Review of Stephan Lamby’s book “Decision Days” – Culture

When the traffic light coalition agreement was signed yesterday in Berlin’s Futurium, Stephan Lamby could already be seen in the hall as he was waiting. Somewhat apart, attentively observing, present and not intrusive. It was there because it is always where something happens in German politics. He has made a chronicle of German politics in many award-winning films. They are important films in which the protagonists have their say in detail and often say a little more than they intended.

In one of his films about the CDU, the late Kohl period and the donation affair, Wolfgang Schäuble ended the legend of the anonymous donors and contradicted Helmut Kohl. As is well known, he had stated that the large amount of money in the CDU’s black coffers came from forty private individuals whom he had given a word of honor not to give their names. And holding a lie to a former Federal Chancellor – very few dared to do that, even if his story has always sounded unbelievable. Schäuble confided in Stephan Lamby, saying that the money was a remainder of Flick’s donations. A historic moment.

Breakdowns instead of ideas – what does the election campaign reveal about our society?

Lamby also accompanied the last federal election campaign and honored it in a film. But there was more material and he worked it up in a book. It appears after the election, but actually gets more valuable with each passing week. The complaints about the empty, under-complex and breakdown-plagued federal election campaign did not stop throughout the year. And they were not unfounded, because instead of a competition of ideas it seemed to be a festival of “bankruptcies, bad luck and breakdowns”, one was already waiting for the moderator Fritz Egner. There was the squabble between Söder and Laschet, the back and forth between Chancellor and Prime Minister in the management of the fight against corona, Laschet’s laughter, the plagiarism in Annalena Baerbock’s book and above all the CSU mask affair – but how do you interpret this series individual unpleasantnesses? What does the contemplation of the election campaign tell us about society, about our time?

Lamby also works like a reserved documentary filmmaker in this book, putting sequences together and letting the audience think for themselves. Beyond the brief descriptions and quotations, he is sparing with interpretations, he does not text anyone with theoretical treatises on the nature of politics. But he also broadens the focus here, not only interviewing political professionals, but also civil society actors such as the pianist Igor Levit. He comments on the unreal mood in the pandemic, gives an interpretation of the time from the point of view of a committed artist. One of the early Corona deniers also has a say – she can be used to measure how strongly completely new social movements are able to influence political events. And beyond that, how much they feed on the feeling of distrust of established parties, in this case the CDU. However, these talks take place at a time when the lateral thinker movement had not yet radicalized as much as it does today.

The first realization of the book is how much political events have moved away from the party headquarters and parliaments. Social media contributes to this, as it sets a style and a pace that the machines are not tuned to. This became apparent for a long time, but it was only in this Bundestag election campaign that the platforms for digital exchange established themselves as the main political stage: The fact that the CDU did not find an adequate answer to the success of the Rezo video is not just a glitch on the part of the staff unit, in this reading an important moment in the country’s political development.

Obviously, the ruling party has missed a lot. The quiet collapse of the CDU, only noticeable in hairline cracks, but now completed with the opposition role, forms the dramatic core of the book. First of all – the book functions here like a private diary, from which you can see in astonishment how funny you used to think – such a development is out of the question, because the bets, the zeitgeist, the expert opinion – everything counts on a black-green coalition . When there is speculation about the future CDU boss, who has to be determined after Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer’s withdrawal, there is always talk that the potential future chancellor will now also be nominated.

Perhaps it has to do with this assumption that Christian Democratic chancellorship is forever, but today it is shocking to read the naivety with which a professional political figure like Armin Laschet enters the election year. He has no strategy for dealing with Markus Söder and the right one for managing the pandemic, no project and no convincing message. The calm he wanted to exude was interpreted as carelessness, and the unhappy giggles that came over him during a visit with the Federal President in the disaster area reinforced this impression in a way that could not be corrected again.

Supplemented by flashbacks, the decline of the Union appears in an almost epic dimension

Laschet was not well prepared, but the decline of the Union appears in this book in an almost epic dimension, because Stephan Lamby can incorporate much older flashbacks. He brings excerpts from conversations with Helmut Kohl, in which it came to his conflict with the Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss. This brings a downright tragic dimension to the story, because it becomes clear that the deep conflict in the so-called bourgeois camp only slumbered while Angela Merkel was more or less firmly in the saddle. But already in 2015 Horst Seehofer strained the relationship because of the refugee policy without having a strategic alternative ready.

Far from portraying Angela Merkel as the liberal modernization agent of a conservative party, Lamby makes it clear that she alone has held the business together all these years. Its gradual withdrawal, first from the party chairmanship, then from the chancellery, poses insoluble problems for the Union, because the milieus have long since become unfamiliar and the staff have been exhausted by the years of government in times of crisis. But the Greens also overestimate themselves while underestimating the internal dynamics of a federal election campaign. A particularly funny passage is when Robert Habeck is supposed to comment on the debate about Baerbock’s plagiarism affair, but does not want to and apologizes by pointing out that he was on vacation during those days and could not be reached. Only Lamby can keep his composure at such moments, suppress laughter and hope to be able to participate again in the next election campaign.

The traffic light emerged from the chaos. But it is precisely through this story that a content-related and stylistic core of the project emerges. After all the drama with the Union, the scandals such as the unspeakable mask affair with which politicians wanted to draw private profit from the pandemic, the ongoing internal party dispute and the unpleasant indiscretions and alliances with the image-The newspaper has a common thread: make it reasonably decent. In a restrained, cool style, Stephan Lamby creates a book that delivers exactly what others only promise, namely a comprehensive narrative of our present. It is a political description of the state of affairs with frugal means and the capital city novel that everyone is waiting for.