Städte und Staaten

Leider noch nicht übersetzt!!

Antagonism between Berlin residents and national governments has a long history, accentuated by the fact that the city has served as the capital of five different German states in the 20th century - the Kaiserreich until 1918, the Weimarer Republik in years between the wars, the Nazi state or so-called Third Reich until 1945, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) until 1991, and of a re-unified Federal Republic of Germany from 1998 on. The relationship between the city and the various governments has been marked by antagonism, generally predicated upon the fact that city politics were far more leftist than national politics. In 1895, for example, the city government refused to congratulate Bismarck on his 80th birthday, in spite of his status as the hero of German unification.

In these days of Seattle and Genoa, and following the usurpation of the U.S. presidential election by the U.S. Supreme Court, the idea that national government, in spite of its pretensions of democracy, is neither for the people nor by the people is becoming more and more ubiquitous. The renewed faith in national government that some have identified in the U.S. in the wake of Sept. 11 seems a minor and local jag in an otherwise downward trend of trust. The recent participation of the Green Party in the German federal government - the dramatic move from extraparliamentary opposition to coalition partner in government - has underscored this, as the Greens found themselves the objects of angry demonstrations by their former constituencies when they approved the governmental nuclear policy and war policies.

The sense that not only power but parliament corrupts is growing, and Berlin is an ideal location for studying this perception. The protests in East Berlin in 1989 that led to the change of nations and governments, the later dissatisfaction with the process, and the disillusionment of all sectors of the city with the government (and, in some cases, with the nation it purports to represent) offer a microcosm of citizen responses to government. And the recent move of the federal government from Bonn to Berlin ensures that this is still a very current issue in the city.