Jacob Christensen

Listen, it could have been worse. It could have been … Helge Sander.

HT: Kosmopolito.

Oh, I almost forgot: I made a short trip to Flensburg (or Flensborg, as we call the place) with some of my colleagues. To most Danes, Flensborg has meant cheap beer and alcohol and cigarettes at the border supermarkets but the town has a long and – in the 19th and 20th centuries – turbulent history.

The photo was taken in November 2004.

I was, of all places in the world, at Christiansborg Castle, the seat of the Danish parliament, attending a meeting organised by the research initiative “Dansk politik under forandring 1945-1985″ discussing the 1963 economic crisis agreement.

What still surprises me is that I did not hear anything – no rumours, whispers, no-one running around slightly agitated in the corridors of power – about the real event of the evening. I only learnt about the news when I came home and turned on the radio to listen to the midnight news – this was waaaay before the www, I didn’t have cable and the TV set didn’t have teletext.

My parents visited (West) Berlin during Easter 1989. They travelled by train which meant dealing with East German border controls. My mother, in particular, hated every minute of travelling through the GDR, probably because the behaviour of the control guards reminded her of the German troops during the 1940-1945 Occupation. FRG was very different. These days, Berlin is full of Danes.

One story I recall about the fall of the Wall: A Danish radio journalist interviewed an elderly East German who had come to West Berlin and picked up his 100 DM Begrüßungsgeld. What he would do with them? Buy fresh asparagus (Germans are crazy about asparagus, the Brits should call the Germans Spargel insted of Krauts). But, he added, he would only use some of the money. After all, you could never know how things developed.

Taken in 2004. I first visited the place in 1993. Potsdamer Platz was just an open field and the S-Bahn station had been opened for passengers but not renovated. Eleven years later, much had changed.

There will be one last Berlin post, to be published later today.

Taken in November 2004.

Taken in November 2004.

They don’t make them like they used to. Here’s the one and only Helmut “Schnauze” Schmidt:

And a remarkably subdued Franz Josef Strauss:

Both with a little help from Loriot.

Much has been said about this incident:

So here’s Ze Fohreign Minister (designate) spieking English. Is he better or worse than Anders Fogh?

So, how did I do in my prediction of the distribution of portfolios?

It was 8 CDU, 3 CSU and 5 FDP as I predicted, but then problems began:

Chancellor – CDU (correct)
Minister of chancery – CDU (correct)
Foreign – FDP (correct)
Finance – CDU (WRONG! I predicted CSU)
Trade and Industry – FDP (correct)
Internal – CDU (correct)
Justice – FDP (correct)
Labour and Social Affairs – CDU (correct)
Consumer and Agriculture – CSU (correct)
Defence – CSU (WRONG! I predicted CDU)
Families, etc – CDU (correct)
Health – FDP (WRONG! I predicted CSU)
Transport and infrastructure – CSU (WRONG! I predicted FDP)
Environment – CDU (correct)
Education and research – CDU (WRONG! I predicted FDP)
Development – FDP (WRONG! I predicted FDP)

So, six out of sixteen portfolios wrong. Oh dear.

At least nobody had seen Günther Oettinger as the next German EU commissioner. (Kosmopolito blog on Oettinger).

And if you feel like reading some 130 pages of German, here’s the coalition agreement.

Just to update an earlier post:

Forming a government in Berlin seems to be the easy part of the process. Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein will also be getting Black-and-Yellow governments but in the other Länder, the picture is more complicated.

Brandenburg: Matthias Platzeck had the choice between Red-Red or Red-Black. Here it seems that the CDU blew it by not having secured the internal hierarchy. Die Linke, on the other hand, realised that Kerstin Kaiser was a no-no as a cabinet member (she worked as a Stasi-informer when she was a student) and declared that they will negotiate with the SPD but keep her outside the state government. Also: Going Red-Red would secure the SPD from attacks in a fiscally difficult situation.

Saarland: Here Die Linke (and Oskar Lafontaine in particular) is the big no-no. The Greens seem to be serious about entering a Black-Green-Yellow coalition. In German this is known as the Schwampel or Jamaika coalition.

Thüringen: Looks like a complete mess. The leader of the state SPD Christoph Matschie wants a grand coalition, the party base wants Red-Red-Green. CDU’s lead candidate Dieter Althaus was forced to resign following the election – the question now is if the SPD will also lose its lead candidate.