junior partner. And therein lies the rub! Her side still leads the polls with about 40 percent, in part because Merkel is a clever, knowledgeable politician, clear-headed, seemingly kind and friendly, without the boasting, blustering, and braggadocio of many predecessors. Too few notice, in the not-so-fashionable but soft-looking glove, a hand, tough as nails, pushing for “austerity” and hunger for millions in southern Europe while still sounding surprisingly socially-conscious for Germany’s working people — up until she can win the September elections. But forty is not a majority! She needs more! And so do her opponents, the Greens and Social Democrats who, even together, also lack fifty percent.
Monthly Review Zine for more