Climate extremists are sawing the Christmas tree in front of the Brandenburg Gate, the city has nothing to oppose them. Berlin also fails in other areas. The upcoming repetition of the House of Representatives elections will not change that.
“It’s just the top of the Christmas tree” reads the banner of members of the Last Generation.
Beatrice Achterberg, editor of the NZZ in Berlin
You are reading an excerpt from the weekday newsletter “The Other View”, today by Beatrice Achterberg, editor of the NZZ in Germany. Subscribe to the newsletter for free. Not resident in Germany? Benefit here.
Berlin remains true to itself. At the end of the year, climate extremists removed the top of a large Nordmann fir in front of the Brandenburg Gate. One of the most visited places in the capital. As you might expect, the beheading of the Christmas tree is meant to point to climate change. “So far in Germany we have only seen the tip of the catastrophe below,” exclaimed one of the women from the lifting platform, which had previously been used to climb the tree and was now gently slid down to announce the apocalyptic message.
The police? Watched helplessly. The bystanders were mostly security guards from the American and French embassies, they could not leave their posts. Intervention at a height of 15 meters might have meant more damage to officials and extremists than was used. When they got down, at least the personal details of the women from the last generation were recorded.
Until then, they could do their mischief undisturbed, while sawing Christmas balls shattered on the floor of Pariser Platz. One couldn’t imagine a more beautiful picture of the city’s apathetic dysfunctionality, if one wanted to.
Five years for three eco toilets
Or maybe yes. The green district mayor Clara Hermann praised the city’s most recent coup as follows: “Bam, there’s that thing!” For 56,000 euros, the district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg has afforded an eco-toilet with three cubicles – including a unisex cubicle – at the “Kotti”. She had been asked for five years. The area around the Kottbusser Tor is one of the hottest drug hubs in the capital. Now a green-painted wooden house in the morass crowns the left-green dreams of sustainability. You can be almost certain that the expensive eco-toilets will either have been blasted away by fire next year at the latest or will be used as a fixer’s room.
At the beginning of the year, the signs were pointing to a new beginning. With the Governing Mayor Franziska Giffey, a Realo politician from the SPD took over the scepter of the red-red-green governed capital. In her New Year’s speech, Giffey announced that she would finally renovate schools and build new homes. It was already clear in the middle of the year: the targeted 20,000 apartments per year are “not realistic”.
The Berlin SPD’s “Restart Future Program” is also ambitious. By 2025, 1 billion euros are to be invested in business and culture. The handsome sum is intended to ensure that Berlin can keep up with cosmopolitan cities such as Paris, London and Barcelona and become “even more attractive”. In a European comparison, the bitter realization is that Berlin is the European capital that is lowering gross domestic product. Unlike London or Paris.
choice doesn’t work
The pinnacle of Berlin failure: last year’s botched election. Ballot chaos and a marathon on the same day of the general election led to international embarrassment: an illegal election in the capital of a democratic country. Now the House of Representatives election will be repeated in February 2023. The organizers are probably already hoping that marathon runners and climate stickers will be busy elsewhere that day.
Despite all these embarrassments, the Berlin CDU does not get a foot in the door. The candidate Kai Wegner remains low-profile, and in view of the left-wing dominance in the city, the Union and the FDP have almost no chance. Although the Greens, SPD and CDU are currently around twenty percent each, observers of political Berlin are certain: in the end it will be a neck-and-neck race between Red and Green. Even if the CDU candidate has already given himself a green coat of paint for a possible coalition.
The city has been ruled on the left for more than twenty years. With consequences. The rest of the republic can regularly enjoy Berlin’s incompetence and antics. Would it have been possible to saw down a Christmas tree in a prominent place in Bavaria? Most likely not. Bureaucracy, administration, the rule of law and schools work better in large parts of the country than in the capital. But in the end, the Berlin voters remain unaffected by the chaos and will probably vote again for a variant of red-red-green.