For many years the “political buttocks geography” of Germany was clear. Middle, left, right – you knew who was where and what to expect. Today, however, we have lost certainties as well as ties. “What’s left?” People asked 24 years ago in view of the “new center”. Today it’s about “lifestyle left” versus “real left”. The controversy over contemporary conservatism is simmering in the political center, accompanied by low blows.
The soft Armin Laschet held up just as little as Sebastian Kurz or Donald Trump, radicalized representatives of a bourgeoisie that sometimes replaces reason with resentment. Much more obvious at the moment is the question of what constitutes the “new liberalism”. With the FDP and the Greens, two very different liberal parties are sending each other to move into the little timbered coalition house.
The determination of the location and course of German liberalism is the subject of our weekend edition. Keyword: “reinvention”. It’s about how the two most popular parties among first-time voters – Liberals and Greens – can reform the country, establish the socio-ecological market economy and strengthen the value of freedom. FDP senior Hermann Otto Solms, 80, reveals: “Our aim is not to enter the government under the SPD, but rather we want to determine the basic tenor of politics with the open-minded Greens.”
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
The FDP remembers more than before the principle of John Locke that a free person can call everything that he “wrestles from nature with his hands his own” – but this only applies for so long, even if with to the “others remain good together”.
Modern liberalism thinks of society as a whole from the perspective of the individual. But this has nothing to do with the socially liberal Freiburg theses 50 years ago, believes politics professor Hans Vorländer. The program at that time would have addressed wealth creation, ownership structures and – once totally innovative – environmental policy.
Conclusion: Sometimes tradition is too good to simply forget.
(Photo: imago images / photothek)
In an interview with Handelsblatt, FDP boss Christian Lindner says: “We have to take liberalism more seriously here.” Certainly one trusts his party to do a lot with digitization too, he explains the success with the youth. One of the Lindnerisms reads: “The concentration of power in platform capitalism from Silicon Valley calls to mind the classic task of liberal economic policy. Namely, to organize the market for fair competition without undermining it by state commands. “
And the next bon mot: “We tend to stick with Karl Popper rather than Karl Marx.”
That is a different announcement than that of the ex-Deutschbanker Hilmar Kopper: “Do I need Popper? I’m Kopper. ”Sociologist Andreas Reckwitz provides a special classification of liberalism. For him, the social corporatism of the welfare society developed after 1945 and then a two-part liberalism: economic liberalism from the right and emancipatory liberalism from the left.
Lindner sees these paradigms in the end – and an “embedding liberalism” mature, analogous to the “embedding capitalism” of the economist Karl Polanyi. This new liberalism presses the old dynamic liberalism into a structure of social norms. Might be a good match for the Ampel coalition, if it comes.
The accusation was concrete: The 48-year-old Austrian Cevdet Caner is a kind of shadow CEO of the Adler Group housing companywho cheat, manipulate and deceive the financiers. The speculator Fraser Perring raised these allegations and last week let his anger run free on 61 pages. Adler shares fell 30 percent on the day the report was published. Germany’s largest housing group Vonovia took advantage of the crisis and secured an option to buy 13.3 percent of the group. Then Adler announced that it wanted to sell more than 15,000 residential units to the Düsseldorf LEG.
In the Handelsblatt two-hour conversation, Caner rumbled about Fraser Perring as a “criminal fool”. In detail he said about …
- Revenge on his adversary: “Our demands run into the billions, Perring’s network must be dug up. It must be destroyed commercially and legally. “
- his role: “I worked on the strategy of today’s Adler Group in an advisory capacity on the shareholder side. It’s a success story. And I, Cevdet Caner, have helped shape the Adler’s success story through my work. I’ve been in the market for 17 years, I know all the players and have accompanied hundreds of transactions. Some refer to me as the country’s dealmaker. “
- an anonymous letter writer who alleges enrichment: “As a whistleblower, I go to an authority like the Bafin or the public prosecutor’s office. But this is not a whistleblower. This is a criminal manipulator of courses. “
The interview reads as if dialog sentences from “Sopranos” or “Bad Banks” had found their way into it.
My culture tip for the weekend: “The Last Duel” by Ridley Scott. The old master finds his way back to his old class in this two-knight-and-a-woman piece. The film is told, just like in Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon”, from several perspectives, whereby one is most likely to believe the lonely woman (Jodie Comer), who feels pressured and coerced by both: her own husband Jean de Carrouges and the bon vivant Jacques Le Gris. The excellent script was written by Matt Damon, who also plays the husband, and Ben Affleck, who mentors the alleged seducer Le Gris. Overall, a lucid historical approach to the current me-too problem.
(Photo: imago images / Rolf Poss)
After the failed federal election, the CDU clears Armin Laschet, and Markus Söder has to endure unexpected battles in the CSU. In any case, he is giving himself the Germany Day of the Junge Union (JU) in favor of a grassroots conference in Upper Franconia, which is tactically understandable. Because just yesterday, an explosive election analysis paper from the JU was made public. It says: “We lost out of our own weakness, not because of the strength of others.”
As a candidate, Laschet “could not reach people in the way many hoped for”. On the contrary, it was a reason for many not to vote for the Union this time, even against longstanding habits. And then the JU speaks of an “open or covert dismantling from the leadership circles of the candidate – especially from Munich.” This made it impossible for Armin Laschet to “develop a positive image”. Greetings too, and hello to Söder-Markus.
And then there is Christian Streich, as coach of the Bundesliga club SC Freiburg, something like the advocate of honest football. He now finds the takeover of Newcastle United by a Saudi Arabian consortium outrageous. The sovereign wealth fund PIF and the controversial Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who apparently had the critical journalist Jamal Khashoggi murdered, dominate there. Streich says it annoys him that the fund includes people “who are involved in serious human rights violations.”
Streich: “There are always things happening in football that have exceeded all limits.” In Riyadh there are still many petro-dollars looking for investment, apparently also at the sports online retailer Signa Sports United from the realm of René Benko. Thanks to a capital injection from PIF, the company is soon listed on Wall Street. Here is a bon mot from the actor Fernandel: “It is only when you draw up your tax return that you find out how much money you would save if you didn’t have any.”
I wish you a peaceful weekend on which 70,000 passengers actually want to travel from the overwhelmed Berlin airport today. One can only hope that as many as possible will come on board for the Lufthansa bingo.
I warmly greet you
you
Hans-Jürgen Jakobs
Senior editor
You can subscribe to the Morning Briefing here: