The next Chief of Berlin!
This is a four minute read
Three Things
Thousands of Germans have booked holidays on Mallorca over the Easter break despite (or because of) the fact that vacations in the Bundesrepublik are verboten. Business owners on the Balearic island have been bending over backwards to accommodate north European sun seekers, even offering those who test positive for the coronavirus free quarantine in a local hotel. The rest of the local population must have been praying that the German government would follow through on a threat to go full GDR and stop people leaving the country. Germans have a deep and, one can only assume, unrequited love for Mallorca. Teutonic tourists on the island are notorious for mass sing alongs to music so atrocious that no adjectives can truly do it justice. (Trigger warnings for anyone who has spent a night out on the Ballermann) see for yourselves here, here and here. Sure enough, within a couple of days of ze Germans arriving some Holzköpfe were already shooting the first Malla mega hit of the season.
Germany’s vaccine commission on Tuesday confirmed that it is no longer recommending the AstraZeneca vaccine for anyone under the age of 60 as evidence builds that the jab is causing fatalities in younger women. Nine women aged between 20 and 63 are now confirmed to have died of a rare form of thrombosis after receiving the vaccine in Germany. A total of 31 cases of cerebral thrombosis have now been recorded from the 2.7 million who’ve had at least one dose of the AstraZeneca jab. There is now general agreement among health experts that the risks outweigh the benefits for younger people given that other vaccines are available which have shown no heightened health risks.
Not specifically Germany-related, but connected to an article we wrote recently. The WHO has published its report after it sent scientists to investigate the origins of the coronavirus in China. The report concluded that it is “extremely unlikely” that a laboratory accident was to blame, saying it was very probable that it jumped into the human population from animals. The Washington Post gives a detailed look at the report and all of its shortcomings, making clear that it produces no significant new evidence to substantiate its findings. Meanwhile the German media has taken the WHO’s conclusions at face value under headlines like "Extremely unlikely" - WHO report rejects thesis of laboratory accident.” Read our piece on Germany’s problematic narrative on the origins of the virus here.
The next Chief of Berlin!
At the Green’s Berlin party congress Bettina Jarasch officially declared her candidacy for mayor. The Greens have been dominating the polls for the last two and a half years and the election is theirs to lose. But at the congress, Jarasch almost blew it. In her speech she cheerfully declared that as a child she had not dreamt of becoming mayor of the nation’s capital but of becoming an Indianerhäuptling.
“Discrimination!” cried her party friends, who forced her to make a public apology, where she called her slur “a childhood memory which I didn’t reflect more deeply upon.” The statement was promptly cut out of the video version of the speech.
Politicians on the right rolled their eyes at the Greens’ hypersensitivity. Sebastian Czaja, the FDP’s faction leader in the Berlin parliament smirked that “it would be great if the Greens would care more about the issues in our city instead of such trifles,” referring to the fact that Mrs Jarasch’s party is part of the city’s governing coalition together with the SPD and Linke.
Mrs Jarasch’s denouncement of her childhood memories and the staged repentance ritual sent Orwellian shivers down my spine. Thoughtcrime!
You might disagree with me, but there is a world of difference between US sports teams such as the Washington Redskins or the Kansas City Chiefs dropping names and logos referencing Native Americans with stereotypes, and a local German politician being publicly spanked for using the common German word for the indigenous people of the Americas.
But at least now Mrs Jarasch has made herself known beyond the halls of the Berlin Abgeordnetenhaus. Prior to Indianergate barely anyone knew who she was.
So who is she then, Berlin’s probable next mayor?
First and foremost, she’s not a Berliner. She’s a German of the worst possible kind, a Swabian! Nowhere is the Schwabenhass as strong as in Berlin, where the southerners are accused of gentrifying the city to death. As if that’s not enough, she’s a Catholic and the daughter of a Bavarian industrialist.
The horror! Enough to make most die-hard Berliners spit out their Club Mate.
Much to her own surprise she was chosen as a compromise candidate because the Green’s two warring factions, the Realos and the Fundis couldn’t agree on whether Ramona Pop, the city’s current deputy mayor, or Antje Kapek, the left-leaning head of the party’s parliamentary fraction, should run.
During a stint as co-chairman of the party in Berlin between 2011 and 2016 Jarasch became known for building bridges between the two camps, but in her subsequent year as a backbench city parliamentarian she didn’t make much of a mark. The party leadership even denied her wish to be on the electoral list for the 2017 Bundestag election.
Pressured on what she really stands for in an interview with the taz, she danced around controversial Berlin-issues such as the expropriation of property developer Deutsche Wohnen, or whether the Tempelhofer Feld should give way to apartments, and didn’t give a straight answer.
But perhaps a Brückenbauerin who doesn’t want to be dragged into the ideological battles of the FDP and CDU on the one hand and the Linke and SPD on the other is just what the city needs.
In the erstwhile so placid German political climate, where any coalition (as long as it excludes the AfD) is possible, Berlin is an exception. As the city bursts at its seams and battles with social issues more important than Indianerhäuptlinge, the liberal-conservative camp has been at loggerheads with the left camp for decades.
I’m intrigued by what mayor Jarasch would bring. For sure, it will be more of the same - a Left-SPD-Green coalition - but this time the Greens will lead. It certainly can’t get much worse than during the last two decades. Current mayor Michael Müller (SPD) is as bland as his name and even his own party forced him to call it quits after one term. And his flamboyant predecessor will not go down in history for his many iconic quotes, but for botching the BER airport, which cost him his career.
If Mrs Jarasch is elected as the first Green, the first female, and first Swabian mayor of Berlin, she’ll have her work cut out for her though. One of my five-year old daughter’s favourite playgrounds in the Swabian-Green nest of Prenzlauer Berg is, you guessed it, the Indianerspielplatz. And a quick search on Google Maps reveals that the inner city alone harbours about a dozen more… The horror!
A.B.B.