Last weekend, top German politicians condemned the fascist torchbearers in Grimma, Saxony – and then went back to their day-to-day work, which included the allocation of ministerial offices due to the ongoing formation of the government. And as the daily work of almost Chancellor Olaf Scholz was supposed to prove on Monday – the problem areas in the East had, as always, disappeared from the minds of the decision-makers.
Twice in Hamburg, twice in North Rhine-Westphalia, once each in Lower Saxony, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg – and Brandenburg, that’s how the SPD’s government team is made up. Everyone in their fifties, no boys, no migrants, a woman from Potsdam, the city that is considered to be the most western part of the East, as evidenced by its fashionable villa district and new population. That is disappointing for an election campaigner who advertised with a respect campaign and who also owes his election victory to the millions of votes and many direct mandates between Rügen and the Thuringian Forest. East Germans (as well as migrants and young people) are suitable as vote-givers, but apparently not as co-rulers.
The items are assigned according to West German proportional representation
Even in a traffic light coalition that promises modernity and new beginnings, the decisive posts are distributed according to practiced West German proportional representation. You know each other, you want to consider large regional associations – and you still know a few loyal fellow campaigners. From an East German point of view, that’s irritating. The same politicians who call in Sunday speeches to stand up against the right-wing mob do not want to understand that precisely these regions must be explicitly involved.
It is just as irritating that this is not called out loud in Dresden, Schwerin or Erfurt. The East Germans seem to have got used to it: management job means West German. For the East, some say, there is a memorial for the peaceful revolution in the coalition agreement. The team around the former Brandenburg Prime Minister Matthias Platzeck received a demand. How humble that sounds. The peaceful revolutionaries of yore are happy about the crumbs that fall from the edge of the coalition plate in the federal capital.
Quite the same for people with a migration background
Anyone who listened to Olaf Scholz during the election campaign and looked at the election results couldn’t help but expect that East Germans would be prominently represented in the cabinet – especially among the Social Democrats. “Scholz will tackle it,” the SPD campaign had promised, which sounded like at least two social democratic ministerial posts for the new federal states, coalition partners extra.
Which would be trendy anyway. With a good eighty million inhabitants, 17 million of them between Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Saxony, almost a quarter of the government members would have to come from these regions. In fact, it is one eighth for the SPD. And in the entire traffic light it’s two out of seventeen. The situation is similar for people with a migration background: a good 26 percent have it across Germany, only six percent at the traffic lights – or one person. Representation as shop window politics!
At the traffic lights there is even less in the shop window than before – although the East Germans made Scholz Chancellor. In the years in which Angela Merkel, socialized in East Germany, ruled, there was an additional minister from the East in the cabinet. Even if Merkel never let it hang out, she always considered the experiences of 35 years in a dictatorship. In future, two East-socialized ministers will sit at the cabinet table – and there is no longer a Chancellor who thinks about the East.
An East German who collects the problems of the East? Heard abolished
If you look at the past 30 years since reunification, the results are even more sobering. The participation of the people from the new federal states stagnates at a low level. The fact that there are supposed to be a couple of East Germans in the second row does not change that, for example Erfurt’s Carsten Schneider as the Eastern Commissioner, based in the Chancellery. This is higher in rank than the previous Eastern Commissioner, but the problem is: this office should actually be abolished. Instead of commissioning an East German to collect the problems in the East, the people there should be included directly in German decision-making processes. It is not a matter of assigning posts to a region, regardless of whether it is East or West, but rather creating the same living conditions nationwide.
You can understand the voices that are demanding, it’s good with East-West talk. It would be nice if it could be stopped. However, it would be simply irresponsible – in the overall German sense. After all, it is the keeping away of people who have experienced tough changes in their lives, from real management positions, which is the first manifestation of the East’s being left behind. People who are not allowed to have a say turn away. Regions that are not taken into account as well. This is how division works.
Even the Greens, who have at least one of five positions in the cabinet with an East German, should still feel the gaps. The early coal phase-out is her heartfelt issue. But how will the Greens in Lusatia and Central Germany be received when they appear with an almost completely West German choreographed team to explain the upheaval to the residents who have experienced upheaval? Just.
With the lack of diversity in the new cabinet, the traffic light sets itself a trap before taking office. There is still time to dismantle it.