Calling the turn on Schröder
The German chancellor is enjoying himself again. Gerhard Schröder has a spring in his step, and not just because of his happy home life in Hanover, after the adoption this summer of daughter Victoria, a three-year-old Russian girl.
He senses that two years after his re-election, the political tide might be turning, in his favour, ahead of the 2006 national elections. On the face of it, this is surprising. Eighteen months after he launched his Agenda 2010 economic reform package, many of the measures remain very unpopular. His ruling Social Democrats have recorded their worst ever string of results in various elections this year. Unemployment is stuck at over 4m, with little prospect of big falls before 2006, and economic recovery is sluggish. Germany is likely to breach the EU's stability pact again next year, despite promises to Brussels by finance minister Hans Eichel.
So why is the chancellor so cheerful? One reason is that his tough-guy role in standing firm against anti-reform street protests is paying off. Sixty per cent of Germans now think Hartz IV (the shorthand in Agenda 2010 for the benefit cuts) is a good thing - an unthinkable result only three months ago.
Another reason is that the conservative opposition is in such a mess. Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats and Edmund Stoiber's Bavarian Christian Social Union have not only failed to convert the anti-government sentiment since 2002 into longer-term backing for the CDU/CSU, they are now falling out among themselves. When leading CDU politicians earlier this year went populist by attacking Hartz IV, they appeared to forget that their party had helped to pass the measures only months earlier. It did not help when Stoiber (who lost to Schröder in 2002) suggested that a leadership line-up in 2006 of Merkel and liberal Free Democrat leader Guido Westerwelle would have no hope of defeating the Schröder-Joschka Fischer double act. Since then, differences over the financing of health reforms, opposition to Turkey's EU membership bid and the need for looser job protection rules have all provided grounds for more slanging matches.
Udo Lindenberg embraces kitsch
Schröder has also been enjoying himself on the world stage, using every opportunity to push his government's bid for a permanent seat on the UN security council. In itself this is nothing new: Fischer's predecessors Klaus Kinkel and Hans-Dietrich Genscher often used UN speeches to hint in this direction, but never before has the demand been so confident and explicit. Schröder and Fischer evidently believe that even if it is not going to happen, the very act of voicing the demand in this manner is another step toward that elusive ordinary nation status for Germany.
And German national pride has been bubbling up in some unexpected places. In September, hundreds of German musicians lobbied parliament to introduce a law forcing radio stations to play a certain quota of German-language songs every day. At present, only 1.2 per cent of songs played are German new releases - a long way, say the campaigners, from the 40 per cent quota that has existed for ten years in France.
The proposal has little chance of becoming law - the government, radio stations and many artists are against it. But there was a time, not so long ago, when all self-respecting German rockers denounced the fatherland at every turn, and would have died rather than express solidarity with the ghastly heart of German language pop music - the jolly world of recycled country music and soft rock. Now even the grand old man of German rock, Udo Lindenberg, backs the quota.
Die Zeit gets tough
The weekly newspaper Die Zeit, the mouthpiece of liberal-minded intellectual Germany, has also caught the new mood. A recent front-page piece on the country's 2.6m Turkish community dared to point out that proportionally many more Turks are dependent on welfare payments than Germans. "Many Turkish people... exploit the welfare state without restraint," the paper concluded, abandoning its usual stance of liberal hand-wringing.
Perhaps the paper has found extra courage since August thanks to its new editor, Giovanni di Lorenzo, former editor of Berlin's Der Tagesspiegel. As his name suggests, di Lorenzo, 45 - who wrote the Turkish story - is not entirely German, having been born in Sweden to an Italian father and German mother. He replaces heavyweights Josef Joffe and Michael Naumann, who had been joint editors and joint publishers since 2001. As a spokeswoman explained, the two men decided after three years that "they would like to concentrate on just being the publishers" (alongside ex-chancellor Helmut Schmidt). Very Die Zeit.
The Queen's English
Finally, the Queen is coming! Britain's diplomats in their postmodern embassy in Berlin's Wilhemstrasse are in the usual panic ahead of the state visit in early November. The planning! The logistics! The endless protocol! But there will be no fly on the wall articles or programmes about the preparations, despite many requests. What one fly did glean from the embassy was that, unlike in France, where the Queen earlier this year spoke in pretty good French, in Germany she will only be speaking English. Despite her heritage, "her German's not up to it," as one insider said. At least this increases her chances of being heard on the radio.
