The second and third generation of immigrants behind the camera has given German cinema a new lease of life and goes way beyond depicting what it is like to be a foreigner in another society, as was the case in the 70s, 80s and 90s. By Margret Köhler...
more
Frankfurter Rundschau: Mr. Hinck, after having spoken to politicians, managers and chief editors in the new Länder - the East German states -, your conclusion is: "Leaders in the East are companions in distress." Why is that?
Gunnar Hinck: Since reunification, power has been shared by West German "reconstruction helpers," East Germans from other fields – think of the many scientists and engineers in politics - and lower-level cadres of the East German Communist Party who managed to find their feet in the new system. The three groups are culturally foreign to one another, and lived in contrasting worlds prior to 1990. They've got little to say to each other.
Why do the elites in East Germany tend to be so much on the defensive?
Because their careers often happened by accident. Take Wolfgang Böhmer for instance, the premier of Saxony-Anhalt. He was a doctor in the GDR and lived in an unpolitical niche. He didn't want to assume any government post, but was pushed to do so. To this day he's got no political gusto or ideas. The collapse of the GDR triggered feelings not only of liberation, but also of uncertainty.
Is that why there's such strong dissatisfaction in the East with the reality of the German Federal Republic, its economic system, institutions, social services and democracy?
It's not due to the economic situation; the living standard of the vast majority of Germans has greatly improved since 1990. Health care, for instance, is today at a level East German citizens wouldn't have dared to dream of. The problem is the inner German power structure. It's the West that determines the country's norms and language. The East German elites could do much more to bring their own experience to bear in the pan-German debate. But so far West Germans are alone as far as that goes.
You consider it a handicap to former GDR citizens that they acquired executive positions through luck or coincidence?
Yes. In East Germany, there's no competition for the best brains. The institutions, parties for example, often search desperately for candidates to fill top spots. The pool of elites is apprehensively small to this day. After 1945, the Soviet occupiers and the Communist Party removed not only Nazis, but also bourgeois entrepreneurs and social-democratic mayors from office. Many families were driven to flee to the West. After reunification, in turn, the SED personnel was in large part phased out. All of this cut immense swaths.
As for PDS (the successor party to the SED or Communist Party - ed) politicians, you write that "conformity was the central factor of their career in the GDR". Is that still the case?
Yes. Cadres of the SED were obedient functionaries – and they continue to be obedient functionaries even in the country of the former class enemy. The mayor of the Berlin district of Lichtenberg, Christina Emmrich, a member of the PDS, was on the executive committee of the FDGB, the trade union federation in GDR times. She confided to me that she'd rather not hoist the Federal German flag in front of her town hall because she doesn't feel this is her country. But she does it, because she has to. With inner rejection and inner emigration.
You have harsh words for West Germans: "The unhoped for reunification helped unblock many a jammed career." Did the West send the wrong people to the East?
That was unfortunately often enough the case. Someone like Kurt Biedenkopf was a stroke of good luck for Saxony, but in administrations the picture looks quite different. Mediocre West German lawyers had no trouble at all finding a job in the civil service. In Bavaria, they would never have had the opportunity they had in Magdeburg. Many quality shortcomings are blatant.
You also criticise the ludicrously high money transfers. Does aid money from the West act as a surrogate in the East?
An absurd logic has developed in this area: A local politician doesn't first come up with a good idea and then think about how he can finance it. First he researches the many support programmes, then constructs whatever there happens to be money for. Market squares paved with granite and well-lit waterfront promenades make up for a lack of sense and identity. The elites of the East are without orientation, their void is filled by support programmes.
When is that going to change?
When younger generations replace the older ones and a climate develops in the East in which problems in the society can openly be talked about.
*
The interview originally appeared in the Frankfurter Rundschau on August 14, 2007.
Roland Mischke is a freelance journalist.
Translation: Claudia Kotte
RSS
Last year secularists and multiculturalists converged at signandsight.com to debate Islam in Europe. Both parties want a liberal society where autonomous citizens live peacefully side by side, but the slightest political provocation is enough to unleash an intellectual Kulturkampf. Jürgen Habermas considers both positions and points beyond them to a post-secular society, where religious and secular mentalities are open to a complementary learning process. (Photo: Wolfram Huke)
At the Durban Conference against Racism in 2001, anti-colonialism bared its anti-Semitic face. The UN is planning a follow-up conference next year in Geneva. Pascal Bruckner tells democracies to keep their distance.
Advocates of Ukrainian democracy are motivated by old desires for independence from Moscow and, now that political autonomy has been achieved, by the need to get under the protective umbrella of Nato and the EU. From an objective point view, though, there are plenty of arguments against Ukraine turning its back on Russia. By Richard Wagner (Photo: Lothar Deus)
On the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel, exiled Iraqi writer, Najem Wali, decided to go and survey the "enemy" territory with his own eyes. What he found was an explanation for the reluctance of Arab leaders to let their people make the same journey: the stagnation of Arab societies and economies cannot be blamed on Israel.
Dragan Klaic arrived in Skopje on the day that Greece vetoed Macedonia's bid to join NATO at the summit in Bucharest. He found a nation reeling from this unexpected slap in the face.
No-one knows what the anti-Koran film 'Fitna' by the Dutch right-wing politician Geert Wilders contains exactly. But fearing Muslim anger many are ready to make concessions regarding the fundamental freedom of expression. Gelijn Molier looks to nineteenth century philosopher John Stuart Mill for advice.
The deportation of Romanians from Italy in the wake of a murder committed by an ethnic Roma has caused a stir in Romania. Yet whereas Romanians object to this discrimination abroad, they fail to see that at home the Roma are treated with nothing but hatred and disdain, and neither the Church nor the state is doing anything about it. By Mircea Cartarescu
Since the 19th century Ukrainians have been dreaming of a return to the paradise lost of Europe. But Ukraine's rich and painful history remains a blank spot in the European collective consciousness, or a mighty underground river flowing out of Europe's cellar, littered with corpses. By Oksana Zabuzhko
The Amsterdam district of Slotervaart, where Theo van Gogh's murderer lived, continues to be plagued by outbreaks of violence from youths in the immigrant communities. Many of their parents have withdrawn from what they perceive as the hostile outside world, which they invariably blame when their children go astray. By Margalith Kleijwegt
The sexual revolution has run itself aground on the back of standardisation and banality. It's time to fight Hefnerism with radicalisation not restriction, declares Dylan van Rijsbergen 
No sooner were the fires put out reelected the government that bore the than Greek votersbrunt of responsibility for the tragedy. Did those who suffered so much learn no lesson from their distress? Crime writer Petros Markaris looks at why the Greeks have failed to find their way out of the political crisis rocking their country.