The order from Frankfurt is: 16 years, one newspaper page. But where do you travel as a country correspondent to get to the heart of the Merkel era? Garmisch and Sylt was such a thought. Then maybe to Bautzen so that nobody complains afterwards. The sensitivities have not decreased in the past 16 years. Or do you just go to North Rhine-Westphalia, which Armin Laschet always says is Germany on a small scale? The same game when choosing our interlocutors. For us, gender parity is non-negotiable. But how representative is it, for example, to talk to a professor, a single nurse, a single cashier and Achille Mbembe? No, in such a situation we had to make a clear decisionas Angela Merkel should have done more often. We reinterpret the demand for more representativeness without further ado and go to where it is represented. Café Einstein, Berlin.
Reinhard Bingener
Political correspondent for Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Bremen based in Hanover.
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Timo Frasch
Political correspondent in Munich.
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A colleague from the features section gave us the tip that “every decent Berlin research” should begin there, Unter den Linden.
We made an appointment in the morning with Günter Bannas, the former head of the FAZ capital city office.
Bannas, who first lays his filterless Gauloises on the table in the sun, is a precise chronicler with no tendency towards postural journalism.
Only when one smoking ban after another came into force in 2007 and 2008 did he make an exception.
Since then, people have been smoking less and less, especially in the political arena. And with smoking, there was also a decrease in drinking, because there is a connection between the two, explains Bannas. "If you have a glass of wine, have a cigarette with it." The mood on the Chancellor's trips has changed significantly as a result. Anyway, the Chancellor's trips. Helmut Kohl and his predecessors spent days in foreign countries, says Bannas. Pictures were taken that were reminiscent of postcards. "That was always a tribute to the hosts: The German Chancellor takes the culture of this old country seriously." The change began with Schröder. "I will not have my photo taken in front of the pyramids," was the motto now. “Instead, five days, five countries. So that afterwards it doesn’t mean: He’s doing well at our expense. "
Under Angela Merkel, the timing has become even tighter. “She condensed it extremely. Latin America in two days, you were on the plane longer than on the ground. ”Is it because of Merkel's Protestant work ethic and her penchant for austerity? Bannas doesn't think so. “First of all, Merkel likes to drink a glass or two of wine herself. And secondly, as a top politician, you have to travel a lot more today. Paris in the morning, Berlin at noon, Brussels in the evening. ”Diving for a few days, being inaccessible like Willy Brandt once was, that is hardly possible today. Because of all the mobile devices.
Times have become more ungracious. Social media has meant that every step could be watched. The aggression in political discourse has also increased. Not necessarily in the political class itself, but on its fringes. As if on cue, Roland Tichy takes a seat at the next table. Jan Böhmermann would now get up and leave, according to the motto: You don't sit next to AfD-affiliated publicists. Perhaps Böhmermann also has someone sitting at another table who films how FAZ editors do not get up immediately, although they see that they are sitting next to Tichy. The purity fictions from the right are now also on the left. So out of protest and because of the sun we sit next to Tichy and his interlocutor with the golden cufflinks,who is mourning the “last upright economic liberals”.