What a scorcher!
Dear Reader,
Wednesday was absolutely sweltering. Temperatures in Berlin of up to 38 °C got within a whisker of breaking that all-time heat record for the city (set in the 1950s). And what do Berliners do when it’s too hot to think? They go to the Freibad! I love Berlin’s outdoor swimming pools. They are not just oases in a baking-hot expanse of concrete, they are cross-sections of the city’s society. Macho teenagers hurl themselves from the diving boards before thwacking into the water; women in hijabs cool off in the paddling pool; pierced exhibitionists bask in the sun in the FKK section.
(Talking of FKK, if you missed Rachel Stern’s excellent piece on Germany’s cultural paradoxes from last week, you can read it online here.)
When I took my toddler to the Freibad this morning, we even got to witness one of the biggest clichés about these outdoor swimming pools - that they are hotspots of petty crime. As we were leaving, four police officers appeared to be arresting a young man carrying a black sports bag. Which reminds me of one of my favourite German road signs. At the entrance to one Berlin Freibad (no prizes for guessing which), a sign informs drivers: “Parking prohibited between May and September due to police operations.”
Sincerely,
Jörg Luyken
Rainbows over Berlin
It is tradition that the largest party in the Bundestag gets to pick the speaker, or Bundestagspräsident as they’re known in Germany.
Since March, that honour has gone to Julia Klöckner of the CDU. Speakers don’t generally generate a lot of headlines. Mostly, they are just there to call rowdy lawmakers to order. Much like a referee in a game of football, the good ones are the ones you don’t notice. But then, some football matches are rowdier than others.
Referees like to stamp their authority on a game early. And that certainly seems to be an ethos that has been taken on by Klöckner. Early on, she threw an MdB out of the debating chamber for wearing a beret (headwear is apparently banned). She also told a young member of the Greens that she would not be allowed in if she kept wearing a jumper with the anti-police acronym ACAB on it. More controversially, she removed a lawmaker from Die Linke for wearing a sweater with the simple word ‘Palestine’ on it, claiming that it was a political slogan.
But the call that has caused by far the most debate was her decision to no longer raise the rainbow flag during Gay Pride Month (or ‘Pride’, as it is now known).
In the Bundestag, outraged lawmakers from the Greens and Die Linke dressed in rainbow colours in protest.
Carola Ebhardt of the SPD described the decision as “fatal” and one that would have “far-reaching socio-political consequences.” Klöckner was signalling that the state “no longer publicly stands by the side of discriminated people and minorities” and was “trampling on” their rights, Ebhardt insisted.
It is worth pointing out at this stage that the rainbow flag has only been raised above the Bundestag on three Pride Months since 2022. Whether the decision to stop doing so will unravel all the hard work done over years to achieve legal equality for gay couples is debatable.
More importantly, Klöckner has already raised the rainbow flag over the Bundestag — on May 17th, the anniversary of the 1990 decision by the World Health Organization to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. “It is very clear that we are firmly opposed to hostility towards people of any sexual orientation,” Klöckner has said.
To get to the bottom of what is really going on here, it is worth taking a second look at the criticism of the decision.
Carola Ebhardt is the ‘queer spokesperson’ for the SPD. Revealingly, her attack on Klöckner never once mentioned gay rights but instead talked much more generally about the rainbow flag representing “discriminated people and minorities.”
Klöckner, on the other hand, had been careful to repeatedly mention homosexuality in particular as something worth standing up for.
It would appear that what is happening here is a more subtle argument about what the rainbow flag now stands for. Polling suggests that homophobic attitudes are now only held by a small proportion of German society (one in ten still see gay sex as ‘immoral’). Where homophobia is still prevalent, it is amongst the dwindling number of reactionary Catholics and among conservative Muslim migrants.
On the other hand, while the colours of the original rainbow flag represent abstract notions like ‘serenity’ and ‘spirit’, new colours have been added in recent years that are directly political — brown for ‘people of colour’ and white for ‘people who are transitioning’. Meanwhile, Gay Pride Month has been taken over by the progressive movement, resulting in the word ‘gay’ being dropped from the name.
Unsurprisingly, progressivism enjoys much less societal acceptance than gay rights. This month, parents brought a lawsuit against a Berlin school for displaying the Pride flag in a classroom, claiming it was a form of indoctrination (they lost the case). Only around one in four Germans believe that ‘trans women’ should be allowed to take part in women’s sport. Meanwhile, a law brought in by the Scholz government that allowed people to change their sex at their local registry office once a year was met with widespread ridicule — the new government has promised to “evaluate” it and suggest changes by next summer.
While the rainbow flag that has been flown over the Bundestag is the original, the flag itself has been dragged into the centre of the culture wars. For conservatives — especially those of an AfD persuasion — it is now shorthand for a “Green elite” who are obsessed with finding new minorities who need liberation from the straight, white mainstream. On the left, the rainbow colours have come to mean ‘anti-AfD’ and are often seen on signs at marches demanding the anti-immigration party be banned.
By restricting the Regenbogenfahne to a day that specifically honours the gay rights movement, Klöckner is acknowledging societal attitudes to homosexuality while simultaneously distancing herself from the new demands of the ‘queer movement’. She almost certainly isn’t motivated primarily by protecting the neutrality of her office. But she is being a clever politician.
Klingbeil’s Klatsche
Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before: Party in German coalition has a mental breakdown after a poor election result, forcing its leadership to take an ever more confrontational tone inside the government. Any good work gets drowned out by squabbles over spending.
For the Free Democrats in the years 2021 to 2024, read the SPD this time around. At the Social Democrats’ party conference at the weekend, their centrist leader Lars Klingbeil (now also Finance Minister) stood for re-election and won just 65 per cent of the vote among delegates. There were no opposing candidates – normally, leaders win over 90 per cent in these routine votes.
According to Der Spiegel, Klingbeil briefly contemplated resigning when he heard the result. What is clear is that he has lost his authority inside his party.
Also up for election as co-leader was Bärbel Bas, Klöckner’s predecessor as Bundestagspräsidentin and a leading voice on the left of the party. Bas won 95 per cent of the vote among delegates, making her the new centre of power. It was a clear signal that the party base is not prepared to go along with the welfare cuts being touted by the CDU.
Does this mean that the Merz government will suffer the same fate as the Scholz one, eventually breaking down due to ideological differences? I don’t think so. Through its decision to ditch Germany’s traditional fiscal conservatism, the Merz government has given itself enough cash to keep both party bases happy… at least for the time being. Due to the rise of the AfD and (to a lesser extent) Die Linke - and the unsustainability of current spending - there is a crisis brewing in German politics. But it has likely been delayed until after the 2029 election.