October 3, 1990 – October 3, 2015. A German Silver Wedding

A global local newspaper in cooperation with

2015

Share the spirit, join the Ode, you’re invited to sing along!

Joy, bright spark of divinity, Daughter of Elysium, fire-inspired we tread, thy Heavenly, thy sanctuary.

Thy magic power re-unites all that custom has divided, all men become brothers under the sway of thy gentle wings.

25 years ago, world history was rewritten. Germany was unified again, after four decades of separation. October 3 – A day to celebrate! How is Germany doing today and where does it want to go? 2 2015

EDITORIAL 

Good neighbors We aim to be and to become a nation of good neighbors both at home and abroad. WE ARE So spoke Willy Brandt in his first declaration as German Chancellor on Oct. 28, 1969. And 46 years later – in October 2015 – we can establish that Germany has indeed become a nation of good neighbors. In recent weeks espe- cially, we have demonstrated this by welcoming so many people seeking GRATEFUL protection from violence and suffer- ing. Willy Brandt’s approach formed the basis of a policy of peace and détente, which by 1989 dissolved Joy at the Fall of the Wall and German Reunification was the confrontation between East and West and enabled Chancellor greatest in Berlin. The two parts of the city have grown Helmut Kohl to bring about the reuni- fication of Germany in 1990. together as one | By Michael Müller And now we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of our unity regained. Berlin is once more a unified city and wenty-five years of German unity the capital of our country. It is well on are also 25 years of a unified its way to becoming an international Berlin. For our city in particular, metropolis. And above all, Berlin is a this quarter-century of German cosmopolitan city admired interna- andT Berlin togetherness is a reason to tionally for the way it has carried out the process of unification. Although celebrate. not everything is a shining success, Twenty-five years after the Fall of the we can be proud of what we have Wall, Berlin has become an internationally thus far achieved. recognized, tolerant, liberal, and now-pros- This newspaper, The Berlin Times, perous metropolis, attractive for people aims to build journalistic bridges from all around the world. And Berlin is from Berlin to the wider world. still growing. Berlin is Germany’s capital The first English-language news- – there is no longer any doubt about that. paper published in Germany will re- But for a long time, the issue was anything port regularly from Berlin; we hope but clear. to establish an interested readership. It is important to remember that every- DPA PICTURE ALLIANCE/JÖRG CARSTENSEN PICTURE DPA This edition offers a bouquet of vari- thing that makes Berlin what it is today is “When Berlin suffered, we received aid.” Mayor Michael Müller promises his city will ous articles by renowned writers. due to the Fall of the Wall and the return We hope you will enjoy it. now offer a safe haven and a future to refugees fleeing war and persecution. of a unified Germany. Only through these events did the perspectives arise that made So it was that joy at the Fall of the Wall Forum will be a cultural highlight noticed it possible for us to make Berlin what it and German Reunification was greatest around the world. Our city has an excellent is today – through enthusiasm and hard in Berlin. At the same time, it was in this chance of building upon the good times of work. divided city of millions that it was most the 1920s – Berlin’s golden era. The Wall was built in Berlin on Aug. 13, difficult to close the wounds left by the divi- Our gratitude for German unity leaves us 1961. It was opened in Berlin on Nov. 9, sion, to get the two parts, which belonged with a special duty. When Berlin suffered, 1989. The process of reunifying Germany together, to grow back together. Let this we received aid, most of it from the Allied was completed in Berlin on the historic remind us of the words of Willy Brandt, Powers. Our city has never failed to repeat evening of Oct. 3, 1990. without whose Ostpolitik – also partly the solidarity we experienced then. Berlin- The division of Germany was most pain- drafted by our sorely missed, recently ers have proven that they have a big heart. fully felt in the everyday life of our city. The departed honorary citizen Egon Bahr – And we are continuing to do so. Even now, Detlef Prinz Wall itself – and the barbed wire – made Berlin would not be in the position it is Berlin is undertaking a great effort to offer Publisher extraordinary demands on Berlin and its now. safe haven and a future to refugees fleeing inhabitants. Berlin and its citizens have achieved war and persecution – here in united Berlin. This is where the people experienced the much in these 25 years. Berlin is a young hardship of the Cold War right down to and creative city; future technologies and their personal lives. Think of the families new businesses are booming, new jobs are Michael Müller is Mayor of Berlin. divided, the friends separated. And let us being created, and Berlin is attracting clever remember those killed and injured, and all people from around the globe. Berlin is a the victims on both sides of the Wall. world-class city of culture. The Humboldt

The Berlin Times is an international registered trademark of Times Media GmbH. All rights reserved. This edition has been produced in cooperation with DIE WELT and Berlin Partner for Business and Technology. Publisher & liable for editorial content: Detlef Prinz Printed in Germany by Märkische Verlags- und Druck-Gesellschaft mbH Potsdam, Friedrich-Engels-Straße 24, 14473 Potsdam © Times Media GmbH, Tempelhofer Ufer 23 – 24, 10963 Berlin, Germany. www.times-media.de 2015 3

 FOTOLIA/SP4764 Opening doors Companies from 170 different countries have established headquarters in our city since the Fall of the Wall | By Eric Schweitzer

erlin is a modern commercial city trade, opens doors for them to interna- many and Israel are celebrating 50 years at the heart of Europe, offering tional markets and underlines the strengths of diplomatic relations. Economic coop- corporations an ideal environment of Berlin as a business center with part- eration has grown hand in hand with the for their global operations. Com- ners abroad. Working in conjunction with intensification of political relations. Trade

Bpanies from 170 different countries have the Association of German Chambers of and the exchange of business ideas have POPOW IMAGO/METODI established headquarters in our city since Commerce and Industry, the Berlin branch helped build bridges from a difficult past to the Fall of the Berlin Wall. About one in of the IHK represents the interests of its a shared future. Economic relations between twelve foreigners working in Berlin is at approx. 274,000 members with regard to Berlin and Israel have also developed at an least part-owner of a business. Berlin corpo- international matters. It is powerfully sup- extraordinarily dynamic pace – at last count rations are becoming increasingly successful ported abroad by the network of German trades volumes had reached approx. €190 in foreign markets. Products and services Chambers of Foreign Trade (AHK) at 120 million. Nevertheless, there is still potential Happy about Berlin’s high degree “Made in Berlin” are not only found in locations in 90 different countries. for further cooperation and new projects. of innovation, pioneering smart-city traditional marketplaces like the US and Berlin’s economy is characterized by a Our business delegation will use the clout solutions and its dynamic start-up community: Eric Schweitzer. France, but also in the growth markets of high degree of innovation, pioneering smart- provided by the one-of-a-kind IHK/AHK Asia and the Middle East. The continual city solutions and a dynamic start-up com- network to tap into this potential. increase in exports since reunification high- munity. Foreign partners have high regard lights the growing significance of foreign for Berlin expertise. Israel, like Berlin, is trade in Berlin: Between 1991 and 2014, setting its hopes on future topics like smart Eric Schweitzer is President of the exports nearly doubled from €7.2 billion cities, high-tech and start-ups, which is why Association of German Chambers to €13.3 billions. the Berlin branch of the IHK is currently of Commerce and Industry as well The Berlin branch of the German Cham- organizing a business delegation of Berlin as its Berlin branch. bers of Commerce and Industry (IHK) is corporations to visit Tel Aviv and Jerusalem playing its part in ensuring that this suc- in conjunction with AHK Israel. cess story is ongoing – it supports Berlin Our Berlin business delegation is visiting corporations in all matters related to foreign Israel at a very special time. In 2015, Ger-

Launch pad to success Berlin is a unique city, a place to develop ideas and make them reality | By Stefan Franzke

et me tell you a story – a story in them collectively into a unique city night- These new business ideas are growing a new three episodes – about the Berlin life. crop of small and medium-sized enterprises of the past, the present and the My second episode is set in the Berlin of for Berlin. THOMAS HEDRICH THOMAS future. Berlin is a city that has the here and now. The German capital’s The story of the future Berlin is especially constantlyL reinvented itself throughout its start-up scene is more lively today than ever close to my heart. Thousands of refugees, history. The protagonists of my stories before. Berlin offers the tools with which to who have lost their homes under drastic could not be more different, yet they all start a successful business – investors pro- circumstances, are among the new inhabit- have one thing in common: They discovered vide the necessary seed capital, respected ants of our city. It is my great hope that the available space offered by Berlin – and they researchers support product development, openness and generosity they encounter in used it! and experienced entrepreneurs are seeking Berlin will enable them to find their own Helping creative people develop Now to our first episode, about the Berlin contacts with younger business partners at available space in which to start afresh. their ideas and make them reality: of the past. After reunification in 1990, home in the digital world. Berlin Partner Stefan Franzke. Berlin experienced the birth of electronic for Business and Technology is the contact music. In disused basements, empty facto- point – we help companies from around Stefan Franzke is Management ries and abandoned East German cultural the world to get established in Berlin and Spokesperson of Berlin’s business centers, followers of the electro scene shook to introduce them to young entrepreneurs development agency Berlin Partner. until dawn to bass beats – empty spaces relevant to their interests. Our toolbox became dance floors. The movement took makes space available for creative people to the legendary clubs of the day and turned develop their ideas and make them reality. 4 2015



PARWEZ Frank-Walter Steinmeier, born in 1956, on top of the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin. The Social Democrat has been serving his second term in office since December 2013.

ere tectonic plates to make and prosperity that very few other states considered consequences of the collapse of the Council and next year’s Organization for sound when they shift, the are fortunate enough to enjoy. bipolar world order that prevailed during the Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). noise in Europe in 1989 and Perhaps we temporarily overlooked the Cold War. Calling them aftershocks would After all, who has a greater interest in the 1990 would have been deaf- fact the world had failed to settle down. somehow fit, but would fail to do justice stable and peaceful evolvement of global Wening. In those years, it wasn’t the Earth’s The much-ballyhooed “end of history” has to the drama and daily suffering caused by politics than Germany? Hardly any other plates that were shifting, but rather the not occurred. To the contrary: the moan- these crises. country is as entrenched economically, phil- world order that was forcefully unraveling. ing and groaning of the tectonic plates of An especially powerful eruption is now con- anthropically and culturally, or as dependent The unification of the two German states global politics can still clearly be heard; vulsing Europe: the tidal wave of refugees that on well-functioning international ground rules triggered a global quake that revealed indeed, they’re moving more than ever struck with full force this summer, reaching for its economic and political stability. cracks in the masonry of the Cold War. before. A whole range of developments, Germany as well. The readiness of people in Both the annexation of the Crimea – in As US Secretary of State James Baker which may have hinted at 1990 but failed Germany to help has been impressive – nev- blatant violation of international law – and expressed in Berlin at the end of 1989, the to foresee it, drive these upheavals in world ertheless, they’re justifiably asking themselves, the events in East Ukraine have called these question of German Reunification is about ground rules into question. Europe’s blueprint nothing less than the development of “a for a lasting peace is teetering on the brink. new architecture for a new era”. “The refugee crisis is only From the beginning, despite all setbacks and Many in Western Europe looked with a strong headwind we have committed our- skepticism upon the reemergence of one example of the questions our selves to a de-escalation of the conflict. We still Germany on the fault line of the Cold partners expect a Germany to have a long way to go. The fighting continues War. Nevertheless, 25 years ago on Sept. on in East Ukraine; people continue to die. 12, France, Great Britain, the US and help address.” The Minsk Protocol is no cure-all, and far the Soviet Union, together with the two from perfect. But at least it offers a framework German states, signed the Two Plus Four politics: globalization and the networking, in all solidarity, what can be done to address for direct negotiations between the opposing Agreement. This restoration of reunified digitalization and economic acceleration this problem in the long term. One thing is sides. Germany, together with France, is com- Germany’s full diplomatic sovereignty that come with it, the rise of ambitious clear: Europe must grant asylum to refugees mitting itself to a future that includes a stable, showed great confidence in the country’s players like China and India, the influ- in need of protection. But it is also a fact that peaceful and sovereign Ukraine. newly emerging foreign policy. Germany ence of non-governmental yet globally no country can manage it alone. Europe will has since secured and expanded its role: operating actors like large corporations be tested like almost never before. he fact that the world remains in despite all concerns, Germany is firmly and terror groups, religious fundamental- The refugee crisis and its causes are only one motion also means that we can anchored in the European Union and the ism, climate change and just now, an acute example of the many questions international attempt to shape it in reflection of transatlantic partnership. More than any migration crisis of historic dimensions – the partners rightfully expect a strong and pros- our beliefs. The successful nuclear other country, Germany has profited from list is long and complex. And new erup- perous Germany to help address. Germany dealT with Iran shows that, despite the world’s the transformation that has occurred in tions are constantly rattling the globe: the has simply become too big to cower from complexity, unwavering commitment can recent decades, above all from Europe’s civil war in Syria, Islamist terror in Iraq, the responsibility, and too networked with make a tangible difference. The Vienna Agree- newfound political and economic unity. the collapse of Libya and Yemen, the conflict the world to remain on the sidelines. In this ment not only verifiably prevents Iran’s devel- For our country this has led to a previ - in Ukraine. It is gradually becoming ever vein we are contributing with concrete actions opment of an atomic bomb in the long term, ously unknown level of security, freedom more clear that these phenomena should be such as chairing this year’s UN Human Rights it can also spur new talks and efforts aimed 2015 5

DPA PICTURE ALLIANCE/MAURIZIO GAMBARINI; PHOTOTHEK.NET/UTE GRABOWSKY; PHOTOTHEK.NET/THOMAS IMO; DPA PICTURE ALLIANCE/AP PHOTO/JOE KLAMAR 

TOO BIG TO HIDE

Germany has profited from the transformation of recent decades, above all from Europe’s political and economic unity. Our foreign policy must continually evolve, yet retain its European stature | By Frank-Walter Steinmeier

at increasing cooperation in the region, which in turn could indicate points of departure for a resolution to the difficult situations in Syria and Iraq. The example of Iran is encouraging, for it demonstrates that Germany has strong and reliable partners – foremost the US, the EU and its member states – together with whom we can tackle even the most difficult chal- lenges. Considering the scope of the world’s organizational tasks, the EU remains the only realistic foreign policy framework within which our efforts at helping to create global order can be truly effective. Neither in Vienna “The restoration of – with the deal on Iran’s atomic program – nor in Minsk – with the agreement on the conflict reunified Germany’s full in Ukraine – would German diplomacy have had the same effect without its footing in diplomatic sovereignty the context of Europe. It is thus all the more showed great confidence important that German foreign policy retains its European stature and a “European reflex”. in our country.” The world is changing rapidly, and it will be some time before peace and calm prevail. German foreign policy must therefore con- tinually evolve. We must constantly reevalu- ate where and how we take responsibility. It remains the task of German foreign policy – in Diplomacy: German Foreign Minister cooperation with our closest partners – to Frank-Walter Steinmeier with his Iranian make a difference in an often turbulent world. counterpart Mohammad Zarif in Brussels on March 16; with High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs Federica Frank-Walter Steinmeier is foreign Mogherini on July 7; with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and minister of Germany. US Secretary of State John Kerry on July 14, the day of the deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program after 12 years of conflict (from top to bottom). 6 2015



Daring to say Heimat again

Let’s stop being embarrassed about finally celebrating a national holiday like everyone else! Author Martin Walser on the significance of October 3.

merica celebrates its Indepen- included a grotesque level of militarization up in terms of weapons and rhetoric. And The fact that we now have a national holi- dence Day on July 4. France and a constant recital of militant slogans. everyone else was glad that, by being cut in day to celebrate comes thanks to the people fetes the storming of the Bastille Meanwhile, trying to find an upside to the two, this eternally troubled Germany had who overthrew East Germany. It was a – the beginning of the French division, prominent and reputable West finally been disposed of. gentle revolution. It was gentle because it ARevolution – every July 14. European states German intellectuals said two Germanys wasn’t carried out by intellectuals or parties usually commemorate the day they gained had more in common with the course of he media set the tone. Some but by people. The people. The German a constitution, as does Denmark, Poland German history than did, say, the single words were practically black- word for people – Volk – also took on a and Norway. For others the anniversary state that ceased to exist in 1945. Writers listed. One example was Heimat, new dignity through this revolution that no of independence is a national holiday, as commonly stated that the country’s divi- or homeland. Fortunately, one propaganda could stop. in the United States, Sweden and Greece. sion was just punishment for the nation’s Tcan hardly imagine today that using this Together with my wife, I was in Dresden In Spain they celebrate a feat: the discov- crimes committed at Auschwitz. Terms halfway sentimental word would expose a from Oct. 1 – 11, 1989, to do research for ery of America were invented to person to all kinds of shameful suspicion. my book Die Verteidigung der Kindheit (The by Columbus. make the split During the 1970s I wrote a small book Defense of Childhood). It was during those Most national “The word Germany look better: Ger- of texts relating to the region I lived in. October days that the unarmed power of the holidays were many, a cultural A publisher in Friedrichshafen wanted to people brought down the dictatorship. Night born in the was only heard during nation in two release it, together with watercolors by and day, people marched through the streets, 19th century. weather reports.” states. Seventeen the painter André Ficus. Then came the chanting: We want out! It was supposed to Some dates million inhabit- meeting with the publisher. I hadn’t yet be the occasion for celebrating the 40th anni- have a unique splendor: Ireland’s St. Pat- ants of this cultural nation lived locked provided a title, but the publisher asked versary of East Germany’s founding. British rick’s Day harks back to 461, while Swit- up behind the Iron Curtain and then the for one. I was so timorous from the politi - publisher Robert Maxwell was on hand and, zerland traces its democracy from the year Berlin Wall, while the creators and heralds cal correctness of the time that I could not in front of the cameras, presented a two- 1291. German history, with all its pinnacles of this phrase strolled freely throughout voice the title. I asked for a piece of paper. volume set of books bound in red leather and chasms, has never yielded a date that the world. The word “Germany” was only On it I wrote “Heimatlob” (in praise of to East German leader Erich Honecker. could stand up as a national holiday. Until heard during weather reports. homeland), and slid it back to the pub - It was an encyclopedia of East Germany. now, that is – until the year 1990. Anyone who would not accept the divi- lisher. He flushed with anger, shouting Maxwell said it contained all Honecker’s That makes the Day of German Unity sion was labeled a nationalist. When Rudolf “No more jokes!”. A true conservative, achievements. He also responded to what Europe’s youngest national holiday. We Augstein wrote in the weekly Der Spiegel he apparently thought that I wanted to was happening on the street, the chorus of can now own up to this fact and must never that he would not renounce Germany, take him for a ride, embarrass him with all the voices that no longer wished to endure forget how this day came to be. Forty years global bestselling author Patrick Süsskind that title. Today no one gets upset about the East German regime. Both German states divided. Forty years of two Germanys and, accused him of early-onset dementia. Of that little book anymore. Anyone back had to stay, Maxwell said, praising East Ger- in East as in West, zealous efforts to justify course, the division would not have become then who used the words Heimat, Nation many as an antifascist bulwark. Honecker this miserable condition. As was affirmed so cruel or acrimonious had Germany not or Vaterland was courting suspicion. The resigned a few days later. and reaffirmed with all the means available been a main theater of the Cold War. East Nazis had costumed their crimes with Wherever we looked, we saw rebellion, to a dictatorship, the socialist part would Germany was the most militarized country them. Yet, it was beyond me to consign unrest and outrage. But nowhere did we remain forever socialist. Those means in Europe. West Germany strove to keep these words to the dustbin of history. see violence.

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“Things that went wrong for 40 years will need at least 40 years to be fixed.”

pointing out that “inner unification” could belong to the people, who accomplished never succeed precisely because of the cur- world history’s uniquely gentle revolution. rency reform. They were the same intellec- We, the beneficiaries of this political tuals who, right after unification had been joyride, can conclude with satisfaction that achieved, promptly began questioning the in German history there has never been a motives of East Germany’s people. Rather quarter century in which Germans in the than to a desire of freedom, these writers East and West have lived as peacefully as pointed to a “deutschmark nationalism” – in the 25 years since reunification. I quickly as if, once the border was open, anyone still scanned the history books: We’ve never wanted the East German currency. been this peaceful – nor as bearable to our These clever critics generally disregarded neighbors. the people who had taken to the streets in Dresden and elsewhere, risking confronta- o let’s not be ashamed to finally tion with Soviet tanks as in 1953 in Berlin celebrate a national day! If we recall and 1968 in Prague. The talking heads what the great poet Heinrich Heine always pounced gleefully to brand every wrote in the 19th century:

P. MATSAS/OPALE/LEEMAGE/LAIF P. difficulty on the path to “inner unity” a SThinking of Germany at night, “failure of unification”. Puts all thought of sleep to flight. Fidelio was on the bill at the opera. aloud a resolution in which they demanded This deep-seated attitude of only seeing Today a writer can say: We went to the second performance. everything the regime had denied them: the negative can be countered only with Thinking of Germany at night, Beethoven’s Fidelio is an opera about free- freedom of expression, freedom of move- statistics: In 1989, people in East Germany Then sleep till 7:30? I might. dom. The stage design, which had been ment, etc. lived two and a half years fewer, on aver- determined months in advance, seemed In November 1989 Helmut Kohl declared age, than did their West German counter- to have been made especially for those reunification an objective of West German parts. Today, this gap has pretty much van- Martin Walser has left his mark October days. The whole stage lay behind policy, but admitted that he did not know ished. In a remark both matter-of-fact and on German post-war literature brilliant, Theo Waigel said: “Investments like no other living author. “We’ve never been this peaceful.” that lead to longer life are not the worst.” Born in 1927 at Lake Constance, Another source reports that the suicide rate Walser often found himself at the a high barbed-wire fence, whose top angled how this unity could be realized. That task in East Germany has “fallen decisively” in center of political and literary out toward the audience. Behind it was a he delegated to Finance Minister Theo the past quarter century. debates, starting with his 1957 modern prison. The chorus of prisoners Waigel and his team. July 1, 1990 was Whenever I encounter such mean-spirited novel Marriage in Philippsburg, was dressed like the people marching the another day to remember: West Germany’s impatience, I always say: things that went a multilayered portrait of the streets outside. The chorus sang: “Quiet, currency, the deutschmark, was introduced wrong for 40 years will need at least 40 Adenauer era. His short novel quiet, keep to yourself, you’re guarded by in the East. Without the changeover, that years to be fixed. When rents rise faster than Runaway Horse from 1978 has eyes and ears.” Afterwards, the applause singular political adventure, the State incomes, I think of those 40 years. By now become a modern German classic. was like none I had ever experienced in a Treaty between East and West Germany, we owe recognition to those politicians who theater. It was as if the opera could not go would never have succeeded. saw what had taken place in East Germany on; and it was the same for the actors, who Left-leaning pundits immediately and turned it into a narrative of progress. came out in front of the curtain and read exploited every crisis during the 1990s by But the ultimate recognition will always

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Two East Germans preside over Germany’s political landscape. Angela Merkel and Joachim Gauck have changed the republic | By Günter Bannas

another political movement in the East. Over dubbed her “Kohl’s girl” – a derogatory term work” became the milieu of intellectuals. He the course of a week, Merkel’s organization intended to be just that. Merkel understood stayed in contact with Merkel. When Gauck had merged with the CDU. Gauck’s citizens’ how it worked. She managed to set herself celebrated his 70th birthday in January 2010, movement turned towards the Greens. Both apart from the women’s policy of Rita Süss- Merkel – already chancellor for more than were northeast German, and Protestants as muth, who was no favorite of Kohl. When four years – gave the keynote address. That well. Merkel hailed from the home of a Prot- she became Minister for the Environment alone was an honor. She then referred to him estant pastor. Gauck was a pastor by trade. in 1994, her first move was to dismiss the as politically enlightened, a freedom philoso- They both had roles, if not prominent ones, Permanent State Secretary of her predecessor. pher, a conciliator and a promoter of unity. in the political upheaval and what would So much for “Kohl’s girl”. She found loyal follow it. And as it happens in politics, supporters in a group of young CDU repre- ive months later, Federal President their professional paths diverged, although sentatives, in both party and faction. Merkel Horst Köhler resigned. But Merkel’s not without mutual appreciation. Gauck is created her own network: Peter Altmaier, generous birthday remarks did not now head of state of the Federal Republic Hermann Gröhe, Ronald Pofalla, Norbert mean she wanted Gauck to replace of Germany. Merkel is chancellor. Long Röttgen, all of whom she would later make him.F Two East Germans (“Ossis”) at the pin- past are the times federal ministers. nacle of the state didn’t sit well, was one of when Germany’s She seized the her arguments. Party tactics had her leaning leadership was “They speak a party chairman- towards the CDU’s Christian Wulff, the state Rhenish, south language that is very ship in one fell premier of Lower Saxony. But Gauck ran German and swoop. As CDU against him, with the support of the Greens, Catholic – in much their own.” General Secre- the SPD and most of the country’s editorial terms of both tary in 1999 she boards. Wulff prevailed, but only after three region and personnel. Soon there were politi- distanced herself from both Helmut Kohl rounds of voting, a portent of things to come. cal talk shows where almost all pundits and Wolfgang Schäuble to avoid fallout from In 2012, Wulff resigned, and again Merkel were from Lower Saxony: Siegmar Gabriel, the donations scandal. Schäuble resigned wanted to find a candidate other than Gauck. Thomas Oppermann, Christian Wulff, as party chairman. Merkel organized a full But this time her efforts were in vain. After Ursula von der Leyen, Jürgen Trittin, Philipp slate of regional conferences and threw the leaders of the SPD, Greens and FDP had Rösler. in her hat, while “networkers” from the nominated Gauck, she herself had no choice CDU’s state associations bickered, calculated but to do the same. They have since coexisted auck and Merkel each lacked and delayed. They assured themselves that in harmony, exceeding most expectations. something previously taken for Merkel’s time as CDU chairman would be Gauck’s first term comes to an end in March granted as a prerequisite for poli- brief. They were wrong. The story goes that 2017, a few months before the Bundestag tics: entrenchment in the prin- she outsmarted them; in reality, they brought elections. Merkel would have nothing against Gciples of a political party – that is, a network. it upon themselves. five more years of President Gauck. Merkel was not active in the Young Union, Gauck had it bit smoother. For a very short the CDU’s youth organization. When she while he was a member of the Bundestag, began working in Bonn, she was already having been posted there by the People’s Günter Bannas, born in 1952, Chancellor Angela Merkel has been in over the 35-year age limit. Meanwhile, Chamber of the GDR. While there he affili- is the Berlin bureau chief of the office for ten years. She studied physics Gauck had no involvement in the dispute ated himself with the Greens. In 1990, before Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. in the GDR. between the two opposing camps within the the Bundestag elections of that year, he Last year he was awarded the Green party. They both must have wondered was appointed director of the Stasi Records Ernst Dieter Lueg Media Prize for t was more than 25 years hence, the end what had so worried their predecessors in Agency, a office he managed so impressively excellence in reporting. of February 1990. The last election of West Germany – with their petty tactical that it became known as the Gauck Agency. the GDR’s People’s Chamber, which games and personal rivalries disguised as He remained there for ten years. With the was to be the country’s first free elec- conflicting political principles. In equal mea- exception of the successor organizations of Ition, lay ahead. Negotiations concerning the sure, each can now poke fun of it. the SED, he earned the respect of all political GDR’s absorption by West Germany – both Both have brought their own pasts along parties in Germany. He subsequently wrote in terms of its legal and monetary repercus- with them, pasts defined by the life circum- books, gave lectures and moderated a talk Federal President Joachim Gauck at the sions – had not yet begun. There were still stances in the GDR, and by the attempt to show on television, which – as a “fisher of former border checkpoint between East and various other ideas out there, such as the distance themselves from the SED regime men” – he managed with success. His “net- West on Bornholmer Straße in Berlin. prospect that the Federal Republic and the without radically opposing it, which would GDR remain independent states. In this ultimately have landed them in the Stasi atmosphere of pending transition, Volker prison as well as the GDR penal camp in Rühe, then general secretary of the CDU Bautzen. They speak a language that is very and later Germany’s minister of defense, much their own, the subtleties of which turned a memorable phrase: “Germany will are lost to West German ears. They have DOMINIK BUTZMANN/LAIF become more northern, more eastern and no command over the blustering rhetoric more Protestant.” And so it did. of politicians who had begun quarreling in Two life journeys of a special sort – marked the Young Union or Young Socialists – nor by the upheaval in Germany and Europe. would they want to. Their style is to feel their Nothing would remain as it was. In the way along with a certain reserve. If need be, big picture, a state was collapsing, while in they can always be understood with a wink. the smaller picture, lives and careers would Merkel’s rise was a swift one. During be given a fresh start. A doctor of physics, the reunification process, the spokeswoman Angela Merkel – born in Hamburg in 1954 had already attracted the attention of West and raised in Brandenburg – was the spokes- German politicians and officials. 1990 person in Berlin for Democratic Awakening, saw her elected to the Bundestag. She was an East German political movement. Joachim then recommended to Helmut Kohl, who Gauck – born in Rostock in 1940, trained as appointed her to his cabinet as Minister for a theologian – was involved in New Forum, Women and Youth. Her West German rivals 2015 9 Democracy is put to rest Germany’s economy is flourishing, its international standing high. Germans are proud of this. That all is fine, and will remain so, is an illusion Stefan Aust will not propagate. The journalist has observed his country for 49 years as if he were its personal physician. Here are his findings in year 25 of German unity.

wenty-five years later, we’ve grown Our welfare state is growing, blossoming, a well-intentioned “democratic centralism”. used to it: the island of West thriving. We’re saving Greece, welcoming The GDR passed away peacefully 25 years Berlin, the Wall and the GDR are refugees from all over the globe and demon- ago because, in its socialist dream, it denied no more. The old Federal Republic strating our moral superiority to the world. reality – and locked up those who refused stillT exists, but in name alone; the country is We ignore European Currency Union laws to dream along with it. Their states are now called Germany. The Bundestag convenes in forbidding the debt assumption of member incorporated into the Federal Republic. the Reichstag and two East Germans preside nations. We unceremoniously leverage our It was a friendly takeover of the socialist DPA PICTURE ALLIANCE/JENS KALAENE PICTURE DPA over the country: Chancellor Angela Merkel Constitution, although it guarantees the right remnants of World War II. It often seems the and Federal President Joachim Gauck. of asylum but for immigrants from “safe GDR is reawakening in the form of a well- We are governed by a grand coalition of third countries”. Deportation makes for bad meaning, reality-blind unity of social and Christian and Social Democrats that in all PR, and the politicians of the grand coalition economic policy – a nostalgically rendered practicality is here to stay – the politics of will gladly trumpet their case in the popu- In short, reunited Germany is paradise on phantom of socialist times. today brook no alternative. SPD politicians larity contest for who’s the better German. earth, an island of the blessed, and we make Reunification is perhaps the greatest suc- have cause to consider whether next time Crime? No-go areas? Islamist terror or sure that everyone knows it. No wonder that cess story in German history. The Germans, around their party should even nominate a radical right-wing violence? Our pared-down inhabitants from countries stricken with thrown together and grown together, should candidate for chancellor. “Mama Merkel”, security apparatus is on it. war, crises and terror are seeking safe haven not squander it. And let it be with the best as she’s now lauded in the Middle East, Thus does Germany block out reality, with us. Whether they find it is another intentions. she’ll fix it. push problems aside, postpone solutions matter. And whether it turns out that, in Interest rates are nearly non-existent and till the cows come home. The concept of no the end, the all-party welfare state is nothing the federal budget is – according to the gov- alternatives has become a political maxim. more than an illusory oasis, a desert mirage. Stefan Aust is the publisher of ernment – in the black. The rich must put With infallible instincts the chancellor has Die Welt and Welt am Sonntag; on their money in overvalued stock or astro- recognized that Germans from both East emocracy, too, can pass peace- January 1, 2016, he will become nomically priced real estate, forcing excess and West prefer no alternatives. They’re fully away if conflict aversion acting editor-in-chief of both. capital to go stale. happy just to sit back and relax: Everything becomes a topmost strategy. But He is a former editor-in-chief of We get our electricity from wind and sun, will be just fine if that’s what the people up governments are only temporary Der Spiegel. our biogas from fields of corn and we think top tell us. The authoritarian state is a state powers.D Laws are there to be obeyed, espe- that it’s all for free. We’ve abolished compul- of calm and comfort; a democratic society cially by those governing. The democratic sory military service, made our secret service that strove for goals and progress would separation of powers between the legisla- transparent and think we’re all the safer for it. only be stressful. ture, executive and judiciary may not yield to

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Am I just an exception? To help us escape the ideological trenches of an unrelenting dispute, documentary filmmaker and author Güner Balci explains how Germany can become a happy country of immigration.

n 1982, British Prime Minister Marga- the time that this “very different” civiliza- alienation” and “the decline of the West” to migration. Either we are critics of Islam ret Thatcher and West German Chan- tion would eventually become identified have yet to be seen. Yet, relationships that or supporters of Islam. Seldom do we see cellor Helmut Kohl held confidential with Germany and that in 2010, uttering endure against expectations and despite signs of positions converging. talks, the notes of which – long stored the words “Islam now belongs to Germany prejudices and obstacles are often the most Iin UK secret archives – are now available, too”, Germany’s then-President Christian productive. hilo Sarrazin, Berlin’s former Sena- marked PREM 19/1036. They record the Wulff would break a taboo? Who would There is certainly no lack of thorny issues. tor of Finance, penned a highly chancellor’s remarks as follows: “It would have expected that this country was on its Texts and articles on the lack of advance- controversial bestselling book in be impossible for Germany to assimilate way to becoming the cradle of European ment opportunities for Muslim migrants, 2011 titled Germany Abolishes the current number of Turks.” And: “… Islam – if it can prevail against backward- families that are hard to reach education- TItself that accuses migrants with Muslim it would be necessary over the next four looking Islamic associations trying by all ally, patriarchal role models, fundamentalist backgrounds of all kinds of economic and years to reduce the number of Turks by 50 cultural integration problems. For a docu- percent.” mentary film in the summer of that year, I The opposite has taken place. Thirty years “I sometimes feel like my dared go on a stroll with him through the later, Germany is a country of immigra- city’s ethnically mixed Kreuzberg district. tion, with all the challenges, enrichments relationship with Germany is Besides hearing insults from an organized and problems that will always occur when like a marriage that took place group of extreme leftists, Sarrazin took people of differing cultures and views of the a scolding at a mostly Turkish open-air world encounter one another. Migration has against the parents’ wishes.” market, where people his book disparages become one of the paramount challenges as “fruit peddlers” pull a 13-hour workday. facing modern society. We are still waiting means to prevent Muslim theologians interpretations of Islam, marginalization It was a valuable experience for Sarrazin. At for cogent political approaches that could trained at German universities from becom- and alienation are plentiful enough to fill one stand, from behind a small mountain of structure it to everyone’s benefit. More than ing the imams of tomorrow. a library. And yet, our ability to actually beefsteak tomatoes, a middle-aged ethnic half a century after the first “guest worker” Every day, in small and tolerable doses, discuss and argue these problems has not Turk called out to him, saying he shared set foot in Germany, we still have trouble each one of us experiences the “clash of improved. Instead, we barricade ourselves in many of Sarrazin’s views, and that he was dealing with each other on equal terms. cultures” we always hear about. “Over- camps that allow for only a “yes” or “no” tired of seeing how some of his Turkish That’s probably why I sometimes feel kindred couldn’t properly “integrate” or like my relationship with Germany is like a appreciate Germany’s democracy and free- marriage that took place against the parents’ PARWEZ doms. But the man then chided Sarrazin wishes. One that people talk about, saying: for constantly referring to “the Turks”, “It’s just not going to work.” Cultural dif- because he, a vegetable dealer, considered ferences are not always an asset that widens himself German, despite all the adversity. horizons. They can also be a wall, behind Sarrazin, confused by the man’s unexpected which people can barricade themselves remarks, uttered a polite thank-you and because they don’t feel safe. kept on walking. Sarrazin said later that he I was recently asked by a senior politician could not believe this man really considered whether I, “assimilated” as I am, were not himself German. actually an “exception” in my development When I then asked him how this “real Ger- and attitude toward this country. What manness” feels, Sarrazin failed to answer. It exactly is an “exception”? Is a German neo- seems the man at the veggie stand had found Nazi an “exception”? Is a Lebanese-born the right track. If most Germans really do career criminal an “exception”? What about identify with our free society, rule of law Ali, the Kurdish lawyer with an office on and democracy, if religion is indeed a private Berlin’s famous Kurfürstendamm? Is Leyla, matter and the raising of our children to a Syrian prostitute from Duisburg-Marxlohe become good people is the duty of all society, an “exception”, or Sabine, who now goes why can’t we then derive values that apply by the name Nour and wears a headscarf? to us all? Values that are rational, secular, based in law and humanism. We need ethics o even understand this question, that teach real moral values to coming gen- we have to see other people’s fears, erations. Then we won’t need to interbreed and their perspective on those with till there’s only one skin color left. Then all a migration background, which our differences might seem pretty normal. Thas been shaped by many other experiences as well. Back in 1982, Helmut Kohl suppos- edly also remarked that Germany has no Güner Balci, born in Berlin in problem with the Portuguese, the Italians, 1975, is a journalist, author and even the Southeast Asians in the country, documentary filmmaker. In 2012, because these communities had integrated she won the CIVIS Media Prize for well. But the Turks, he continued, came from Integration and Cultural Diversity. a “very different” background. Even today, Aliyah’s Flucht. Die gefährliche Reise he’s far from alone in this opinion. in ein neues Leben (Aliyah’s Escape. There are indeed statistics demonstrating The Dangerous Journey to a New that Muslim immigrants, even those in the Life) was published in 2014. third generation, have bigger difficulties adapting than, for example, East Asian For decades, intellectual circles have met at the Literaturhaus Café in Berlin’s posh Germans. But who would have thought at Charlottenburg neighborhood. No exception: Güner Balci. 2015 11 WE CAN DO THIS

Angela Merkel is not alone in her support for over one million refugees arriving in Europe. Except for a tiny minority, Germans have learned from the racist attacks of the early 1990s | By Eberhard Seidel

t’s 2015, and a nation is reinventing do this!” It was August 31, the 25th anniver- incidents in Rostock in 1992 and Hoyer- 1990s. Since that time, and partly in reaction itself. For weeks, a wave of willing- sary of the signing of the reunification treaty swerda in 1991 – racist riots in which state to it, a diverse and proactive civil society has ness to help has been washing over between East and West Germany. forces capitulated in the face of the neo-Nazi emerged, with a network of organizations Germany. The more refugees that She reminded Germans that offering pro- mob – when the world looked at Germany and people that respond decisively to neo- Icross the border, flooding the country’s tection to the politically persecuted and in horror, wondering how much aggressive Nazi activities and overt racism. The state cities and villages – the more people are on giving shelter to refugees from war zones nationalism was still present in this country and civil society have created alliances to hand to welcome them. Tens of thousands were part of Europe’s basic values. She and its people. strengthen and develop democratic values. of volunteers in Berlin, Munich, Dresden, hardly needed to speak these encouraging A reminder: In the early 1990s, newly Hamburg, Leipzig and other towns are words – a majority of the population already reunited Germany was a deeply insecure e have become a better, more helping the authorities, who are completely agrees. According to a poll this September, country, with no clear identity and in search mature and kinder republic. overwhelmed by the unprecedented number some two-thirds of Germans support the of a new image of itself. At the same time, In 2015, it has become clear that the old battles surround- Wing migration are over; citizens have mod- ernized their way of thinking. Few today claim that Germany is “not a country of immigration”. That makes sense, since 20 percent of the population – 16 million people – have roots outside of Germany, that is,

DPA PICTURE ALLIANCE/SVEN HOPPE ALLIANCE/SVEN PICTURE DPA they themselves, or at least one of their par- ents, were born abroad. And many of those in the other 80 percent come from families with a refugee history, as descendants from one or more of the 12 million refugees displaced to the territories of either East or West Germany between 1945 and 1950. More than any other European country, modern Germany has been shaped by immi- gration. Despite its attendent problems, immigration has has profited the company both economically and demographically in recent decades. This is something people feel not only in their hip pockets; few regret the metamorphosis of the old Germany into the cosmopolitan republic it is today. And that makes Germany different from its eastern neighbors, which are seeking to stem the stream of refugees and preserve their national and religious homogeneity. Despite all the changes in Germany, the threat of neo-Nazi terrorism and extremist right-wing populism are very real. There will be further cases of arson and other For the refugees from the world’s war zones, arriving in Germany can for the time being feel like a place “Where dreams come true”. attacks. Yet it is clear that Germans today are astoundingly resistant to neo-Nazi par- of arrivals. German mechanics, housewives, taking in of many more refugees in the an entire continent was on the move. In ties such as the NPD, alliances like the doctors, children and teenagers, soccer clubs future, should it be necessary. In 2015 alone, 1992, 438,000 people applied for asylum in anti-Islam Pegida movement and to parties and volunteer fire brigades are organizing up to one million people are expected to Germany. Most of them came from Eastern like the AfD. Unlike in Switzerland, France, medical care and the distribution of food. arrive. Europe and the Balkans. A further 200,000 Hungary, Denmark, the Netherlands, Aus- And in many cases, they’re offering refugees At the beginning of August 2015, it was ethnic Germans arrived from territories of tria and Finland, no party with a racist, shelter in their own homes. the image of the ugly German that briefly the Soviet Union, Poland and Romania. anti-Semitic, anti-Islam or anti-refugee plat- The inconceivable atrocities of the Islamic made international headlines. A neo-Nazi The early transformation process of the form has been able to gain a foothold in State (IS) and the images of dead or desper- mob battled police over several days in the formerly communist part of Germany as mainstream politics. well as the process of unification were accompanied by a nationalist revolt. Some “Germans today newspapers and some established political Eberhard Seidel is a journalist are astoundingly resistant to parties fulminated against “asylum-seekers”. and managing director of a Encouraged by this, thousands of angry and European program promoting neo-Nazi parties.” brutalized youths formed nationalist gangs, racial tolerance in schools, wooed by tightly organized neo-Nazi cadres. Schule ohne Rassismus – Schule mit ate people in the Mediterranean Sea have eastern German town of Heidenau. And There were daily racist attacks on refugees, Courage (Schools without Racism – shaken the Germans and awakened feelings elsewhere, buildings slated to become refu- on darker-skinned people, on punks. Far Schools with Courage). of empathy. Germany opened its borders gee shelters were targeted by arsonists, while more than a hundred people died as a result and its people opened their hearts. While refugees were verbally abused, spat on and of extremist right-wing violence. Poland, the UK, the Czech Republic and threatened with violence. But even if some of the images are similar, other European countries gave Syrian refu- The images and commentaries in the media and refugee numbers have reached the same gees the cold shoulder, exclaiming “No Mus- and on social networks at the time gave the order of magnitude as in 1992, Germany is a lims, please!”, Chancellor Angela Merkel impression that Germany was experiencing different country today. We have learned sig- called on Germans for solidarity: “We can a nationalist revival. People remember ugly nificant lessons from the events of the early 12 2015

 The joy of conquering the world

The moment everything changes again: the boomer generation of East Germany and the spirit of freedom | By Ines Geipel NATURESTOCK/FOTOLIA

henever the taxi arrives at the abandoned. It was not possible to achieve boost to the foot soldiers of the revolution generations that came before and after. It’s huge departures board at Ber- much with heroes like us, who had been back home. Sixty percent of those who left possible we lack the historic aura of the lin’s Tegel Airport, a very spe- implanted into the collective good fortune of East Germany from 1984 on were children 1968 generation, but we’re now a force for cial feeling overwhelms me. I East Germany. We simply did not believe in born in a divided Germany. political stabilization: our numbers are high Wread the names Sydney, Rome and New York the success of the system, or our parents and These were not 20-year-olds turning their enough to rival the baby boomers in the and the same three thoughts come to mind. grandparents who had swallowed whole the backs on their country, but young people West. This comes with the knowledge that What is happening now was not the original messages of hope and salvation. This marked trying to escape the “utopia” into which the fortune of history has resolved for us a plan for your life. You were not supposed to a break in authority and a disillusionment of they had been born. The country was dis- dispute that our contemporaries are now see Athens, Istanbul or Paris. But now you a very special kind. After all, the Wall genera- solving, and with it our unpopular mandate. having to experience, endure and battle will board a plane and can fly to any corner of through in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and Russia, the planet. This brief moment standing before and often must pay for with their own lives. the departures board is what reminds me “What has happened to At the time of German Reunification in most powerfully of the past. East Germany us heroes and the hopes we the fall of 1990, who would have thought was a small, blockaded country surrounded that conflicts and wars under dictatorships, by walls, a country with countless restric- cherished for our lives?” which we believed had been relegated to the tions, a country where you were unable to dustbin of history, would repeat themselves fly, drive or even walk where you wished, a tion includes those who triggered the end of We were 20, 25 or 29. We were young and so brutally 25 years later. country that could not be transposed onto East Germany loudly and provocatively in already part of history in the fall of 1989, today’s world. their jarringly bright outfits on those painful which became an advantage in terms of hat has happened to us heroes, For a long time, I was uncertain whether days in the 1980s. In 1981, the band Planlos experience. The Wall generation had not and to the hopes we cherished other Wall children had the same feel- sang: “Wherever you go / Your ID card is only lived through something spectacular, for our lives? The Wall chil- ing whenever they stood in front of that checked / And if you say something wrong / it was also the last generation to have real, dren, who are now between departures board. It’s a feeling that is now You know what’ll happen to you.” This was considered and emotional ties to the politi- Wages 50 and 60 and stand at airport gates all 25 years old, but it has not aged or grown a generation that shouted, sang, stuttered and cal extremes of the 20th century. This was across the globe, claim they are the escapees, tired. On the contrary, it becomes stronger ultimately exposed and erased the barren- an asset of sorts, but one whose value was history’s privileged ones, who had once been and more intense with each passing year. I ness, schizophrenia and ambiguity in the East in the eyes of the beholder. It would not predestined for a very different sort of life. thought just jetting around the world pro- German system. The children of this divided always be viewed as a head start or a bonus. There they stand, passports in hand, ready fessionally would quell this sense of gut Germany were intense, flagrant, sober and Many political and private burdens proved for boarding and full of expectation – a sense nervousness. Has not the ability to travel harsh. “We’re the young generation / But particularly heavy after 1989; Wall children of expectation that doesn’t wear off. Standing anywhere become so natural as to kill this what do we know about life? / We’re wait- may not have experienced a real war, but we at the gate could be the moment when every- feeling of delight? Is it inappropriate to con- ing for the downfall / We’re waiting for the were a generation full of internal conflicts, thing changes again, and everything starts tinually bombard others with this strange downfall / We’re waiting for the downfall” into which the experiences of our parents anew; a third life may await in the wings. feeling of happiness? bawled Shanghai, the lead singer of the Punk and grandparents had been thrust as a bul- But why? Why not talk about the miracle band Vitamin A. wark against the unresolved history of two and good fortune of history? Why not recall It was impossible to build a state with German dictatorships. Is that why children Ines Geipel is an author and lives that West Germany was able to absorb half a heroes of fortune like us. We were wait- of the Wall often seem so quiet, subordinate, in Berlin. Her book Generation million East Germans without any problems ing; we had increasingly set ourselves apart almost invisible? Have some of them sought Mauer. Ein Porträt (Wall in 1989? Why should 1,000,000 migrants from the system; we were young, but had to over-adapt to life in the West? Does East Generation. A Portrait) was recently suddenly be an insoluble problem in 2015? no future. Nothing worked any more. We German thinking still control them? Is it published by Klett-Cotta. Why can’t the Wall generation – those of no longer wanted to be part of the collective possible simply to discard experiences of Born in 1960, Geipel was a world- us who grew up in the shadow of the Iron system, or to grow moldy in the GDR, for dictatorships and truly learn what freedom class sprinter and world-record Curtain – remember what it meant to be that was our destiny. As a result, we were the is without some sort of help? holder on the 4x100 relay team welcomed into the real world and treated only generation in the East that made it clear Our new mandate was not long in coming of the GDR before being booted off like normal people? in the fall of 1989 that it was impossible to in 1989; it just emerged, inevitably. The the squad for political reasons. I can still see us in the late 1960s, stand- reform East Germany. We no longer wanted Wall generation was needed to resolve the She fled the country in the summer ing and saluting the flag at the “Schools of talks or extensions; we wanted something past, guarantee reality, rebuild, research of 1989. Socialism” to receive our political mandate more than a life spent waiting. In this sense, and break the silence by recounting their from the generations that had come before it was primarily members of our generation experiences, giving them life and finding a us. We were the flag-bearers, the “fighters for who set off in the summer of 1989 to bid language for the injustices they had lived happiness” predestined to see communism farewell to East Germany via Hungary or through. We were unpretentious and real- become a reality. It was a mandate we soon Czechoslovakia, and gave a much-needed istic, acting as a corrective factor to the One country. Das Auto.

Germany celebrates the Day of German Unity.

RZ_German_unification_day_picks_Client_247_8x370_V3.indd 1 23.09.15 12:00 14 2015



PETITES MAINS

Paris, London, Milan, New York – Berlin! Germany is experiencing the rebirth of a fashion capital – at last | By Christiane Arp

eunification was an important pay top dollar for stylish interior design for creativity. Furthermore, the city forms Week. We aimed to create a platform that event for all German industries, and state-of-the-art bathroom and kitchen a link between Scandinavia, with its lively would showcase the wide variety of excellent especially fashion. The 1991 technology; they cultivate German wines designer scene, and Eastern Europe’s insa- design in Germany, and to develop a sense decision to make Berlin the and frequent the many Michelin-starred tiable appetite for fashion. of togetherness among German designers Rpolitical capital of the united Germany restaurants that have sprung up across the Many young designers have moved to that would reinforce morale. Above all, the laid the foundations for a new fashion country since the 1990s. Berlin because they love the atmosphere – Salon is a place for young designers to meet capital as well. Globalization and social media have worn but also because it offers optimal conditions retailers and industry experts. We support Bonn had been the seat of government but down some of the sharper edges of national in which to ply their trade. Berlin retained and mentor our young talent for four sea- never a focus for German culture; a nascent idiosyncrasies. Germany’s newfound opti- an infrastructure of small workshops – sons. The current Berlin Mode Salon at the fashion identity requires the fertile ground mism is having a significant effect on its pattern-cutters, tailors, sewing shops – that Kronprinzenpalais is the logical extension of of a cosmopolitan city. That had existed in avant-garde mood. And Berlin in particular are now under siege by start-ups and the the Vogue Salon – a forum for established Berlin up until WWII – not least because has become the place to be; an experimental students of Berlin’s nine fashion academies. designers to meet with new, up-and-coming of Jewish expertise in the field. In 1929, lifestyle is easier here than in Paris, London And another thing is helping idealistic colleagues. half of all Germany’s fashion companies or New York. Berlin designers: retail sales are increasingly There are also many parallel initiatives, had Jewish owners; and in 1933, Germany Yet it takes more than a few years to shifting to online sales, which are far more such as the Designer for Tomorrow Award had 50,000 fashion houses, many of them establish a universally recognized fashion able to respond to the global demand for sponsored by Peek & Cloppenburg. It brings showcasing haute couture. culture. Simply becoming the German capi- new articles and collections. It represents an fashion students to Berlin from all over the Even after the war, Berlin was able to tal did not automatically trigger a fashion opportunity for small labels; today’s buyers world under the patronage of top interna- compete with Paris for a time. But the tional designers. Galeries Lafayette on Fried- construction of the Berlin Wall put an richstraße gives display space to talented end to the industry, whose tailors and “Today’s Germans have young designers – a gracious move by our seamstresses, known as petites mains (little learned to take pleasure in experienced and fashion-conscious French hands), were mostly located in East Berlin, neighbors. The Berlin city government, with while the well-known fashion houses were the finer things in life.” the help of a fashion consulting company, in the West. offers “Start Your Fashion Business” advice, However, even those great days of Berlin renaissance in Berlin. It didn’t really get and individual customers are metaphorical which is often helpful in a pinch. fashion were an exception in Germany’s going until 2002 when the Premium trade frequent fliers, flitting from one unmistak- But the biggest boost for the future of couture history. Until the Fall of the Wall fair opened, followed the next year by able must-have item to the next. the industry was the establishment of in 1989, the country tended to be skepti- Bread & Butter, for streetwear, and in And it works. The number of exhibitors Fashion Council Germany at the start of this cal of fashion. With the exception of a few 2007 by the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week. at the Premium fashion fair has increased year. Something taken for granted in other brands and the keen promotion of fashion International fashion reporters appeared tenfold over the past decade. Solutions have countries arrived late to Germany, but not by a handful of stores, style-conscious at the catwalks, and at glamorous photo even been found to the problems that had too late: permanent representation for the Germans had to look abroad. exhibitions like Karl Lagerfeld’s “100 Years typically plagued its early years. It used to fashion industry. I am frequently asked why Germans make of Fashion Photography” at C/O Berlin and be that the most important buyers, retail- That gives German fashion a place it has such heavy weather of fashion. The coun- Fashion Week’s “In your face” by Mario ers and fashion reporters could not inspect long since earned in the national economy, try’s Protestant ethics are surely one reason Testino. Not least, Berlin’s clubs, bars and the quality of German products because considering that after France, Germany is for Germans’ consistently modest taste in restaurants – comparable with New York Berlin Fashion Week was not coordinated Europe’s biggest market for clothing and clothing. And the decentralized nature of nightlife – provided an unexpected – and with key international shows. Our fashion fashion. Germans spend €60 billion annu- West Germany supported a provincial men- relaxing – mecca for fashion buyers. industry stage now features in the calendars ally on clothes and shoes. That’s an average tality that managed just fine without glam- Berlin is a rough diamond: unpolished, of important buyers and commentators. of €800 per person, €100 above the Euro- our. But today’s burghers have learned to radical and yet so fragile. It’s still finding In 2011, we founded Vogue Salon, which pean average. And that cash is also being take pleasure in the finer things in life; they its way, which fosters a good atmosphere runs in parallel with Mercedes Benz Fashion spent on homegrown products. 2015 15

(1) VINCENT PETERS, (2) KARL LAGERFELD, (3) FRANCESCO SCAVULLO, (4) MARK ABRAHAMS, (5) KOTO BOLOFO, (6) MARIO TESTINO, (7) CLAUDIA KNOEPFEL + STEFAN INDLEKOFER, (8) CAMILLA AKRANS, (9) FRANCESCO CARROZZINI, (10) ALEXI LUBOMIRSKI



Vogue has been dressing women since 1892, setting fashion trends worldwide. Today the magazine is published in 21 editions around the globe. The cover solely features internationally successful top models like Christy Turlington, Claudia Schiffer and Julia Stegner.

Many of German fashion’s heavyweights contact point for the media and the wider And if Germans themselves begin to value with annual sales in the hundreds of mil- society while creating a presence that it is and support fashion made in Germany, lions of euros – such as Hugo Boss – are hoped to draw political and financial sup- international appreciation is sure to follow. based in provinces far from the capital. port into its orbit. But they export around the world. There Because creativity takes time, rising fash- is much global interest in German clothing ion producers need investors with staying Christiane Arp, born in 1961,

DPA PICTURE ALLIANCE/ANDREAS GEBERT ALLIANCE/ANDREAS PICTURE DPA creations – due to trust in quality fashion, power, with vision, passion, empathy and holds a degree in fashion design. an affection for sporting apparel and other an appreciation of quality. The aim is no She has been editor-in-chief of high-tech sporting products, as well as a less than to establish fashion as a part Vogue Germany since 2003. curiosity about innovative niche producers of German culture. The first step is for and youthful newcomers. German fashion design to gain respect at Fashion Council Germany is a lobby for home; that is Fashion Council Germany’s this mass of quiet strength, providing a biggest task.

www.porsche.com

A declaration of our love for freedom only needs 3 words: Macan, Panamera, Cayenne.

In Stuttgart since 1950. In Leipzig since 2002.

Porsche is celebrating 25 years of German reunification.

AZ_The_Berlin_Times_248x180mm_DU110915.indd 2 14.09.15 11:27 16 2015

 THEY HAVE A DREAM

Making money and changing the world – a Berlin start-up is making it happen | By Johanna Trapp

The company logo is an elephant, and hopefully be available via online banking at once. There is no obligation, no per - The biggest problem for start-ups is not just because the idea is so big. Tim and Deutsche Bahn ticket machines. sonal data, no waiting. Elefunds carries finding a market in which they can gain a Wellmanns founded elefunds in Berlin – Ger- out the entire donation process in the foothold. The most important issues are many’s capital of start-ups – in 2012. The Is elefunds currently profitable? background, issues a donation receipt and, leadership, team, financing, networking, name is short for “electronic fundraising”. Elefunds is already making money, even if you want, will give you more informa - marketing, sales and whether you can The plan is to get people to donate money though all its founders take on other jobs tion about the charities. In turn, the chari- handle a setback. Extremely important to with a single mouse-click by rounding now and then, so they don’t lose touch ties can address whole new segments of making it work is a good network, one up the sum when they make an online with their other clients. Elefunds provides the market, receive regular donations they that believes in you. You also need a broad purchase – as if they were giving a tip. fundraising and marketing services for wouldn’t otherwise get, and the whole spectrum of expertise to answer internally 150 online stores have already joined up. charities and charges them accordingly. process requires no effort on their part. all the questions that will arise. Tim Wellmanns explains the elefunds We convert a large volume of non-donors Persistence is essential. There will always philosophy. How much start-up capital did you have? into donors with the one-click simplicity be ups and downs that a new business Elefunds obtained seed investment very of round-up-and-donate. must go through. You have to keep your What exactly is the idea behind elefunds? quickly, which was very helpful in giving eyes on the next “up”, and learn to enjoy We aim to integrate social involvement us early experience in real business. It was Were you afraid of failing as the founder your failures. as simply as possible into everyday life. a six-figure sum. of a new business? Since 2012, elefunds has been revolution- An entrepreneur fails every day. A good How important is team spirit in a start-up? izing the way we all make donations. We Is Berlin a good location for start-ups? entrepreneur chooses his settings, and We’re not just colleagues, but friends introduced our first product in 2012. We Berlin is truly a dream for young entre - remains confident, relaxed and happy with as well. So we’re happy to talk business offer our customers a cashless transac- preneurs. You only need five minutes on over dinner on a Sunday, or late at night tion, a choice of how much they want to a bike to get to relevant conferences and in someone’s living room. We have con- round up their payment, and a chance to meetings, or to see colleagues and cus- “Berlin is truly a nections not just through work, but also help respected non-profit organizations. tomers – that’s why Berlin is a mecca for dream for young from evenings spent playing ping pong or We also assist charities with the overall start-ups. Contact with other start-ups and strolling Prenzlauer Berg with a beer. expansion of their fundraising activities, developing a network are very important, start-ups.” both on- and offline. particularly when a business is just get- ting off the ground. Elefunds wouldn’t what he’s doing. We’re growing faster each Johanna Trapp is a journalist Who are your partners? be what it is today if it had been founded year; this year we’ll double our volume. based in Berlin. With elefunds We work mainly with well-known chari- in Bochum. And Bochum is a really nice You don’t have to be Apple to call it a donations, she has found a way ties in Germany like WWF Deutschland, place. breakthrough. And we’re just warming to ease her guilty conscience while SOS Kinderdörfer, Care International and up. I think you’ll be hearing more about indulging her online-shopping Welthungerhilfe. What are the advantages to making dona- elefunds in the future. addiction. tions via elefunds? Who can use elefunds? Elefunds is the easiest way in the world What are the most difficult questions for Elefunds can be integrated simply into to make a donation – one click and you’re start-ups, and which new enterprises are all cashless transactions. One day it will done. You can donate to several charities most likely to succeed?

PARWEZ Bustling metropolis and creative spirit, a mecca for new start-ups: elefunds’ David Hirsch, Tim Wellmanns and Leonie Beinhardt (left to right) at their office in Prenzlauer Berg. 2015 17

saf Moses is working on his  can carry out an idea, the easier it becomes personal “new Jewish dream”. for new startups to get money from inves- In Berlin. The now 33-year-old tors.” And now the city is attracting more Israeli moved here after three Size matters and more private venture capital. According Ayears of military service, studied economics to Dow Jones VentureSource, 2 billion of € tuition-free and in 2010, along with Sebas- Berlin is luring young entrepreneurs, especially venture capital flowed to Berlin firms over tian Schulze, founded a company. The goal: the last year. In the first quarter of 2015, the to go from their back courtyard in Neukölln those from the start-up meccas of London total was €876 million Euros. But there are to Exit. Exit is the currency of startups; an and Tel Aviv | By Peter H. Koepf other, much more banal reasons why young Exit is successful when a company becomes pioneers are drawn to Berlin from abroad. so profitable and so promising that it gets For Asaf Moses, it was the tuition-free edu- bought up by a bigger player. that they will probably buy and that will And others are still aspiring to get there: in cation. For other fortune seekers it’s the low Moses’ company is called Fit Analytics, make them happy.” 2008, Syrian-born Ijad Madisch (35) founded cost of living. Especially from pricey London, and it wants to make shopping on the More and more Israelis are trying their a platform, ResearchGate, where scientists young people flock to Berlin, where rent is Internet easier. “Online clothes-shopping luck in Berlin. Emerald Medical Applica- from all over the world share their results. Six still cheap. “Berlin is now growing faster still suffers from one drawback; finding tions, with startup assistance from the big investors, including Bill Gates, have been than London”, notes Moses. “The number of the right size.” He wants his company to media company, Springer Plug & Play, is said to have allocated €27 million of capital startups is increasing, human capital is now change this: with Size Advisor, software he as good here as it is there, and wages are high developed in-house, his employees collect enough to live on.” data from people who would like to order “Berlin is now growing faster Two years ago, the management consul- clothing online. The better the analysis of than London.” tancy McKinsey predicted that by 2020, body sizes and individual tastes of custom- 100,000 jobs are set to be generated by ers, the fewer returned goods. “Size mat- marketing its revolutionary skin cancer for further development. Rocket Internet is Berlin start-ups. And for ten years the city has ters” is the company motto. screening platform, a method for the early birthing one company after the next, even been growing – by about 45,000 residents in “Our value can be measured”, says detection of skin cancer. GetJob is an app after going public (sorry, investors). the last year alone. The London newspaper Moses. “We now have 22 employees. That’s to connect employers in the Berlin service “Since 2008, every eighth job opening in The Guardian has taken notice: “Creative good for Berlin. And we help companies industry with those seeking jobs. Springer Berlin has been in the digital economy”, young Brits are quitting London for afford- make more money.” All over the world. Plug & Play is helping this Tel Aviv-based reckons Stefan Franzke, management spokes- able Berlin”, read an Aug. 1 headline. “More German companies like Karstadt and Sport startup as well, “to get our product in person for the business development agency, and more burnt-out Londoners are embrac- Scheck, the American outfitter The North another place”, as CEO Liyam Flexer Berlin Partner. That’s almost 18,000 new ing the laid-back cool – and much lower cost Face and numerous firms from Russia to puts it. InFarm is cultivating vegetables jobs. A total of around 60,000 people work of living – of the German capital.” South America employ the services of the indoors. in this sector. “Berlin’s universities also give Berlin start-up, whose fees are calculated The German start-up capital is attracting rise to many new technology- and hardware- Peter H. Koepf is “per unreturned purchase”. lots of entrepreneurs. And the success sto- based companies.” In the past 20 years, editor-in-chief of Fit Analytics currently collects 52,000 ries are piling up. Microsoft has bought an 1,000 companies were founded from within The German Times. data sets – daily. The more data, the more Exit for 6Wunderkinder and its to-do-app, universities, 40 percent of them in the past precise the recommendation, believes Wunderlist. Word has it that the purchase five years alone. Moses. “Our goal is that people are only price is €200 million. Soundcloud has Asaf Moses is content with this develop- offered clothes that make them look good, found a partner in Warner Brothers. ment: “The more startups that show they

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Germany has already made a great deal of progress and every day, is generating even more: affordable, clean energy, secure jobs, expert knowledge for the future, sustainable growth, and a better quality of life for everyone. Our energy transition is tur ning Germany into one of the most energy-conscious and environmentally friendly countries in the world. Find out what we have already achieved and where we still need to go in the newsletter “Energiewende direkt”. Subcribe now at www.bmwi-energiewende.de/EWD/subscribe ...the ultimate cabrio jacket.

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RTL Who’s a spy? Who’s a pawn? Jonas Nay (left) as Martin Rauch in Deutschland 83 is determined to stake out his very own territory. BACK IN THE GDR

Socialism’s catching on in America – as great TV. The US watches Deutschland 83. The show is hitting a nerve | By Nina Rehfeld

n a scene from Deutschland 83, several Martin Rauch (Jonas Nay). Rauch is pres- cess despite some controversy surrounding two children oblivious to their parents’ high-ranking Stasi officers stand look- sured by his Aunt Lenora (Maria Schrader) the story of five friends in Germany during mission. But Hofmann rejects the com- ing at a floppy disk containing secret – who has connections within the highest World War II. “That series opened doors parison. “When we started developing NATO files, which has been obtained level of the Stasi – to get close to West for us”, says Nico Hofmann. “Many of the Deutschland 83, The Americans was not Ifor them by the young spy Martin Rauch German General Edel (Ulrich Noethen) broadcasters that bought Generation War even on German television. And we took a (Jonas Nay). “And what am I supposed to and, at the height of the Cold War, to smug- were keen to get Deutschland 83, and now completely different approach. The Ameri- do with it?” one of them asks. The East gle NATO secrets back to the East. Anna doors are opening for talks about further cans is very American, quite patriotic – in German secret police don’t have the tech- Winger, who came up with the story, is an serial content from Germany. We have many ways the opposite of what we did nology to read the disk – a medium from American journalist who used her excellent spoken with AMC, Netflix, Sky and BBC here with a strong sense of irony.” the West. “Stick it up my ass?” Perhaps the bold concept behind this Deutschland 83 is an early-1980s spy series – and its international success – marks thriller, soap opera and period piece of East “Perhaps the bold concept a new turn for German television, where, and West Germany. The series captivates according to Hofmann, there is “still a lack with good acting, a fast pace and a catchy behind this series and its international of courage to tell stories as a series over soundtrack, including Nena’s “99 Luft- success mark a new turn for eight or ten weeks”. German TV executives, ballons” as well as songs by David Bowie he says, are far more likely to green-light and the Eurythmics. But above all, it is the German television.” a three- or four-part series, because audi- series’ lighthearted humor that gives a new ences are used to the 90-minute format. But take on the Cold War. In another scene, contacts within the American community America. It’s clear there is an awakened viewers here have been strongly influenced Martin has to learn “West German” – in Berlin, including former US Ambassador interest in international product.” by high-quality US series, which are riding over there a bread roll is a Brötchen, not a John Kornblum, for her detailed research. For the German market, Deutschland a wave of success, even in Germany. Schrippe, and there are different words for Her husband Jörg Winger is a television 83 makes a call to nostalgia – the books of Hofmann strongly believes that the trend basic things such as “plastic” and “super- producer whose credits include SOKO Petra Kelly, Ronald Reagan’s “evil empire” in German television is veering toward market”. His language lesson is accompa- Leipzig (a German Law and Order); he speech, the German peace movement and high-quality series. “There is a lot more to nied by a brightly colored montage, like translated the screenplay, which his wife Pershing missiles, along with clips from come in the next five years.” one from a 1980s schoolbook. wrote in English. West Germany’s Tagesschau and East Ger- The series is already an international hit. Nico Hofmann particularly liked the idea many’s Aktuelle Kamera news programs, The first-ever German series on US cable of an East German protagonist. “The great conjure up the atmosphere of the early TV, it ran in June and July on the Sundance strength of Anna Winger’s screenplay is 1980s. “It’s a trip back to my own youth”, Nina Rehfeld is a German TV critic Channel, in German with English subtitles. that she doesn’t judge; she takes both sides says Hofmann. “Our protagonist is the based in Phoenix, Arizona. American critics gave it rave reviews: Enter- seriously”, says Hofmann. “She managed age I was then, and the nuclear threat and tainment Weekly put Deutschland 83 on to take a highly ironic view of the era – in Giovanni di Lorenzo’s candlelight vigils for its “Must List”; and Rotten Tomatoes – a Germany, we would probably never tell it peace still stand out in my mind’s eye.” The review aggregator – showed a rare 100 per this way.” But Americans, Hofmann says, fact that Deutschland 83 works in America cent approval rating. are hardly troubled by the idea of contem- as well Hofmann accredits to the grand “I’m surprised by this unanimous enthu- porary history told as entertainment. And conflict of two systems, which is played out siasm”, says Nico Hofmann, who has been he adds that the directors, Edward Berger here and has just recently taken on a new making ambitious historical dramas for and Samira Radsi, represent “a generation political relevance. cinema and television for many years and is between 35 and 38… that tackles these US media have compared Deutschland 83 the producer of Deutschland 83. “It seems topics in a more relaxed, less didactic to The Americans, a much-praised US series the time was right and we hit a nerve.” fashion.” about two Soviet spies who – also at the Anna and Jörg Winger wrote the story Hofmann recently won an International height of the Cold War – live undercover about the young border patrol soldier Emmy for Generation War, a global suc- as a married couple in a US suburb, with 20 2015  GERMAN

What does pop music say about the state of a nation? In the 1970s, the sound of Kraftwerk rocked the world. Today, Helene Fischer and Paul Kalkbrenner rule the unified country | By Sebastian Zabel

Helene Fischer is Germany’s he came out of nowhere and had current world tour by four middle-aged Lead singer Til Lindemann grumbles and biggest pop star. She has a master plan. She gave German men in latex suits. They perform at museum grunts provocative lines like “Bück dich, sold over nine million CDs. Schlager – a pop genre no one outside venues like the MoMA and Berlin’s Neue das Gesicht interessiert mich nicht” (bend Her biggest hit is “Atemlos” Germany will ever understand – an Nationalgalerie. Kraftwerk, Germany’s top over, I’m not interested in your face) and (Breathless). Simmaculate smile, two perfect rows of teeth, pop act for decades, is more popular abroad “Du bist hier in meinem Land, mein Land, a swinging disco beat and a catchy verse on than at home. Their minimalist, repetitive, mein Land” (You’re here in my country, the pleasures of the night. technoid vision of pop long ago became my country, my country), which place both Plenty of pop stars had done it before part of the world’s cultural heritage. They him and his band under suspicion of sexism Helene Fischer came along. Yet this artistic helped techno get started and feature in and fascism. But it’s not as simple as all singer with Russian roots has set off a tsu- hip-hop artists’ work more than any other that. Gestures of dominance and submission, nami of enthusiasm in Germany not seen band. What makes Kraftwerk different from fetish gear and uniforms, their use of con- since, say, Robbie Williams at the zenith of his career. Fischer is accompanied and guided at every turn by her goal-obsessed “German pop was often either too management. She’s a German superstar, heavy or much too light to compete.” an entertainer so perfect it’s almost boring; and she’s single-handedly put the German Helene Fischer – apart from the obvious – is troversial language and political incorrect- music industry back into the black, selling their originality. ness – it’s all somehow ambivalent. There’s more than nine million records – a rare feat The band from Düsseldorf, which retains too much lipstick and irony for Rammstein these days. only one of its original members, Ralf Hütter, to be considered unequivocally evil. Their It’s not easy to explain the Helene Fischer was always very different from all other pop shows, bursting with pyrotechnics, attract phenomenon to British or American friends. acts; it is as German as it is international. just as many screaming fans at New York’s Some of her music verges on tear-jerking, Four nearly indistinguishable band members Madison Square Garden as at the Olympic some is good to dance to; her performances stand on the stage like robots behind key- Stadium in Munich. While not all their fans are as flawless as they are soulless. Her fans boards. In their videos, 1950s Volkswagens are right-wing extremists, Rammstein lends are of all ages and from every social drive through the picture. Their mechanically itself easily to causes of the extreme right. class. The biggest star sung lyrics contain words like Urankristall And their music? It’s a kind of Teutonic in Germany today, (uranium crystal), Klingklang and Neonlicht industrial-metal, blood-curdling, like the Fischer is an exclu- (neon light). Songs like “Autobahn”, “Das sound of a gorilla in heat. sively German Model” and “Die Roboter” – all sung only phenomenon. in German – were worldwide hits. German or decades, pop meant pop from the The scene pop music has never been more successful, UK and the US. German pop was is quite a dif- or credible, abroad. often either too heavy or much too ferent one The key to Kraftwerk’s success is its truly light to compete. There were folksy on the original sound, which has its roots in what hitsF and bands that copied their favorite English music critics in the late 1960s dubbed Anglo-American idols, but there was no Krautrock. It not only departed from what native German language for pop culture – had gone before, but was perceived as that had been wiped out by the barbarity of representing something entirely new. the Nazis. The corrupting economic miracle Germany no longer appeared dull of the postwar years did not lead to any kind and folksy; it had moved on from of cultural miracle; the silence on German its image as a Nazi cliché – it crimes lay like a fog over the young republic. was now an elegant, modern Not until the early 1970s, when Udo country. Lindenberg came along, did Germany find The bands and artists on its own voice in the world of rock and roll. today’s German charts are a far cry Lindenberg, a former jazz percussionist, had from elegant. Along with Helene a brash voice and a style that was at once Fischer and the like, there’s the awful casual, lyrical and linguistically playful. right-wing-extremist rock band Krautrock bands like Neu! and Can – who Böhse Onkelz; the three grand at first found hardly any audiences at all – seigneurs of German pop, Udo invented their own sound, which was not a Lindenberg (70), Peter Maffay mere adaptation of British pop, but rather (63) and Herbert Grönemeyer embraced the art of German engineering (58); and a horde of young and the German Romantics. rappers acting as if Comp- And then the early 1980s gave rise to the ton and the Bronx were Neue Deutsche Welle (New German Wave), boroughs of Germany’s with its sometimes rebellious, sometimes depressed Ruhr Valley offbeat, often silly acts. Finally there was town, Wanne-Eickel. something we might call German pop. The only band with Although its early years were wild and excit- much of a following out- ing, it wasn’t until Nena – a tame band if side of Germany is named ever there were one – came along with the after the site of a plane bouncy dance tune “99 Luftballons” that a crash that claimed 70 lives. Rammstein, German track made the international charts, lovers of obscenely controversial lyrics and even reaching no. 1 in the US. Music critics – militaristic garb, hails from eastern Germany. even in Britain – celebrated the new German The band is both surprising and original, and Underground, with bands like Fehlfarben, in this way comparable to Kraftwerk. DAF and Palais Schaumburg. DPA PICTURE ALLIANCE/MATTHIAS BALK ALLIANCE/MATTHIAS PICTURE DPA 2015 21 PHENOMENA

This narrow, exciting thread of tradition German techno DJs and producers are a continued into the 1990s, when bands trademark to rival Mercedes-Benz. The most with powerful lyrics appeared – Blumfeld, successful of them all, Paul Kalkbrenner, Tocotronic – that expressed the feelings flies from gig to gig in a Learjet, command- and political expectations of an urban post- ing six-figure fees. What does he sound like? Berlin Wall generation. However, those A German military parade exploring its

who don’t understand the German lyrics softer side – precise, dependable, a dash of ALLIANCE/JENS KALAENE PICTURE DPA of Blumfeld singer Jochen Distelmeyer must Wagner, a pinch of Ibiza; a party machine feel a bit left out, which is why the band out of East Berlin. Kalkbrenner is the inter- made only a short tour of small British national standard, “Made in Germany”. clubs.

ut of course, there is one German pop phenomenon that outshines Sebastian Zabel, born in 1965, all others – techno. Imported from has been editor-in-chief of the Detroit, the loud heavy beat was German edition of Rolling Stone. adaptedB and developed in Frankfurt and, One of his favorite albums is above all, in Berlin after the Fall of the On the Beach by Neil Young Wall, becoming the world-embracing sound for a generation of ravers. The music is the lyrics, erasing any potential question of comprehending it. The band Kraftwerk was formed in 1970. It is known for its very own brand of electronic pop.

New dimensions.

With German reunification, the country was finally made whole again. Its farmlands also expanded greatly. CLAAS rose to the challenge with a generation of machines with tremendous performance capacity. Like their field of use, they were a new dimension.

claas.com 22 2015

 Long live the short year of anarchy As long as there is Freiraum and people with Freizeit, Berlin can support a unique subculture | By Paul Hockenos

ctober 3, 1990, was a distinctly which challenged the mores and structures The grit of the East German underground many, only bigger: from the Rhine to the glum day in the bastions of Ber- of West Germany’s Kleinfamilie, its authori- protest movement – of which the punks Oder-Neiße. lin’s subculture: the squatted tarian schooling, Christian morality and all were just one thread – played a bigger role But Berlin still riffs off the short year of tenements of Friedrichshain, the the other cultural underpinnings the student in the Wall’s fall than historians today anarchy. 1990s Berlin generated something subterraneanO dance clubs in Mitte and the radicals claimed made fascism possible in the tend to give it credit for. But when the Iron entirely original, intensely political and late-night haunts of Kreuzberg. Many of first place. The communards underscored Curtain was finally raised, the punks and enduring. The ethos and aesthetic of the the underground scene’s habitués – East and Berlin underground makes Berlin cool, West Germans, as well as many internation- inspiring and attractive. Berghain, written als like me – understood unification to mean “Berghain doesn’t make Berlin hip. up in the New York Times, doesn’t make the crushing of the breathtaking “short year Berlin hip. Berlin makes Berghain hip, like of anarchy” that had reigned in the city’s Berlin makes Berghain hip.” the dance clubs that preceded it in the inner districts since the Wall’s breach on one guiding tenet of Berlin’s counterculture the literati, the bohemians and the freaks wild 1990s. It’s no wonder Detroit asked Nov. 9, 1989. that remains valid today: Stop all the talk wasted no time seizing the moment. In the a handful of 1990s Berlin impresarios to No doubt, it spelled the end of those exhila- and do it yourself! From 1967-69, Kommune power vacuum of those days, people’s first come to their failing city and advise them rating months when absolutely everything I made a host of mistakes, but the spirit of impulse wasn’t to burn and plunder, but on repurposing Detroit’s decrepit inner-city seemed possible. For a moment there even challenging the establishment and acting on rather to use the extraordinary unclaimed neighborhoods. flashed the fantasy of a new Germany based it inspired decades of young Germans. space available to create, interact freely The squats and other projects of the early on the ideas of direct democracy, solidar- By the time the Wall fell, a hedonistic and and live according to their own rules. They 1990s offered a glimpse of what another ity, and DIY ingenuity – the culture that avant-garde late-night scene had been thriv- squatted whole buildings at a time, where kind of democracy and another Germany prevailed in many of the over 130 squats of East Berlin, as well as the untold number of occupied apartments, industrial spaces, shop fronts and even abandoned breweries and bank vaults. With unification, gone were the days when anybody with a kooky idea and a crowbar could set up a little gallery or café or studio in the abandoned properties of East Berlin. JÖRG CARSTENSEN ALLIANCE/DPA PICTURE Yet, 25 years later it’s fair to say that our dark moods weren’t entirely justified. While the craziest year of innovation and experi- mentation could not be replicated, the years that followed generated an untold number of quirky, off-beat, ingenious projects and cultural products that bore the imprint of the 1989-90 zeitgeist, when East and West Germans met for the first time in the post- war ruins of Prenzlauer Berg, Mitte and Friedrichshain. Berlin’s cool, late-night scene and all of its arts still live from this energy, enabling Berlin to reinvent itself over and over again. Some of the most colorful 1990s phenom- ena, like the techno and acid scenes, had One of a kind: Sven Marquardt, doorman at Berghain. only just begun by Oct. 1990. There was still a surfeit of vacant space – Freiraum in ing in West Berlin since the late 1970s thanks they created in miniature the society they might look like. Though this never came to German – that distinguished Berlin from any to the students, the punk rock revolution, the desired. The spirit of the day was to break fruition for all of Germany, it lives on in of its international counterparts. You could squats in Kreuzberg and Schöneberg, and a new ground in the name of a Germany that Berlin’s multitude of collectively organized still make ends meet on very little, which left self-confident queer crowd like nowhere else had never before existed. The partisans houses and projects of all kinds. plenty of Freizeit, or free time – the other in Europe. If ever “no future” fit as a label, it tested new forms of participatory democ- As long as there’s Freiraum and people prerequisite for an original counterculture – was in the stranded island city of West Berlin racy, community and shared economy – and with Freizeit, Berlin can be a location for for self-made ventures that didn’t necessarily – occupied by three armies, surrounded by had loads of fun doing it. unique subculture. Its enemy is gentrifica- turn a deutschmark. another and smack in the middle of a nuclear tion. If its advocates prevail, Berlin will Today the kids in the world-famous club standoff. The UK’s punks had nothing over efore long the West Berliners become just like every other bland city in Berghain may not know – or care – that the West Berliners, with the exception of the and other free spirits from afar Europe. the source of the club’s cool goes back even fact that the Berliners chose their poison – caught wind of the Shangri-La further than 1989-90, to the vibrant subcul- and quite liked it. The Wall made their little of Freiraum in the East, which tures in postwar East and West Berlin. Long anarchic sociotope possible. lookedB much like derelict Kreuzberg had in Paul Hockenos is the before the Wall fell, both Berlins were on the East Berlin’s post-punks envied their west- the 1970s. In the squats and on the floors of Europe correspondant for map as havens for artists and radicals, draft ern peers’ option to drop out. Under the the techno clubs, East met West for the first The Chronicle of Higher Education. dodgers and individualists, gays and lesbians, GDR’s socialist dictatorship, their illegal time. The early encounters weren’t always He is the author of three books, eccentrics and punk rockers. Today’s Berlin bands screeched and tortured their instru- smooth, but the artists, anarchists and scene including Joschka Fischer and the is unimaginable without the legacies of Iggy ments to protest “too much future”. Their denizens of the “temporary autonomous Making of the Berlin Republic: & Bowie, Christiane F., the Ingenious Dilet- fates were determined by the state from zone” of East Berlin had a common foe. An Alternative History of Postwar tantes, Wolf Biermann and the East German cradle to grave. Dropping out and pursuing Before their experiments got far off the Germany, published by Oxford punks who rocked the red-brick churches in music or painting or fashion design beyond ground, the processes of German Reunifica- University Press in 2007. 1980s Prenzlauer Berg. the state’s parameters meant challenging the tion were already in motion. For a moment In West Berlin, the advent of subculture system, which could bring with it a prison they forgot that the counterculture had happened in the form of Kommune I, a full- sentence or, at the very least, exclusion from been only a tiny minority on either side of fledged free-love commune that emerged the perks bestowed upon the compliant Cold War Germany. The new Germany from the student revolts of the late 1960s, majority. would look much like the old West Ger- AMTRON_Berlin_Times_010615_Alternative_Bild_finale_TEXT_Pfade.indd 1 15.09.2015 15:36:12 24 2015

 MONEYBALL

Red Bull Leipzig is rising up through the German soccer ranks with the help of a soft drink producer. Fans of opposing teams want no part of it | By Alfred Draxler

wenty-five years after German comes this bit of invective: “An Austrian percent of its company plus one additional successful. The professional team plays in Reunification, the country’s soccer shouts and you blindly follow – where it share. But RB Leipzig exists only on paper. the 45,000-capacity Red Bull Arena, which map is as divided as before. The ends every child knows. You would have In contrast to all other German soccer clubs, was built for the 2006 World Cup on the Bundesliga has no club from any made great Nazis.” RB Leipzig grants its followers no official grounds of the former Central Stadium – Teastern state. Of the 14 teams that played RB Leipzig and the anatomy of a contro- possibility to become voting members of formerly the largest arena in Germany with in the last season (1990/91) of the GDR’s versial ascent: at the initiative of Red Bull the organization. In the first five years of the a capacity of 110,000. An average of 30,000 top league, not even one is still competing GmbH, the club was founded only six years club, there were fewer than ten full members; people attend RB Leipzig matches, which is in Germany’s second division. Here we ago as a rather blatant PR tool. Its match however, German law requires only seven to terrific for the second league. Otherwise the have only two clubs from eastern Germany: permit was purchased from the completely found a registered association. Under pres- stadium would sit unused. good old Union Berlin, which before the unknown club SSV Markranstädt, which sure from the German Soccer League (DFL), Fall of the Wall lived in the shadow of BFC had played in the fifth-league Nordost divi- RB Leipzig has since welcomed so-called ut most importantly, a successful Dynamo – a team controlled and protected sion. Mateschitz announced that he would “supporting members”, who pay between RB Leipzig could retrieve a sense of by the Stasi and the perennial champion of invest 100 million euros with the goal of 70 and 1,000 euros each year but have no identity and pride for East German East Germany’s Oberliga – and RB Leipzig, reaching the Champions League. voting rights. soccer fans. After reunification 25 the most controversial and probably most After immediately advancing to the fourth In German soccer, however, “50+1” has yearsB ago, greedy players’ agents and dubi- disliked team in Germany. Although “RB” league, the club only made its leap into the long been undermined by several clubs, such ous investors from the West raided the is officially short for RasenBallsport, the old clubs of the GDR. Talented players association with Red Bull – the energy drink flocked to the Bundesliga, while in the East, producer – is fully intended. “RB Leipzig has ignited a organizations faltered and stadiums fell For example, RB Leipzig has ignited a into decline. The big traditional clubs like conflict between commerce and tradition in conflict between commerce and Dynamo Dresden, 1. FC Magdeburg and soccer, which Germany administers more Hansa Rostock, which formerly had enjoyed passionately and implacably than any other tradition in soccer.” repeated success in the European Cup, van- country in Europe. Fans of visiting clubs ished from scene of top-notch soccer. refuse to make the trip to Leipzig. Teams third league on its third attempt, where it as this year’s Champions League competi- If any sort of renaissance proceeds in strongly influenced by their hardcore fans then marched into the second league after tors, Wolfsburg (100 percent Volkswagen) Leipzig, it will have a somewhat symbolic – so-called “ultras” – have cancelled test one season. In its first year in the second and Leverkusen (100 percent Bayer). With significance. The German Soccer Federa- matches there at the last moment. Placards league, Leipzig finished in fifth place; this this fact in mind, RB Leipzig’s right to exist tion was founded here in 1900. Three years advertise Leipzig matches without the “RB” season the stated – and indeed realistic – goal actually changes nothing – a blunder, or just later, VfB Leipzig became the first official designation. The car of the team’s general is to advance to the Bundesliga. a stroke of luck? German soccer champion. And it was here manager, Ralf Rangnick, was pelted with Why Leipzig was even able to obtain a Unlike the rest of Germany, the region on November 21, 1990, that the merger of paint bombs. At road games, stands are dec- professional soccer license was and remains surrounding Leipzig has consistently posi- Germany’s two soccer associations – DFB orated with hate posters. And from eastern controversial. German soccer regulations tive feelings about the club. RB Leipzig (West) and DFV (East) – was agreed. Germany’s Aue, in reference to the Austrian contain a clause, the so-called “50+1 rule”, is strongly committed to various social It would be great if now the resurgence founder of Red Bull, Dieter Mateschitz (71), which states that a club must own at least 50 themes. Its youth teams are well kept and of East German soccer would spring from Leipzig!

P.S. Whether or not Red Bull has managed to increase sales in Germany in recent years is unfortunately unknown.

Alfred Draxler, born in 1953, is editor-in-chief of Europe’s biggest sports magazine Sport Bild. His Opposing teams’ fans consider Red Bull favorite soccer team Leipzig to be an artificial soccer club. is Schalke 04. DPA PICTURE ALLIANCE/JAN WOITAS(RB LEIPZIG); JFK (MATESCHITZ) WOITAS(RB ALLIANCE/JAN PICTURE DPA To Leipzig supporters, the team Dietrich Mateschitz (above) has put together feels visibly real.

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 “We were better.”

DPA PICTURE ALLIANCE/FRANK KLEEFELDT PICTURE DPA Thomas Berthold, German soccer world champion from 1990, says: We actually knew how to play the game, today’s players are merely athletes.

THE BERLIN TIMES: You won the 1990 soccer it was partly an infrastructure problem. Despite all the bad players – Why are the World Cup in Italy playing for West Ger- And that hasn’t changed, apparently. To stay national teams still so successful? many. The Germans won the title again in successful in soccer, you need good people. I Because Germany has always been a tour- 2014. Which team was the stronger one? could imagine that East Germans weren’t ready nament team, because our mentality helps us THOMAS BERTHOLD: The standard to open up in Germany – both towards the to seal the deal. Not everyone can do that. we saw last year in Brazil was pretty low. west and people from abroad. So they wound In terms of play there weren’t many bright up stewing in their own broth. And there’s How does one seal the deal on the pitch? spots. People in the soccer world said it was nothing inspiring about that. You keep playing With resolve. With the awareness that until a weak world cup on the pitch. 1990 was in in your own back yard and never move on. the whistle blows, anything is possible. That a different league. really is a German virtue. Now there’s a new effort in Leipzig, but by a What’s the reason for that? Does it have to rootless club with outside money, from soft In 1989 (the year the Wall fell) you were do with the lower quality of players, the up- drink maker Red Bull. playing in Italy. What’s your memory of and-down of available talent? That’s the way it is today. In soccer you November 9th? Of course it has to do with the player mate- need start-up financing. That’s the problem. That’s over 25 years ago. The thing in my rial, the talent on the market. It’s simply a You have to make sure you make it into the life I remember best is the World Cup quali- question of how good the generation of play- second league at least; then you’ll get real fier we played in Prague in 1985. The day ers is that’s out there on the pitch. money from TV rights. But most of all you before the match we entered the stadium for need a philosophy: Where do I really want training. Twenty-five thousand East German The best always have someone trying to to go? How do I want to play? If you don’t fans were waiting for us there, and they topple them. Today there’s less space, have that and are driven only by results, it’s cheered us on. I thought, what’s going on play is faster and more direct. Is that not going to work. You also need a long-term here? We’re not playing until tomorrow. a reason the days of soloists are over? goal. Sticking to it is sometimes hard. Soccer is Unbelievable. I remember that more clearly Play is definitely faster, partly at emotional, and when the fans start question- than the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. the expense of technique. Today you ing the coach after two or three lost matches, see hardly any players anymore who you can’t give in to them. Soccer clubs need Thomas Berthold combined technical can work with the ball; hardly anyone who continuity to develop. Otherwise there’s savvy with a hard-nosed playing style. can make a 50-meter pass that reaches its little progress and many things get worse. man. Footballers were better in the past. Today we have better athletes. The systems have changed too, the tempo’s higher, faster switching from defense into attack, and more pressing. I guess that didn’t exist earlier in the extreme form we see today. Delivering solutions.

Has that made soccer better? Who would win if a Bundesliga side from 1990 were to play against a German club today? If the technical skills that players used to have were adjusted to today’s tempo, all teams right now would be in trouble. Earlier teams simply had more technical quality. They were real ANDREAS SCHOELZEL soccer teams. Today you have track and field athletes out there who run and have strength.

That means play back then was more beautiful, more esthetic? Yes, definitely.

And why is that? Young people today have more distractions, especially with their electronic gadgets and hundreds of other possible ways of spending their free time. Thomas Berthold talking with Sticking to high-level sports Peter H. Koepf (right) and Lutz under such conditions might seem a bit boring. Lichtenberger of The Berlin Times. And that’s although soccer is so important in Germany? Earlier there was school and soccer. That was it. Plus you had to be the kind who wanted it.

In eastern Germany these distractions were less present for more than 20 years. On the other hand, there was the big opportunity of gaining recognition in soccer. Why aren’t clubs there moving forward? Why are the big ones practically all in the third league? East Germany produced many top athletes in many different sports, it had the right programs and was successful at Olympic games. But in 26 2015 A MIRACLE CURE

The university teaching hospital in old East Berlin not only survived reunification. It has grown and become a key center of medical research | By Peter H. Koepf

hen Karl Max Einhäupl moved Helmholtz Associations, and the Fraunhofer from Munich to take charge Society. “This is an environment in which we of the Charité’s Department can do excellent research”, says Einhäupl. of Neurology in 1992, the “And that is the reason why these people come CharitéW itself was his sickest patient. Two to Berlin. Researchers don’t go where they can world wars and two dictatorships had all make the most money – they go where they get but destroyed what had once been a center the best opportunities to develop.” of pioneering medicine. The legacy of great SCHULZE ALLIANCE/LUKAS PICTURE DPA Where the researchers went, success fol- scientists such as Rudolf Virchow, Robert lowed. And success brought with it more Koch and Ferdinand Sauerbruch had barely options to collaborate with business. “Good held on. The Nazis had excluded Jewish ideas are born often in Germany. But there is doctors, and the communists had replaced no good way to market them”, says Einhäupl. competent researchers with more or less loyal “We have to change that in Berlin. We are apparatchiks. The Charité’s research was in making that our task.” More specifically: palliative care; and by 1992, West Berlin’s “We aim to become a center for translational medical community was hoping to bury the medicine and to try to get medical products fast-fading patient once and for all. to the patients quicker.” And then something extraordinary hap- “We try to get medical products To this end, the Charité founded the Berlin pened, which hardly any East German enter- Institute of Health (BIH). Einhäupl is one of prise managed after reunification. An eastern to the patients quicker.” its directors. In one of its projects, for instance, brand got its act together, shook off its com- The operation required a number of trans- Einhäupl, “but for research and development seven research units from the Charité and the munist legacy, and not only survived – absorb- plants. The organs of the communist party of the hospitals I had to bring new people Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicin ing West Berlin’s Virchow Clinics and the and the Stasi were removed and replaced with me.” (MDC) are seeking to develop a t-cell treat- Benjamin Franklin teaching hospital and the by 70 professors from the West, including Today, the Charité is part of an internation- ment for cancer. Charité researchers are also East’s Berlin-Buch – it became a state-run con- Einhäupl, who brought eight doctors with ally recognized biomedical research network. active within the Berlin-Brandenburg Center cern with annual revenue of €1.5 billion. It is him from Munich. “I found a number of It includes state-sponsored research groups for Regenerative Therapies (BCRT), where Europe’s biggest group of university hospitals. outstanding clinical senior physicians”, says like the Max Planck Society, the Leibniz and they are working with Helmholtz scientists

CHARITÉ – UNIVERSITÄTSMEDIZIN BERLIN

Facts › 13,100 employees Annual treatment of Research and Teaching › 3,700 doctors and research staff › 139,000 inpatients › Involved in 5 Excellence Initiative projects, heading 3 of them › 4,135 nursing and other medical staff › 656,000 outpatients › Involved in 12 collaborative research centers, heading 7 of them › 710 administration staff including: › 2 clinical research units › 220 professors › 75,000 operations › 5 research units sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG) › 3,001 beds › 5,000 births › 2 research training groups sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG) › 5.95 days, average duration of stay › 770 transplants › 6,900 students

STAATSMINISTERIUM FÜR WIRTSCHAFT ARBEIT UND VERKEHR 2015 27

to find out why bone fractures sometimes fail to heal. It may be because the patient’s own  defense cells have got it wrong. To explain a complex process in simple words: The defense cells interpret the fracture as some kind of infection and hinder the regenerative process.

Knowing this, the research center now aims PARWEZ to develop new treatments, diagnostic tools and biomarkers. Products like these also need to be marketed. Einhäupl has been head of the Charité board of directors since 2006 – and under his direction, management started doing what research- ers are reluctant to do – boast about their achievements. “You need quality to create a brand”, Einhäupl explains. “But that alone is not enough”. PR is what lacks. A central element of major international significance is the G8 medicine summit, the annual World Health Summit taking place in Berlin this year between Oct. 11 and 13. What began as a meeting of eight universi- ties has become a globe-spanning alliance of academic health centers, universities and National Academies, a collaboration between academic institutions committed to improving global health. Einhäupl is pleased to welcome key research colleagues to Berlin: “I have the feeling that by now, we should be a part of it”, he says. A number of young East Germans stayed with the hospitals and have risen through the ranks. “The Charité succeeded in keeping East “Researchers don’t go where they can make the most money – they go where they get the best opportunities to develop.” German colleagues who would otherwise have Karl Max Einhäupl (above) at the new Charité research center cco. The Charité (on the left) in the heart of Berlin is one of the most famous gone elsewhere”, Einhäupl says. “If I had to hospitals in the world. It was established in 1710 in anticipation of an outbreak of the plague. cite an example of the success of reunification, it would be the Charité.”

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www.herrenknecht.com Beautiful Gera at the White Elster river is located in the east of Thuringia. The Black Forest is Germany’s highest and biggest upland. East German tiger Black Forest power Thuringia – Dynamic economic development in the Baden-Württemberg – An economic community middle of Germany | Wolfgang Tiefensee with a sense of purpose | By Nils Schmid

fter the reestablishment of the ago in the city of Jena. And only very aden-Württemberg is at home At the young age of 25, unified Germany small federal state in 1990, eco- few people are aware of the production throughout the world. Liebherr has outstanding economic prospects, which nomically there was no heads- site for the world’s first BMW: it was not drills bore their way into almost emerged when borders began to vanish. It up in Thuringia. As in all of the produced in Bavaria, but in Eisenach, every continent, companies from meets the challenge of change by way of AEast German states, with the Fall of the Thuringia, in 1904. SouthB Africa to East Asia use SAP software its strong foundation, upon which a shared Wall and long sought-after reunification Four decades of socialism and the chaos for their accounting, Japanese and American future has been built. Reunification was a of the country stood the collapse of an of the early 1990s failed to extinguish factories alike deploy Trumpf machine tools, world event that marked the starting point underachieving, economic system. From Thuringia’s entrepreneurial spirit or to and there’s hardly a road in the world where of Germany’s healing process 25 years ago. the first minute after that collapse, coura- set back its engineering tradition. A quar- you won’t see a Mercedes or Porsche. It was an enormous gain for Germany and geous entrepreneurs together with newly ter-century after the peaceful revolution, Southwestern Germany has more global its states. founded government entities were trying Thuringia’s growing creative industry is leaders per capita than any other German In recent years, not just Germany but the their best to reestablish a market economy. back on track to become Germany’s cen- region. And they’re not just big corporations. entire world has been closing ranks. Geo- However, the reality of the early post-1990 tral hub for research and innovation. In fact, most are medium-sized, family-run graphic distance has been digitally margin- years in Thuringia was marked by rampant Overall during the last 25 years, 80 per - companies that provide customers world- alized, and markets have been tapped that job losses combined with mass emigration cent of Thuringian companies have been wide with highly innovative products. Export are continents away. Baden-Württemberg’s to West Germany, making the task of newly established, which speaks for the is Baden-Württemberg’s forte. For ten of the economic community is treading this path reinventing a whole economy much more state’s never-wavering, business-friendly fifty leading importers of German goods, with a sense of purpose – in both a unified difficult for the ones who stayed. and encouraging spirit. Baden-Württemberg is the biggest exporter. Germany and a globalized world. Who would have thought that the small The region’s economic vigor spread long heartland of Germany would soon rise Wolfgang Tiefensee, born in 1955, ago throughout Germany. Porsche builds Nils Schmid, born in 1973, has been to become a little tiger state, instilling is minister of economics and science cars in eastern Germany, where Trumpf minister of finance and economics. the future with a rich and venerable his - in Thuringia. He is a member of the also has a production site. Since the Fall of He is a member of the Social tory of innovation. Historically, Thuringia Social Democrats. the Berlin Wall, Germany has merged both Democrats. was always right there among the great socially and economically, and companies industrial regions of Europe. Carl Zeiss from Baden-Württemberg have proudly done was turning out precision lenses 150 years their part.

PICTURES: IMAGO/PICTURETEAM; AUTOFOCUS67 - FOTOLIA; FRANZ METELEC - FOTOLIA; IMAGO/MÜLLER-STAUFFENBERG

Wenn Freiheit zum Erfolg führt. WennWhen Freiheitfreedom zumleads Erfolg to success. führt. 20 Jahre MauerfallWenn – wir Freiheit gratulieren zum den ErfolgFamilienunternehmen führt. in den alten und neuen Bundesländern20German zu Jahre zwei unityMauerfall Jahrzehnten – we – congratulate wir gratulierengemeinsamer family-owned den sozialerFamilienunternehmen companies Marktwirtschaft! in the in oldden and alten new und federal neuen states 20Bundesländernfor Jahretheir Mauerfall25 years zu of zwei– commonwir Jahrzehnten gratulieren social gemeinsamerdenmarket Familienunternehmen economy! sozialer Marktwirtschaft! in den alten und neuen Bundesländern zu zwei Jahrzehnten gemeinsamer sozialer Marktwirtschaft!

Familienunternehmen haben in Deutschland eine lange, gewachsene Tradition. Speziell die Vielzahl der großen, Karte der 500 größten Familienunternehmen Deutschlands FamilienunternehmenFamily-run companies haben have in Deutschland a long tradition eine lange, in gewachsene Germany. Tradition. The diversity Speziell dieof Vielzahllarge, der großen, Karte der 500 größten Familienunternehmen Deutschlands oft weltweit führenden Familienunternehmenoft weltweit führenden istFamilienunternehmen eine Besonderheit, ist um eine die Besonderheit, uns die ganze um die Welt uns beneidet. die ganze ZwarWelt beneidet. Zwar often globally operating firms is one of a kind. Although 40 years of a socialist EmployeesBeschäftigte Familienunternehmen haben in Deutschland eine lange, gewachsene Tradition. Speziell die Vielzahl der großen, Karte Beschäftigte der 500 größten FamilienunternehmenMap Deutschlandsof Germany’s haben 40 Jahre sozialistischehaben Planwirtschaft 40 Jahre sozialistische dazu geführt, Planwirtschaft dass der dazu Anteil geführt, der dassgroßen der AnteilFamilienunternehmen der großen Familienunternehmen in in 250,000250.000 250.000 oftcommand weltweit führenden economy Familienunternehmen has resulted in a relatively ist eine Besonderheit, modest share um die of unsfamily die ganze businesses Welt beneidet. Zwar 100,000100.000 100.000 500 largest family-owned den neuen Bundesländernden noch neuen relativ Bundesländern gering ist. noch Doch relativ die Wenigen gering ist. leisten Doch die viel. Wenigen Mit großer leisten Innovationskraft, viel. Mit großer Innovationskraft, 25,000 habenin the 40 new Jahre federal sozialistische states, Planwirtschaft the few aredazu accomplishing geführt, dass der Anteila tremendous der großen Familienunternehmenamount – in 25.000 Beschäftigte 25.000 starker regionaler Verbundenheit,starker regionaler hoher Verbundenheit,Mitarbeiterorientierung hoher Mitarbeiterorientierung und einem generationenübergreifenden und einem generationenübergreifenden 250.000 companies denwith neuen great Bundesländern power of innovation, noch relativ strong gering ist.regional Doch die bonds, Wenigen high leisten employee viel. Mit großerorientati Innovationskraft,- 100.000 Engagement. Ihr beeindruckenderEngagement. Erfolg Ihr beeindruckenderist ein Beweis fürErfolg die ist positive ein Beweis Energie für die und positive Dynamik, Energie die und dem Dynamik, freien die dem freien 25.000 starker regionaler Verbundenheit, hoher Mitarbeiterorientierung und einem generationenübergreifenden Unternehmertum innewohnen.Unternehmertumon and Herzlichen cross-generational innewohnen. Glückwunsch! Herzlichen engagement. Glückwunsch! Their impressive success is proof of the Engagement.positive energy Ihr beeindruckender and dynamism Erfolg inherent ist ein Beweis in free für enterprise. die positive EnergieCongratulations! und Dynamik, die dem freien Unternehmertum innewohnen. Herzlichen Glückwunsch!

Beschäftigte je 1.000 Einwohner 10,00 und mehr (4) 7,00 bis unter 10,00 (3) BeschäftigteEmployees jeper 1.000 1000 Einwohner residents Beschäftigte 1,00 bis je 1.000unter Einwohner 7,00 (3) 10,0010 and und more mehr 0,14 (4) bis unter (4) 1,00 (3) 7,00 bis unter 10,00 und 10,00 mehr (3) (4) 7 to 10 (3) 7,00 bisunter unter 10,00 0,14 (3) 1,001 to 7 bis (3) unter 1,00 bis 7,00 unter (3) 7,00 (3) 0.14 0,14 to bis 1unter 0,14(3) bis 1,00 unter (3) 1,00 (3) less than unter 0.14 unter (3) 0,14 (3) 0,14 (3)

www.familienunternehmen.de www.familienunternehmen.de www.familienunternehmen.de 2015 29 Language is indivisible Germany was divided for more than 40 years, but the language always connected the people in East and West Germany. Today, more people around the world are learning it than ever before. By Klaus-Dieter Lehmann

he language and culture formed a loaded terms – there are some noticeable history – because the conditions requir- dip in the early years of the millennium – core of commonality long before additions. These words were often used in ing its use no longer exist, or because the more people are learning German at Goethe Germany became a nation-state official and institutional communication as words simply did not make it into common Institutes than ever before. in the nineteenth century. Lan- well as in newspapers and party documents. use. Only a few such words have been That is due to new opportunities for Tguage and culture were to provide the Then there are some everyday words – such adopted into standard German, such as teaching German, such as the Schulen: unifying force to encompass the fragmented as those for roast chicken, supermarket and Fakt, Exponat (exhibit), and Kosmonaut. Partner für die Zukunft initiative, which politics of countless political territories. plastic – that are different in the East. Greater international curiosity about Ger- takes German learning into schools around This has left its mark on Germany’s long However, it is clear that the attempt to many and the new, can-do mood which the world. Today a total of 1,800 partner historical development. States have come dictate a division of the language did not followed reunification have led to an enor- schools form a comprehensive network. and gone, but the relevance of the wealth of work. Reviewing the years since reunifica- mous increase in the number of people More than 500 of them are backed by the German language and culture has remained tion, we see that East Germany’s special learning German around the world. Today, Goethe Institute. a constant. It brought people together. vocabulary has largely been confined to we are happy to report that – after a short But in Germany, too, the language is They did not need a centralized state to becoming even more important. German be a nation. language competence is now seen as a key More than forty years of division, differ- requirement for a successful integration ent social systems, different value systems MAIK SCHUCK policy and is being promoted consistently and different alliances in the politically as a result. With language, as with culture, bipolar Cold War world order were not neglect makes it less attractive, less rich and able to destroy the common cultural foun- less expressive. Its newfound popularity is a dations of the German people. win for Germany and a win for the world. East Germany made a conscious attempt to make its German language different. In 1970, communist party chairman Walter Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, Ulbricht announced the division of German born in 1940, is President into two different national languages. The of the Goethe Institute result was minimal – there are no changes in Pleased with the enormous increase in people learning German around the world: Klaus- grammar or syntax. But in the vocabulary Dieter Lehmann, President of the Goethe Institute during his speech at the Goethe Medals – particularly in the coining of politically awards ceremony at the Weimar City Palace in 2015.

www.thats-thuringia.com

Thanks to Thuringia, any freight will reach its destination. Even if it’s 416 kilometers above the earth. The Cygnus cargo spacecraft. Equipped with sensor technology made by Jena-Optronik GmbH. That’s Thuringia.

As a center of the logistics economy, Thuringia has a significant role to play in the international transport of goods. And when it comes to its role as a technology hub, then the earth is no longer the limit. Thus, sensors produced by Jena-Optronik GmbH ensure that the unmanned Cygnus cargo spacecraft delivers its cargo safely to the International Space Station ISS.

Thuringian Ministry for Economic Affairs, Science and Digital Society ATK Orbital 30 2015 Lead, but don’t dominate

Germany has accepted its new leadership role in Europe – during the Greek CHARISIUS ALLIANCE/CHRISTIAN PICTURE DPA bailout and even more so in the refugee crisis | By Theo Sommer

n the past five years, Germany was at tate. Even Luxembourg’s affable Foreign the refugee crisis, the pecuniary factor is well-funded response to today’s mass migra- the epicenter of the Greek euro crisis. Minister Jean Asselborn admonished Merkel only an ancillary element. The issue hinges tion tsunami from conflict-roiled regions. No sooner than this issue was half-way “to put away the whip”. “Merkeliavel- primarily on values, moral standards and resolved, Berlin became the epicenter of lianism” was a favorite pun of her critics. codes of behavior. ermany is no longer afraid to lead. Ianother, potentially even more disruptive Others, however, egged Merkel on. The Angela Merkel has boldly taken the lead. But hardly does it storm ahead – one: Europe’s refugee crisis. Once again, Economist deplored that Germany was “the Her message is clear: Europe is not only “leading from the middle” is the Chancellor Angela Merkel finds herself the reluctant hegemon”. Poland’s Foreign Min- about the economy, the euro and EU struc- guideline, bringing its partners focus of attention, maligned by some as the ister Radek Sikorski made a dramatic appeal tural funds; first and foremost it’s about along.G It is wary of military interventions; villain in the piece, commended by others as to the Bundestag: “I fear German power less solidarity, mutual support, charitable help- the dismal record in the Middle East is a the only one getting it right in a situation as than German inactivity.” fulness and cooperative fairness. Germany powerful deterrent. Nor will it contemplate unprecedented as it is overwhelming. There have always been those who have stands out for its efforts in dealing with military force as a means of resolving the As hundreds of thousands of Syrians, feared German leadership and those who the current wave of migrants washing up crisis in Ukraine, yet Merkel has played a Iraqis, Afghans and Eritreans seek refuge have yearned for it. “Lead, but don’t domi- at its borders. In the first half of 2015, it leading role in the Minsk negotiations. “In from war and destitution, the chancellor nate” was the gist of Sikorski’s appeal. accommodated no less than 180,000 asylum practice, she is now leading Western policy has opened her arms and welcomed them To which Martin Schulz, president of the seekers. One amazing fact, which dwarfs the toward Russia”, Anne Applebaum writes to Germany. The country expects to process European Parliament, once replied: “As shocking neo-Nazi attacks on housing for in Foreign Affairs, adding: “At long last, a staggering 1,000,000 asylum seekers this soon as we lead, we hear: Not in this asylum applicants, is that the vast majority Europe’s economic powerhouse has taken year. In pitiful contrast, Britain’s prime min- direction, and not in this style.” Thomas of Germans approve of Merkel’s stance. on some foreign policy responsibilities as ister referred to 3,000 desperate migrants de Maizière, defense minister at the time, Moreover, their approval is more than just well.” Indeed it has, and it is high time for clustered in squalid camps near the Calais then added, tongue in cheek: “Those who theoretical: tens of thousands of volunteers Germany’s partners to recognize this fact. entrance to the Eurotunnel as “swarms” The nuclear deal with Iran is an offshoot trying to “break into Britain”. It took the of a German initiative begun twelve years heart-rending picture of the Syrian toddler “Germany does not see itself as ago. Germany is a member of the “quartet” Aylan Kurdi, who was washed up drowned Europe’s overlord.” addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its on a Turkish beach, to change Cameron’s navy pursues pirates at the Horn of Africa, view that “simply taking more and more demand leadership usually want money.” are greeting the arrivals, providing food, patrols the Lebanese coast to prevent Hez- refugees” was no answer to the crisis; he has This may explains why Chancellor Merkel water and clothing, arranging for transla- bollah arms smuggling, and participates now promised to admit up to 20,000 Syrian exerted her leadership in the Greek crisis tion and guiding them through the jungle in the hunt for human traffickers in the refugees by 2020. No less shameful was the with remarkable reluctance. She insisted of red tape. Mediterranean. Germany is neither a free refusal by the leaders of Poland, the Czech on a price for German financial solidarity: Of course, Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s rider nor a country that cops out, but it does Republic, Slovakia and Hungary – countries solidity, meaning sound husbandry, fiscal anti-immigrant premier, rants on and on not see itself as Europe’s overlord. Leading that were beneficiaries of Europe’s unre- discipline and moderate levels of new debt. about Merkel. The refugee stampede is in partnership, or partnering in leader- stricted solidarity after the fall of the Iron “In Europe, Germany is a key power with- Germany’s fault, trumpets the Hungarian ship, is its preferred mode of action. In the Curtain – to accept an EU quota system for a out a key”, historian Michael Stürmer once “pocket Putin”, as the Financial Times European Union, that is the only mode that fair distribution of asylum seekers across the wrote. Indeed, going it alone is not an option called him. But most others disagree with works. 28 member states. Steel fences and barbed for Berlin. It must act within a European Orbán. “Merkel’s plan shames Cameron’s wire in Calais and along the Hungarian- framework, persuading, cajoling and, well, fear” wrote the Financial Times. Calling Serbian border are not true emblems of the buying off its negotiation partners, which her “Europe’s humanitarian leader”, its Theo Sommer is the executive editor European spirit. used to work in the past. Chancellor Kohl editorialist enjoined her colleagues: “Ger- of The Atlantic Times and former Over the course of the Greek debt crisis, could inconspicuously direct the affairs of many’s plea over migrants must be heeded.” editor-in-chief of the German Chancellor Merkel was depicted in Athens the EU-12. In the EU-28, this is much more France’s prestigious daily Le Monde chimed weekly Die Zeit. with a Hitler moustache. Many saw the difficult. But it worked once more, perhaps in: “Aidons Merkel” – let’s help Merkel. Greeks as the victims of German bullying, for the last time, in the euro debt crisis, With this kind of assistance, Europe might at being asphyxiated by Berlin’s austerity dic- where money was the crucial lubricant. In long last agree on an equitable, humane and

25 years of German unity: an occasion to enjoy!

The reunification of Germany was a historic event. As the market leader in jams, we’ve been bringing enjoyment to everyday life for generations, and we look forward to finding our place on German breakfast tables in the future as well. plays Beethoven’s masterpiece

Freude, schöner Götterfunken, e gave his first concert at That made Beethoven’s Ninth one of the Joy, bright spark of divinity, the age of seven. He sold most popular works of classical music in Tochter aus Elysium! Daughter of Elysium, the tickets himself. Ludwig the world. Wir betreten feuertrunken, van Beethoven was a genius It became the hymn of happiness, hope fire-inspired we tread, H– today he would be called a pop icon. and harmony. In 1985 the European Com- Himmlische, Dein Heiligtum. thy Heavenly, thy sanctuary. He lived for music, women and his own munity, now the European Union, adopted Deine Zauber binden wieder, huge ego. There were days when he drank the work as the Anthem of Europe, stating Thy magic power re-unites Was die Mode streng geteilt, more alcohol than he scored notes. He that the anthem expresses the European all that custom has divided, was respected and feared. And there were ideals of freedom, peace and solidarity. Alle Menschen werden Brüder, all men become brothers years in which he did not know how he Beethoven’s Ninth is played at solemn Wo Dein sanfter Flügel weilt. would ever pay the bills. Countless mala - ceremonies all around the world. And under the sway of thy gentle wings. dies drove him to the edge of depression. because the 25th anniversary of German But his music gave him strength at his Unity is an important national holiday, weakest moments. When he died, deaf, at The Berlin Times has decided to present the age of 56, he left a grand legacy to the you with the Ninth Symphony. Use the world – the Ninth Symphony. It puts to QR code on page 1 to listen to Beethoven’s music Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy”. masterpiece.

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