Germany has a university crisis too
If you happen to use the Berlin subway these days, you may find yourself eavesdropping on a lecture on 19th-century Jewish literature or maybe one on the mating rituals of the South American forest frog. While travelling between Gesundbrunnen and Platz der Luftbr?cke, you may learn something about ossification in the human hip, French company law or diphthongs in Spanish. In any case, you will share your train with a large number of university students and one or two lecturers. There will also be placards protesting against the latest round of budget cuts for Berlin's universities. The students call this kind of action a "strike."
It is, of course, rather difficult to go on strike as a student. The person profiting from your being at university and attending class is you. If you don't attend lectures, it's you who has a problem. Having thought about this, Berlin students hit upon another tactic. Instead of not going to lectures they would take their lectures into public places to make their point. So they stand around on street junctions, fill crowded trains, prevent politicians from going about their daily business: in short, annoy people.
And they do have a point. As in Britain, there has been a steady growth in the numbers of people going to university but no increase in funding. Berlin itself has three universities of once global reputation, and a large number of colleges and polytechnics on top of that. However, in the last ten years, the city's politicians - who always waffle on about the knowledge society - have cut the per capita budget for higher education by almost 50 per cent.
Unlike in Britain, where the government is taking action - however unpopular - to increase funding to the universities, in Germany the ruling Social Democratic party has set its face against the introduction of tuition fees. Remarkably, such fees are now even supported by some student organisations. Higher education is supposed to be a matter for the L?nder (state) governments but in a fine example of Germany's pseudo-federalism the national government can block anything, such as fees, which might mean living standards diverging in different parts of the country.
The SPD is against fees because it fears the poor will be excluded, but as everyone knows, the poor are already excluded and the rich exclude themselves by trying to get their children into university in France, in the US or Switzerland. Or, even better, in Britain. Britain is still probably top of the list for anyone in search of a good education, although perhaps not for much longer if those Labour backbenchers get their way at the end of January.
Germany's under-underdogs
We Germans are trying to become acquainted with our new role in Europe: the underdog. Everything is getting more and more expensive, and less and less reliable. Trains are late (no, not as late as in Britain, but we're working on it), German cars break down (according to the automotive journals), and the national football team isn't much good either. A friend of mine whose father died recently even discovered that his name had been spelt wrong on the gravestone. The only truly brilliant German these days lives in Switzerland and drives a very, very fast Italian car. But Michael Schumacher is a tax evader. So, not much of a hero, really.
The underdogs of the German underdog, the under-underdogs, so to speak, are the German childless. For a few months demographics has dominated the national conversation, and whether the discussion is on the terrible state of the pension system, the failing schools or the poor results of German industry - it turns out to be down to the tiny number of German babies.
Which leaves, nicely, the new German father as the hero of our times. I am one of them. The new German dad is heavily involved in the upbringing of his son or daughter - well acquainted with nappies, kindergarten schedules and child food logistics. And whereas the German mum is looked down upon at work for being too interested in her offspring, dad is praised and fussed over by his office colleagues for leaving early to attend the under-five carol service, and excused for arriving late in the morning because of the little one. Heaven.
Kassel, not so boring after all
Despite Germany's slow growth and general underdog status, Kassel is still one of those German towns that you marvel at if you have been living in Britain for a few years. Although by no means prosperous by German standards (it might be the equivalent of, say, Middlesbrough) it has a solid material infrastructure, no obviously "rough" parts of town, tennis courts everywhere, a fine art gallery, and a local opera house that one Saturday in December had, as usual, filled almost all of its 900 seats for a performance of the Magic Flute that would not have disgraced the English National Opera. Kassel has a reputation for being rather dull. It is certainly livened up every few years by the arrival of the Documente, the avant garde art world's biggest international show. And it will now forever more be known for its avant garde cuisine thanks to being the home of Arnim Meiwes, Kassel's self-confessed cannibal, currently on trial. My spies in the town tell me that the people of Kassel seem rather unmoved by the whole thing. Indeed the trial has provoked more interest outside Germany than in it. Perhaps we just don't want to face the fact: we are the dull, inefficient, man-eaters of Europe.
