Jacob Christensen

Let’s begin with the difficult question first: Do you know the name of the prime minister of North Rhine-Westphalia?

Oookay … what about his party affiliation then?

Right – I’ll put you out of your misery and reveal that his name is Jürgen Rüttgers, he’s from the CDU and the CDU/FDP win in the 2005 state elections triggered the early German federal elections in the autumn of 2005. The 2005 NRW election wasn’t the only reason that the Red-Green coalition broke up – it came as the last of a series of disastrous state elections for the SPD – but it tells us that this Sunday’s state election may have implications for the Federal level, and by implication European politics.

As it is, the NRW campaign has had some effects on the European level: Chancellor Angela Merkel sure as hell wouldn’t want any kind of settlement of the Greek crisis which could in any way affect CDU’s chances at the polls. On the other hand, the loss of the CDU-FDP majority in … do you know which city is the capital of NRW? No? Düsseldorf … could be a blessing in disguise for Merkel. If CDU puts in a respectable performance while the FDP gets whacked there is the possibility of a Black-Green coalition taking over. That would definitively liven up proceedings in the Bundesrat.

To Scandinavians, NRW is a curious, somewhat anonymous place. Like many German states it is an artefact created by the Allies after the Second World War combining parts of the Prussian Rhine Province, Westphalia and the state of Lippe. If you have a couple of days to spare, try visiting Bonn, Köln and Düsseldorf – three cities within commuting distance but completely and utterly different in character. Still, the Ruhr District continues to be the symbolic centre of the state which has almost 19 million inhabitants (that is more than all Nordic contries combined) but NRW has also been characterised by the fundamental changes in the German economy leading to the decline of mining and steel industry.

Which election is the most interesting: The NRW state election or the British general election? I will agree with Mattias Tesfaye that Germany is curiously underreported in Danish media (one reason is that most Danes don’t know German anymore, but then again: Why don’t Danes learn German anymore?) and that the UK has a position in international media which is not quite congruent with the country’s international importance. In some ways, the UK is to Europe what New York is to the US. On the other hand, he (and we) should not underestimate the problems a traditional industrial economy as that of the Ruhr has been – and still is – facing. The discussion about the relative merits of the Anglo-Saxon and the Rheinische models of capitalism is a major one in political economy and political science – even if academics tend to see the merits of the German/Continental model, especially when it comes to the creation of jobs, as somewhat more mixed. And we shouldn’t forget Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg which have been the powerhouses of German economy since the 1970s.

Even if we like to ignore Germany, the country is one of the largest markets for Danish services and goods, and therefore the NRW election is of more than peripheral interest. But which election is the most important? The NRW one or the GB one?

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.