How Germany tries to shut down controversial opinions on Covid
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Four Things
Markus Söder just can’t let it go. After conceding defeat in his attempt to become conservative Chancellor candidate last week, he complained in a newspaper interview that Germany needed someone who embodied the current Zeitgeist rather than “Helmut Kohl 2.0” (a none-too-subtle hint that Armin Laschet is a dinosaur). This is the same Mr Söder who spent 2018 hammering crosses into the wall of every Bavarian town hall before he realized that mimicking the AfD wasn’t quite the vote winner he thought it would be. If the Zeitgeist changes as often as his political convictions, the German public would have multiple personality disorders by the end of a Söder Chancellorship. Mr Söder also insisted he was relived his “offer” of being Chancellor candidate wasn’t accepted as it would have meant leaving “the most beautiful country in the world” - Bavaria.
In most of the country's care homes, elderly residents still can’t meet freely in communal areas despite the fact that almost all of them have had their double vaccine doses. The government has been making noises for months now about the need to ease the suffering and loneliness of the people in these homes but little seems to have been done. Broadcaster ARD reports that many care homes are afraid to lift contact restrictions and allow unrestricted visiting because they are worried about getting into legal hot water.
In our main article today we are looking at a group of actors who have poked fun at journalists for instigating a climate of fear during the pandemic. German media houses countered that the actors were mimicking the rhetoric of the far-right. But take just one example from Monday, and the actors behind #allesdichtmachen have a point. As we’ve previously reported, the increase in deaths in 2020 can be explained through a variety of expected demographic factors - the effect of the pandemic seems to be fairly small. That didn’t stop online news outlets indulging in a bit of Panikmache with headlines like “Coronavirus: number of deaths in 2020 rises by five percent” - with obligatory pictures of piles of coffins - before admitting in the articles that the an aging population explained much of the increase.
At a “vaccine summit” on Monday, Angela Merkel promised that the priority list for vaccines would be lifted at some point in June, meaning that everyone can try and get an appointment from that point onwards. She reaffirmed that everyone who wants one will get a vaccine by the end of the summer.
Free yourself from opinions
Two weeks ago a letter arrived in the post from my Hausverwaltung. Short on detail, it informed me that the front of my apartment building needed painting and that the work would take around seven weeks. I should inform my insurer as a precaution, it advised.
A week later, a crew of builders woke me from my sleep as they they built scaffolding up the wall at an ungodly hour. Once they were done they wrapped it in a blue netting, thus turning the apartment I currently have little opportunity to leave into a shady cave.
A week went by with no action. Then, on Monday, a new crew arrived. They spent a couple of hours scrubbing the walls, taped some sheets of plastic across the windows - making them impossible to open - and then left.
I now live in a perfectly sealed cocoon that I neither asked for nor knew was about to arrive. The decision over when I will have access to fresh air again also lies in the lap of the gods. (Given the pace of recent house work, I have the feeling these could be a long seven-weeks.)
This seems like an apt metaphor for the situation we find ourselves in these days.
It’s not that I’m against the house being painted (and I get why the windows need to be sealed) but the way these things are just ordained from above without any sort of consultation leaves you feeling frustrated and helpless.
More fundamentally - the walls of my house haven’t been painted in the past thirty years at least - could it really not have waited a couple more months until we are allowed to go outside again?
Feeling like you are stuck in a discombobulating machine that no one else questions has tradition in Germany (thanks Franz Kafka!), and it’s this absurdity that a group of fifty German actors seem to have been taking on in a satirical action called #allesdichtmachen (close everything down). Each actor shot a short video making fun of the resurgence of Obrigkeitsgläubigkeit by vowing their fealty to the current lockdown measures.
“I am an actress and I’m standing up for freedom of opinion. I’ve learned over the past few months to free myself from my own opinion bit by bit - and I can tell you it feels good,” says Nina Gummich, a cast member of Babylon Berlin.
“I want to say a big thank you to our tireless media, who for an entire year have been setting the level of alarm exactly there where it belongs - at the maximum,” says Jan Josef Liefers, one of the country’s most beloved Tatort detectives. “And I want to thank them for ensuring that no unnecessary disputes have developed round the sensible and consistently appropriate government measures.”
Samia Dauenhauer, a Berlin theatre actress, simply impresses you with the various ways in which she can say “I support the corona measures.”
The videos are funny, disconcerting and thought provoking. In other words they are good art - something badly missed in a year in which the nation’s entire cultural life has been hidden away like an inappropriately flamboyant piece of jewellery.
Coming just days after the government passed a law tying the right to leave your home to a number published by the health ministry, the protest action could not have been better timed. And one suspects that much of the German public have been quietly laughing along.
But the videos caused exactly the public reaction that the actors were taking a dig at. Germany’s thin-skinned media protested in perfect concert that they most certainly do not all sound the same. The actors were condemned on social media for their “dangerous” opinions and for making common cause with the far-right. Incensed doctors started a counter-offensive called #allemalneschichtmachen (everyone should do a hospital shift!) - because clearly constitutional rights should be contingent on doctors getting a good night’s sleep.
For Stefan Aust, author of the Baader-Meinhof Komplex and former editor of der Spiegel, the moral outrage is reminiscent of how outspoken artists in the GDR were denounced for supplying arguments to the decadent, capitalist West. The East German propaganda sheet, Neues Deutschland, would ask what these “so-called artists” had done lately to alleviate the suffering of the proletariat.
None of the actors behind #allesdichtmachen face the type of Berufsverbot that was hung on malcontents in the GDR. But we’re not as far away as you might think.
The nadir of the reaction came when one of the board members of state broadcaster WDR called for an immediate end to all collaboration with the offending thespians. Although he quickly deleted his demand from Twitter, the WDR official in question still insisted that the actors were “associating with trolls and Covid deniers.”
Several of the protagonists have since bowed to public pressure and issued apologies. Humour, subversion and critical questions in democratic Germany please! Just not when there is anything at stake.
J.L.
Who we are:
Jörg Luyken: Journalist based in Berlin since 2014. His work has been published by German and English outlets including der Spiegel, die Welt, the Daily Telegraph. Formerly in the Middle East. Classicist; Masters in International Politics & Arabic from St Andrews.
Axel Bard Bringéus: Started his career as a journalist for the leading Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet and has spent the last decade in senior roles at Spotify and as a venture capital investor. In Berlin since 2011.
Exactly - I was equally attacked as soon as I took the side of the actors on German media barons’ FB pages 😢. Germany definitely a development country as far as humour goes.