Einträge von Rory Maclean

    Once in West Berlin I staged a Nazi march, with American GIs.  In Germany in the 1970s it was illegal to display Nazi memorabilia and to wear Nazi uniforms.  But West Berlin was still considered then to be occupied territory, and Allied soldiers were to some extent not subject to West German law, hence the ban didn’t apply to them.



    At the time I was an assistant director on feature films.  One of the movies on which I worked told the story of a young Prussian officer, played by David Bowie.  It was set between the end of the First World War and the rise of Nazism.  In the penultimate scene, the script called for a column of Brownshirts to march along a Berlin street.  But none of the German extras would agree to wear the uniform for, to do so, would break the law.

    To solve the problem, the director and I hit on the idea of using soldiers, U.S. soldiers.  We met the commander of the Berlin Brigade, explained our predicament and – early one Sunday morning two weeks later – two dozen American servicemen were dressed in replica SA uniforms...and marched through town.

    Sunday morning had been chosen so as to attract as little attention as possible.  On the deserted streets there didn’t seem to be a single soul about to witness our cinematic antics.  Until the last shot when an elderly resident stepped out of her apartment, and right into the scene.  The woman stopped dead in her tracks.  She stared at the swastika banners.  She blinked at the polished boots and glistening belt buckles.  Her eyes widened and she whispered to herself, within my hearing, ‘They’re back.  They’re back.’

    To this day, I don’t know if the old woman utter those words in horror...or in wonder.  But I do know that it is still illegal to display Nazi memorabilia in Germany (any one who displays its symbols or uses its greetings can be punished with up to three years in prison).

    I was reminded of that incident when veteran, uniformed Stasi secret policemen marched through Berlin’s Treptow neighbourhood last month.  The march caused an outrage, and rightly so.  It has led to calls for the banning of symbols of old East Germany, in the same way that it is illegal to display Nazi memorabilia.

    Such ‘provocation’ should not be tolerated, the CDU parliamentary leader Volker Kauder told the Berliner Morgenpost.  He said the march had made a mockery of the victims of a dictatorship which had harassed and persecuted its people for decades.

    Germany has dealt with the darker ideologies of its past by banning their symbols.  But it’s a top-down approach, in which legislators instruct the public on correct behaviour (or rather punish them for incorrect behaviour).  In many ways it’s a traditional way of doing things here.  Yet to me it seems to be incompatible with an open society, and modern pluralist European democracy.  How much better it would be if lawmakers could trust individuals to be responsible themselves.  How much more honest those nostalgic Stasi veterans would be if they'd admit to the pain and heartache they once caused.

    That said, at the same time I cannot forget the sight of the old Berliner, standing in her doorway, staring at the marching Brownshirts, and whispering ‘They’re back.  They’re back.’

(Der Führer photograph by Gundula Schulze Eldowy)

    Early last month in London, the Queen opened Parliament and set out the British government’s plans for new legislation.  At its heart is a fresh attempt to curb immigration by demanding short-term migrants pay for NHS care, by making landlords check their tenants’ immigration status and threatening to double fines on businesses that use illegal foreign labour.



    The message is clear: Brits believe too many foreigners are flooding into the country to snatch jobs, school places and seats in the waiting rooms of doctors’ surgeries.  And that message – which has become especially strident with the rise of UKIP – now rings in the ears of would-be migrants around the world.  Net migration to the UK fell by a third in the year ending June 2012, compared with the previous twelve months, according to the Office for National Statistics.

    At the same time more than a million new immigrants have settled in Germany, a number not seen in the two decades since unification.  Germany now welcomes almost twice as many immigrants as Britain.  Some 515,000 people came to the UK last year.  Over a comparable period 1,080,000 immigrants moved to Germany, according to the Statistisches Bundesamt.  

    In both countries, the incomers tend to be young, healthy, skilled, and determined to earn money, thereby increasing their host nation’s prosperity.  So is it any wonder that some economists fear that Britain’s economy may stagnate for years to come?

    Now add in the immigration cap which is already undermining the British higher education sector.  Today more and more foreign students are choosing to study abroad.  While international applications have increased in Germany, Australia, the US and elsewhere, numbers in the UK are flat or declining.  In my own circle, I know of three British-born, high-flying academics who have turned down UK posts to work respectively in Singapore, Canada and Germany.  Go figure.



    In the 21st century, especially in western democracies recovering from the recession, immigration will be one of the keys for international success.  Immigrants are needed to help to galvanise economic growth as well as to sustain expensive social welfare systems.  Immigrants revitalise aging societies with new blood and fresh ideas.  Britain – so long a world leader in admirable, open-minded and tolerant immigration policy – is in danger of crippling itself at this time of immense change.

    Would Barbie have joined the Bund Deutscher Mädel or BDM, the girls’ wing of the Nazi Party youth movement?  Today the pink plastic doll may prefer a surfboard to a swastika banner, and her boyfriend Ken drive a Ford Thunderbird rather than a Königstiger battle tank, but could the world’s favourite ‘all-American doll’ – if she’d been invented in 1940 -- have been a model for German girls?



    I’m compelled to ask this question in response to the huge fuss surrounding the opening of the Barbie ‘Dreamhouse Experience’ in Berlin.  Over the last two weeks, normally-sensible adults have burnt effigies of the emaciated plastic toy, crucified it and – to the delight of the mostly-male paparazzi – gone topless to protest against the ‘sexist propaganda’ of manufacturer Mattel.

    Given the vitriol of the demonstrations, one can’t help but wonder what’s really going on beneath the surface.  Yes, Barbie is a naff, and her portrayal of femininity is both debasing and simplistic, but surely that isn’t reason enough to get into such a lather.  To my mind, a greater issue has come to light.  Maybe, just maybe, the protesters have realised that Barbie is the perfect German Maiden.

    The Bund Deutscher Mädel used uniforms, summer camps, pseudo-folklore and sport to educate and indoctrinate girls into the National Socialist belief system, and to train them for their role in German society as wives and mothers.  Not so different then from Barbie, who dresses in spiffy outfits, goes RV camping with her sisters and female cousins (Skipper, Stacie, Kelly and Krissy) and embraces the great American myth in the course of her indoctrination into modern consumerist society.

    According to the 1940 BDM Youth Leadership pamphlet, new Jungmädel members were to aspire to ‘grow up to become obedient, service-minded and dutiful, and live in comradeship with those in the community’ and, aside from duties at home and in school, to play their part ‘voluntarily and joyfully’.

    At social evenings and sports afternoons, during day trips and week-long camps, the German Maidens had to show their ‘willingness to work together with others’, to demonstrate their courage and dexterity, and to prove themselves ‘to be dependable’, fulfilling their duties ‘consistently and proudly’.

    Which is Barbie all over.  During the 50+ years of its existence, the virginal doll has been everything from aerobics instructor to nurse, army officer to paratrooper, paleontologist to ambassador for world peace, wedding stylist to McDonald’s cashier.  And in every guise, Barbie has shown her willingness to work with others, to be dependable, to fulfil her role with joy.

    ‘A good Jungmädel never tries to get out of any of her tasks,’ instructed the 1940 BDM pamphlet.  ‘She never says that she can’t do her tasks, that she’s afraid to do them, or worse yet, that she doesn’t want to fulfil them.  A good Jungmädel always steps up to the tasks and sticks to them.  Her way in the Jungmädel is straight and honest -- too proud and too open to lie to comrades or to suck up to leaders.’

    Of course back in those bad, ‘unpink’ years, BDM girls -- in order to meet the membership requirements -- had to be of German citizenship and German ‘heritage’.  But then one mustn’t forget that Mattel’s Barbie was inspired by Bild Lilli, a German fashion doll spun off from a cartoon character in Hamburg’s Bild-Zeitung.



    So why the great hullabaloo over the arrival of Barbie’s plush plastic villa in Berlin?  Because paradoxically, for better or for worse, Barbie is at heart a German.  

    Or perhaps the protesters simply don’t like pink?

    What do Berliners do when away from home?  How does a high-flying VW exec or globe-trotting Berlinerin DJ cope without Spree-side brunches and Cookies Cream?  For that matter how do this city’s cultural tourists, after a couple of months’ or years’ residence, readjust to life back in Luton or San Diego?  How can they survive without Prenzlauer Berg cafés, Ampelmann pedestrian traffic lights and Club-Mate?



    An answer may be in a newly-released Blu-ray DVD.  Helsinki-based Ambient Productions has recently released ‘Berlin by Night’, a 100 minute film of ‘ambient night scenes’ around the capital.  See the Alte Nationalgalerie and Bundestag!  Gaze at Potsdamer Platz and Checkpoint Charlie!  Admire the Hauptbahnhof and Deutscher Dom!  But don’t expect any chatty narration, high drama or abrupt Dziga Vertov editing.  These long duration, street level views aim simply to capture the feeling of the city at night.  By giving viewers ‘the opportunity to observe subtle changes in the environment and surroundings, they are ideal for relaxing, inspiring and creative spaces’.  

    A perfect balm for the homesick Berliner?  Don’t ask me.  Ambient Productions’ producers kindly sent me a complimentary DVD but – as I don’t own a Blu-ray disc player – I haven’t been able to gaze at this modern age version of a tropical fish tank.  I’m unable to watch the Spree flow across my television screen.

    Call me ungrateful but I don’t see a burning need for Ambient’s Urban Series.  Their other DVDs – ‘A Day in the Finnish Archipelago’ and ‘A Day in the Finnish Wild’ – strike me as more appealing, bringing the Finnish coast into my living room.  But then if I lived on the Åland Islands or Turku Archipelago I’d probably feel different.



    Of course I’m lucky.  I live in Berlin.  If I want to see the Tiergarten, I can hop on my bicycle and – hey presto! – I’ll be there in ten minutes.  But what about when I am away from home, say paddling through the wilds of northern Canada?  Perhaps after all I’ll pack the DVD in my canoe so that next time I’m in Nunavik, and feeling homesick, I’ll be able to listen to night-time traffic roar around the Großer Stern and watch the flashing lights on the Fernsehturm.  Assuming there are Blu-ray players in the great outdoors...

    Berlin’s tourists are being used.  A 5% ‘city tax’ is to be added to every hotel, hostel and guest-house bill from July.  And business travellers are to be exempt from the new charge.  



    Taxes on overnight accommodation are nothing new.  Around the world dozens of cities, from Paris and Rome to New York, impose a similar ‘pillow tax’.  What is different in Berlin – and will prove to be conveniently tricky to police – is the proposed business travel waiver.  

    To any devious observer it obvious that, come the summer, tourists wishing to avoid paying the tax will simply complete an official form, declaring that their visit is for professional reasons.  Hey presto, 5% will be saved.  Berlin won’t raise anything like the extra €25 million a year predicted by the city’s politicians.  The ‘pillow tax’ will be a disaster.  Or will it?

    Berlin likes to portray itself as being upfront and open.  But as in many parts of German life, little is as it seems on the surface.  There is another agenda on (or under) the table, and it’s all about fiscal stimulus.

    While encouraging economic self-restraint across Europe, Germany seems to have embarked again on a policy of domestic stimulus – by expanding its army of tax inspectors.  

    According to unconfirmed estimates, Berlin’s ‘pillow tax’ will need to be administered by as many as 750 new bureaucrats.  These specialist ‘pillow-watchers’ will not simply scour the exemption forms for discrepancies.  After 1st July at the Brandenburg Gate and in Potsdam, atop the Siegessäule and underground on Berliner Unterwelten tours, undercover inspectors – cunningly disguised in ‘leisure’ sandals and white socks – may well seek out the so-called ‘business’ visitors.  Casual conversations will be initiated.  Suspects will be asked if they happen to know – for example -- the GDP of Schleswig-Holstein.  Claimants who cannot name the rates of both the federal Steuermesszahl and Berlin-Brandenburg Hebesatz taxes will be declared bogus businessmen/women.  The possession of a pocket calculator will not be accepted as proof of business travel.

    The ‘pillow tax lunacy’ scheme seems to mirror that of the ‘car tax idiocy’ programme.  As has been reported in the press, the government’s decision to streamline the collection of motor and insurance taxes has necessitated the employment of a further 1,000 specialist tax collectors.  Apparently 50,000,000 tax notices and a further 8,000,000 reminders must be sent out every year, a job so large that employee numbers will have to double.

    Another example of bureaucratic inefficiency?  No way.  Once again Berlin has proven that it worries not about inconveniencing individuals in the name of the common good.  And given the likely success of these two pilot schemes, rumour has it that similar Beamte-expanding programmes will soon be in train in the capital.  Among those under consideration are a fiendishly-complicated fresh air tax (calculated on the number of leaves per tree per street), a Techno tax (10% added to the entry fee of Berghain, Tresor and Picknick) and a condom tax (you can work that one out yourself).  At least 500 new government employees may well be required to administer each scheme.



    Once again little is ever as it seems in Germany.  Berlin’s tourists aren’t being used.  No one should take at face value matters as taxing as these...or believe everything that they read online.