Turmoil in Thuringia
With the shock election of a minority party member to the position of minister president of Thuringia with the help of the AfD, Germany’s political landscape suffers an earthquake
While all eyes seem to be riveted on the US presidential impeachment – or lack thereof – simmering political turmoil in Germany has suddenly erupted into scandal. The situation was described this morning by Chancellor Angela Merkel as an “unforgivable process”.
The event that has set the cat amongst the pigeons was the election of FDP (Free Democratic Party) candidate Thomas Kemmerich to the position of minister president in the German state of Thuringia. Innocuous? Not so much.
Although the Thuringia state election took place on 27 October 2019, the results gave no clear majority to any party – but with the two parties on the fringes of the political spectrum gaining the most support. The far left-leaning die Linke secured 30 per cent of votes, followed in second place by the far-right AfD (Alternativ für Deutschland) with 23.4 per cent. The only other party with comparable figures was the centre-right CDU (Christian Democratic Union), trailing the AfD with 21.7 per cent of the vote. The centre-right, neo-liberal FDP just squeaked in with 5 per cent.
The results show a state riven by political discord. This played out in the attempts to elect a minister president to lead the government. The now former minister president Bodo Ramelow, a Linke party member, had been expected to resume his position.
But rancour amongst the various parties could not be resolved, coalition agreements could not be reached. The CDU – which could have formed a coalition with die Linke – refused to go into government with them. No party wished to work together with the AfD, known for its anti-immigrant stance, branded racist in many quarters, and harbouring alleged connections and sympathies with the Nazis.
Three votes took place. The Linke and AfD parties both put candidates up for the state parliamentary vote for minister president: Ramelow by die Linke, and independent candidate Christoph Kindervater by the AfD. Ramelow was unable to regain victory with the combined votes from his own party, the SPD and the Greens. In the third round, a new, surprise candidate presented himself: Kemmerich from the FDP, the party least represented in the Thuringian state parliament. He won over Ramelow by one vote, 45 to 44 – with every member of the AfD switching their vote to him from their own candidate in this round. Together with the support of the CDU and Kemmerich’s FDP, it was enough to push him through.
Conspiracy theories about agreements – secret or tacit – abound, although the FDP insist there were no discussions or trade-offs, and that they would not work together with the AfD. But the political, press and social media shitstorm whipped up by this event has taken over the airwaves – nudging even the coronovirus into second place.
Politicians from almost all corners have resoundingly condemned Kemmerich’s acceptance of the vote, many calling for new state elections in Thuringia. Up to now, Kemmerich has, however, remained firm and insists that he has been legitimately elected to the post of minister president. Both Merkel and CDU party leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer have voiced their disapproval, with AKK saying that her compatriots in Thuringia voted against the advice of the federal party leadership, and threatening consequences. Even in Bavaria, Markus Söder, the leader of the CSU (Christlich Social Union, right-leaning sister party of the CDU), said that his party would “not take part in any such adventure if it extended to the federal level”. A tweet from CSU party member Dorothee Bär, however, congratulated Kemmerich for his victory – and was immediately and vociferously condemned and swiftly removed.
After the vote, Ramelow quoted Hitler in a tweet on Wednesday evening: “‘We aimed for our greatest success in Thuringia … The parties in Thuringia that formed the government up to now will not be able to command a majority without our help.’” The tweet refers to the fact that Thuringia was the first German state in the Weimar Republic to include the Nazis in its notorious Baum-Frick government in 1930, helping to pave the way for their dominance across Germany.
The spectre of Nazism remains fresh – reminding most people of what once happened, what could happen and what should never again take place.
BREAKING NEWS
Bowing to pressure, the newly elected minister president Thomas Kemmerich has announced he is stepping down. The FDP in Thuringen plans to put forward a proposal to dissolve the state parliament and precipitate a new election.
Mysterious crossbow killings in Bavaria
Police are baffled at a spate of macabre deaths in the historic and otherwise peaceful city of Passau
A CRIME in the Bavarian city of Passau has horrified as much as mystified the police – and the general public. On Saturday morning, employees of a B&B in Unteröd, a district in Passau, found three bodies in one of the rooms. Two of the bodies, a 33-year-old woman and a 53-year-old man, were found in bed, holding hands. A third woman, aged 30, was lying on the floor. Two crossbows were also discovered in the room, and all three bodies had numerous bolts still in them. The state prosecutor’s office has called for an autopsy.
The man and woman in the bed both came from Rhineland-Palatinate; the woman on the floor from Lower Saxony. They had arrived together on Friday. It still isn’t clear what their relationship was. The B&B where they stopped was located in an idyllic verdant locality near a small river.
Since then, the police have announced today that they have discovered two more bodies, both women, this time in Lower Saxony. The flat, located in the town of Wittingen, was the home of one of the crime victims in Passau. No crossbows or bolts were found there; the cause of death is still unknown – or at least not yet made public. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, one of the two women found in Wittingen may be the partner of the 30-year-old woman found in Passau.
Bavarian police are working feverishly to solve the mystery of this macabre case.
Playing around on the radio
Recording a drama for the airwaves is exciting – even more so when it’s your own script
“WHICH MICS are we using?”
“Em … ” I cast a glance around the cast. There’d be two to three characters in a scene. This one has three. “Blue, green and orange.”
“Thanks.” Gavin, the sound director, switches the colour-coded mics on from his control room, which we can see through the window, and gives the go-ahead for the recording.
We’re spending Saturday and Sunday at Near FM radio studios in Coolock, north Dublin, recording a radio play. By “we”, I mean Gavin Byrne, responsible for IT and radio drama, as well as production co-ordinator Paul Loughran and actors Lloyd Cooney, Darragh Kelly, Sarah O’Rourke and Ali White. And me, too. I’m there because the play they’re recording is mine. And because I’m directing as well.
It’s hugely exciting for me to be part of the production of this, my first play on the radio, or performed anywhere, to be honest. It’s called Buckle, and it was inspired by an article I read about a women who had gone to visit her son’s killer in jail. After repeated visits and conversations, she eventually called for and succeeded in getting him off death row.
What would drive a woman, a mother, to put herself in that situation? How could she face it? And what would they talk about? A series of exercises in imagining that fraught scenario continued to grow and eventually turned into the play that we’re in the process of recording.
It’s quite an ironic day to be doing the recording: Mother’s Day (Ireland and the UK). Depending on what happens in the respective scene we’re doing, the actors stand or sit to deliver their lines – which is why Gavin asks which mics to switch on. After the rehearsal on Saturday, we go through each scene at least twice to make sure it’s going where we want it to, and so Gavin has several takes to work with for the finished mix.
Headphones on so I can listen to what’s being recorded, it’s quite surreal and weirdly discomfiting at first to hear the actors speaking the lines I worked on for months, over years. But over the course of the weekend, it becomes business as usual. I’d been involved in many workshops and productions as literary manager at Rough Magic Theatre Company and new writing co-ordinator the Abbey. But this is the first time – apart from a workshop reading of the play with WillFredd Theatre – that I’m hearing my own work done. It feels very vulnerable, but also immensely, fizzingly exhilarating.
The cast are amazing – enormous luck to be in the same room with such terrific actors. After half a day’s rehearsal, they totally own the script. Watching, listening to them make it come to life is a magic experience, like watching flowering vines grow in time-lapse photography. I can’t wait to hear the final version!
Buckle will be broadcast at the end of May as part of Near FM’s New Drama Hour, a radio play anthology. The first in the series, These Lights, was broadcast on 8 March at 1pm
International Women’s Day Berlin
Berlin’s new bank holiday gives birth to a revealing performance
It’s not every day you get to watch a giant vulva reveal itself on stage to the lilting tones of Ave Maria sung sean-nós. It was a tonic after a week of running after film clips, dodging the raindrops and asking for views on Berlin’s sparkling new International Women’s Day bank holiday. And where else but Berlin would you get it?
Apart from all the demonstrations, strikes, information days, breakfasts, there were evening parties and club events. This one, however, put together by Nina Hynes and Dee Mulrooney, two of the initiators and organisers of last year’s Craw Festival, nested itself in the intimate back room of the Wein-Salon in Berlin-Friedrichshain. Nina Hynes performed on a variety of instruments and sometimes belted, sometimes whispered out her own tunes about womanhood. For one song, she split the audience down the middle – the fault line cleaved between my husband and me – with one side panting out a rhythmic high E, the other chanting out a low “vul-va, vul-va, vul-va”. For those without a “vul-va”, Hynes suggested, they could share one with someone else – but only by invitation.
Then she switched styles to the reverential, crooning Ave Maria – the cue for the Growler, aka Deirdre Mulrooney, who shed her Tizian-blue mantle to expose herself in wavy layers of red, complete with a nub of a pink cap. Her performance combined singing and stand-up, infused with a kind of native, feral spirituality. It had us in stitches – until she sang about the babies of Tuam.
Alongside the small stage – about the size of a Eur-palette – stood a candleholder, the accumulation of wax on it reminiscent of a cave encrusterd with stalagmites. In between there was an altar of sorts, decorated with votives of both the Virgin Mary and an embroidered vulva. In appearance they resembled each other to a surprising degree. But I’m sure Mary would have approved. She, too, had a vulva. Nobody really knows how Jesus got in there in the first place, but he almost certainly came out the usual way.
Thank God – or Mary – that you can still find venues and fringe acts like this in the middle of Berlin. In a world in which gentrification is closing down small neighbourhood venues, city-centre Berlin still has corners and back streets where you can stumble on to places like the Wein Salon. Or be initiated into by a friend. Irish artists have leapt into this haven and forged their place in it. The atmosphere is something like Greenwich Village ca. 1961 (I imagine in my fantasies, sadly not having been there to experience it). No better way to conclude Berlin’s first International Women’s Day holiday.
To see my video about Berlin’s new International Women’s Day holiday, click here
Political earthquake in Bavaria
Candidates Katharina Schulze (l) and Ludwig Hartmann (r), joined by German Green party leader Robert Habeck, wave at a jubilant crowd at the final Green party rally. Photograph: Christine Madden
THE dust is far from settling over Sunday’s parliamentary election in Bavaria. The CSU, a behemoth of Bavarian – and a frequent irritation in Federal German – politics, lost the absolute majority they’ve more or less held for decades. They are now forced to enter into a coalition to build a new Bavarian government. Possible partners include the Green party – the big winners of this election, doubling their result from five years ago to achieve 17.5%. But a Bavarian populist party, the Free Voters (Freie Wähler), might be a better ideological fit. The SPD are also an option, but given the miserable effect of their grand coalition (Große Koalition, or GroKo) with the Federal German government, they’d probably rather keep their distance. And nobody wants to get into bed with far-right party AfD.
It’s all up for grabs as the CSU conduct exploratory talks with potential coalition partners. Interesting times.
My report on location in Munich: text and – for the first time – VIDEO.
Video: How the Green party is shaking up Bavarian elections in The Local
‘Guantanamo Bayern’
At the #noPAG demonstration on 10 May 2018. Photograph: Christine Madden
Bavaria’s new Polizeiaufgabengesetz (policing regulations act) has been called unconstitutional, the most Draconian since the Nazi era. On 10 May, tens of thousands of demonstrators thronged into Munich’s city centre to protest
Storms were forecast, but the sun still shone on Munich’s Marienplatz on Thursday, 10 May. At 12.30 pm, the square fills up – nothing particularly unusual for a holiday (Ascension Day, a bank holiday in Bavaria), when tourists routinely assemble to watch the Glockenspiel in the tower.
But more and more people crowded into the square, bearing signs, posters, banners, even clothing emblazoned with slogans. When the #noPAG demonstration – a protest organised against the new Polizeiaufgabengesetz, or Policing Regulations Act – was about to start, 15,000 people had already crushed in. “Wow! There’s a LOT of you!” announced one of the organisers over the Tannoy. The announcement was met with a roar of delight. There were too many people to make opening remarks, the voice gleefully continued. They would keep their speeches until after the march.
“Like old times,” says Munich resident Helga Kamy.
View the full article here
View of the crowd at the #noPAG demonstration on Marienplatz. Photograph: Christine Madden
One of the many signs carried at the #noPAG demonstration in Munich on 10 June. Photograph: Christine Madden