Philosemitism: A Berlin Story

I was feeling suddenly notstalgiac. Must be the Berlin winter coming on. So....

Back when I was a poor graduate student, doing my dissertation research in Berlin, I tried to make some money on the side playing my guitar and singing in the subway. I figured Yiddish music was the way to go. Never mind that I don't really speak Yiddish, and that my repertoire was limited to about 8 songs I'd learned off a poorly recorded cassette tape given to me by an overly earnest Dutch engineering student in Ann Arbor who played the squeeze box. I had heard Germans loved this stuff, and with my big curly "Jew-fro" and my vaguely jiddische punim I'd be sure to seem authentic, and the coins would flow.

I advertised in the classifieds for a fiddler or an accordionist to accompany me. A Brazilian violinist called me -- I wasn't sure if it was a man or a woman -- who spoke such awful German that we were barely able to make an appointment, but we arranged to meet at a cafe in Prenzlauer Berg. What followed was like the old Saturday Night Live skits involving "Pat the hermaphrodite." The prospective fiddler was short and slim, with a shock of brown curly hair, a smooth attractive face, and beautiful blue eyes. He/She said his/her name, but I barely understood it, and not knowing Brazilian names I didn't recognize it as male or female. I began carefully listening for gender endings (was this person a "Geiger" or a "Geigerin"?) and even posed baiting questions, but it quickly became clear that whatever German-lessons he/she was getting, gender-endings were not a strong focus.

Well, anyway, Joao turned out to be a guy - happily married in fact to a lovely Portugese-speaking German woman -- and he was a pretty good fiddler too, though he didn't know anything about Yiddish music and was going to have to learn the songs from the same miserable tape that I had used.

We practiced the songs a bit. Joao kept doing these riffs that sounded like Jimi Hendrix crossed with Caetano Velosa: not exactly kosher, but very cool. I taught him a few Chicago blues songs, which seemed (to me at least) like a nice complement to the angst-ridden, yearning, and ironic yiddish folk tunes. Or maybe it's just that Chicago blues was otherwise about all I knew (I'm a pretty lousy guitarist actually.)

After two or three sessions, we headed off to play in the subway station in a transfer point between two lines. It felt pretty absurd. People walked by quickly, and usually barely looked our way. Ironically, about the only commuters who stopped to give us anything, so far as I could tell, were Americans, including a group of burly black guys from Baltimore who were visiting to play football. They gave us more than anyone that day and then danced raucously to "Die Grine Kusine" as they continued through the passage-way. I thought to myself "es lebe die jiddisch-Afrikanische Symbiose!" (Long live the 'Jewish-African symbiosis' - a favorite term of Nazi writers on American culture.)

After a couple more disappointing efforts to make money in the subways, I decided to advertise our services in the classifieds. I'd christianed us (so to speak) "Die Grine Ganoven" (the green thieves) , and I was careful to put my last name in the ad -- ROSENBLUM -- just to underscore that this was Echt.

To my surprise someone called almost right away. To my even greater suprise, he said he was organizing a birthday party for a 90 year old Jewish woman who would be visiting from Israel. He seemed very excited at having found Herr Rosenblum and Die Grine Ganoven and didn't ask me for a demotape or even for references. All he wanted to know was whether we could make it and what would be our fee.

I hadn't given any thought to a fee, and I was suddenly washed in guilt at the thought of charging money for some poor old refugee's birthday party. This woman would probably know all the songs! She was probably a native Yiddish speaker! Certainly she'd see right through us: A graduate student in German history from suburban Chicago with his hermaphrodite Brazilian fiddle player pretending to be klezmorim. Oy, Vey! And did I mention that I'm a horrible guitar player?

Certainly Joao, however, was entitled to make some money. I told the gentleman on the phone that 100 Deutsch Marks would be fine. We finished making plans, and I hung up. Five minutes later the phone rang again. "Herr Rosenblum?" It was the same man. "This is about the fee."

"Ok," I said, feeling guilty again and certain that he was now going to ask for a demo-tape.

"I have to insist that you take more. We'll pay you 200 Deutsch marks." We argued, but he wasn't budging. "Ok," I said finally, "let's see how it goes, and then you pay me what seems right."

Two weeks later, Joao and I showed up at the party site. It was a little convention center on the Wansee, and the party was in a meeting room overlooking the lake. As we entered, they were finishing dinner. A cheerful looking fat man ran up to me, shook our hands, and told me we should sit and have dessert. They were going to make some toasts, and then we would perform.

He pressed a wad of bills into my hand and led us to our seats.

The dessert was fantastic, but as I ate I snuck a peak at the bills. There were four 100-mark notes.

A young woman stood to give a toast. This 90-year old woman, it turned out, was a Berliner. In fact, Frau P. had been one of relatively few women to complete her legal studies in the Weimar Republic and had almost become a judge. It occured to me suddenly that having been an assimilated German Jew, she probably didn't speak a word of Yiddish and could probably care less about Yiddish music. (In fact, she wasn't even Jewish, she told me later. She had simply married a Jewish guy and spent a little time in Israel.)

When the speeches finished, we got up to play, and, sure enough, it immediately became clear that the guest of honor was utterly indifferent to the music, no matter how much angst, loss, yearning, etc. I poured into the Yiddish songs. I decided to make an unauthorized trip to another genre, and we did a version of "September Song" by Kurt Weil, which got a good response from everyone, especially the birthday lady. Then we played the only other song I knew that was remotely similar, Gershwin's "Summer Time" from Porgy and Bess. After that, we had nothing left but Chicago blues, so we played, I think, a Buddy Guy song and something by Muddy Waters, and Joao did his Jimi Hendrix on the fiddle routine, and I think it went over ok, though I remember the fat man giving me funny looks.

Long live the Jewish-African symbiosis.

And then that was it. We got ready to leave, and the organizer came running over to me, enthusiastic and cheerful again. "Herr Rosenblum, " he told me, "Frau Proskauer loved the music. Come, she'd like to speak with you."

I sat with the old lady, who was completely charming, and we talked about judges in the Weimar Republic and law and the Nazis, and then she told me how much she loved 'September Song,' and asked if I realized that it was by Kurt Weill, the German-Jewish composer who'd been a refugee in the U.S.

"Yes, of course," I said. In fact I'd just finished reading a memoir, by Lotte Lenya, Kurt Weil's widow.

"Well," she told me, "I was at the opening performance of Brecht and Weil's Mahagony in Berlin."

"Wow," I said. I was crazy about Brecht and Weil plays but had never had the chance to see Mahagony. I told her that Lotte Lenya wrote something funny: that if all the people who claim to have been at the opening night of the Three Penny Opera had really been there, they would have had to perform the play in a football stadium.

"That's what I meant," said Frau P.. "That's where I was: the opening night of The Three Penny Opera, not Mahagony."

She paused for a moment and then said sharply, "That's crap what Lenya wrote!" (Das ist ja Quatsch was die Lenya geschrieben hat!)

I decided I'd earned my 400 Deutsch Marks. We finished packing our instruments and headed home. I think I even grabbed another piece of cake on the way out.

Americans and the French Riots

I thought the German commentary on the French riots was bad -- but that was before I had a look at opinion pages in the U.S.

The right-wing pundits, which seems to be most of the American pundits these days, are pointing their fingers at 1) Islam, 2) 14 years of French Socialist government in the '90s, 3) the French welfare state

Incredible.

Quickly to each point:

1) The vast majority of rioters in France were Muslims (though not all of them). The question is, what's the connection between their religious faith and their looting? The vast majority of rioters in Cincinatti (does anyone remember Cincinatti?!) and before that L.A. were Christians, but nobody blamed the Baptist Churches. These are angry, bored teenagers, not religoius zealots.

What's more, the leading French Muslim clerics issued fatwas early on calling for the rioting to stop. But you'd never know that from reading American papers.

2) France has not had a Socialist President since 1995. Blaming Mitterand for the Paris riots is like blaming Eisenhower for the 1968 riots: Not completely implausible, but you'd need to argue your case.

What's striking in retrospect is that there WEREN'T riots during Mitterand's time, and that this has at least something to do with the Socialists' relatively decent (though clearly inadequate) efforts to reach out to constituencies in the projects and to support social equality.

French Conservatives turned their back on these policies long ago.

Which brings me to the dumbest of the dumb Conservative arguments on the French riots: That the riots are the consequence of expensive welfare programs, which stymied French economic growth and produced mass unemployment in the projects.

3) Who woulda thunk that there are so many Marxists among American Conservative writers today? How else to explain these constant displays of crude economic determinism?

Yes, yes, yes, the French have anemic growth rates, and America, America has BIG, lusty, manly growth rates. The French have high unemployment nationwide. America has lowwwww unemployment nationwide.

But the problem is this: French unemployment in the banlieus is not significantly higher than in American inner-cities. Consider the fact that the French poor get subsidized housing, health care, and public transportation, whereas the American poor get mostly bubkas, and the economic explanation for why their cities are burning and ours ain't falls apart.

The other possibility of course is that the economic determinists are right, and it's really only a matter of time before American inner cities start burning (again) as well. If that happens, I wonder where our punditocracy will place the blame. Clinton's welfare policies of the '90's? The democratically-controlled Congresses of the Reagan era? Sister Souljah? Bart Simpson? SpongeBob SquarePants?

I gotta stop reading the papers.

German-US Relations Under Merkel

The Spiegel posted an English-language analysis of how Merkel's Chancellorship is likely to affect US-German ties.

David Crossland, "The World According to Angie"

I'm still waiting for someone to explain how German - US relations have suffered in any substantial way over the past few years. Yes, of course, Gerhard never got to go to the Crawford ranch (And "W" never got to try that plum pie.) There are enough sulky diplomats on both sides to fill a Smells Like Teen Angst world tour concert.

But, as the Berliners say, "nah, und?" The US and Germany have actually cooperated quite well on most of the issues that have traditionally caused friction: Turkey, trade agreements, relations with Russia. It might even be that having bad blood between the boys at the top is GOOD for the countries' relations. Ever since the differences re. the Iraq war started percolating, Germans and Americans have been extra careful not to battle with each other over other matters.

I hope Angie gets to go to Crawford -- she's got a lot to learn about Texas -- but I don't see how US/German relations are going to change for real over the next few years.

p.s. A self-congratulatory postscript (12/15/05). The revelations that Germany's Red-Green government turns out to have been doing plenty of dirty work for and with the Americans regarding suspected terrorists just confirms my point. Gerhard and Joschka could bluster all they wanted to publicly about standing up to the U.S. and still do plenty of smoochy-smoochy with Don & Colin when the cameras weren't on them. W's temper-tantrums re. world leaders were too silly to be relevant.

Joel Kotkin ist kein Berliner

Would-be urban guru Joel Kotkin recently published a piece in the British magazine Prospect containing lots of misleading comments about our dear Berlin. My response is here, since Prospect, for whatever reason, chose not to print it.

There is no question, as Joel Kotkin argues, that mayors around the world have gone overboard in their embrace of Richard Florida’s ideas about “the creative class.” Conferences on how to make one’s city hip and cloying ad campaigns have often indeed been useless distractions from a host of important urban issues.

But Kotkin himself goes overboard in his supercillious attacks on Florida and his disciples. I have no idea whether the current mayor of Detroit is doing a good job, but I know from experience how that rustbelt city has desperately been in need of an image make-over. No doubt, fifty plus years of urban decline was not caused by a crisis in hipness, but the fact is that college educated twenty- and thirty-somethings stay away from Detroit today because of damaging myths and misguided perceptions that “there is nothing there.”

Regarding Berlin, where I am living for the year, Kotkin’s comments are totally off the mark. Mayor Klaus Wowerweit has done the right thing in bolstering Berlin’s reputation as a cultural capital and a fun place to live, even as a fiscal crisis has loomed and the industrial labor market has collapsed. Tourism may generate only $7 per hour hotel jobs in New Orleans, but in Berlin it sustains operas, theaters, museums, galleries, antiquarian booksellers, and a host of other cultural institutions. Obviously, tourism also generates good jobs. I have a feeling that Maestro Barenboim’s salary, for example, is rather above the minimum wage. Berlin’s population certainly declined since reunification, but that could be an inevitable effect of pent up demand for suburban housing after years of living in an enclosed island. There are already signs, moreover, that the population outflow has reversed.

Kotkin, like Richard Florida, has marketed himself as a consultant to American cities, including St. Louis, where I otherwise reside. Many of his ideas have been based on solid principles of urban planning. Some of them, including his own previous infatuation with the dot-com economy, were as faddish and overblown as Florida’s. This latest attack on Florida’s success as an urban guru has the unmistakable smell of sour grapes.

The Ostriches of Germany

If I stay long enough in this country, I may well lose all of my sentimentality about labor unions.

Spiegel reports that the Chairman of the German Labor Federation (DGB), Michael Sommer, has taken a hard line against any changes in Germany's extraordinary job-protection laws. He baldly asserts that creating greater labor flexibility for businesses (i.e. making it easier to fire people) will not create a single new job.

This sounds like the politics of self-destruction. German companies are moving their operations not just to low-wage places like China, but to developed countries whose main advantage is flexible labor laws -- Hungary, Ireland, the United States. It's hard to see how German unions are protecting the little guy, particularly in places with 18% unemployment. Perhaps there won't be mass layoff, but good jobs will continue slithering away. The happy, protected, highly skilled workers who remain will be more and more of a privileged elite.

The unions are also rejecting any effort to raise the retirement age to 67. So there's no stopping the German worker when he wants to work -- or when it's time to quit. Never mind that people are living longer and healthier lives than when these laws were created, or that the nation simply can't afford to pay for the pensions that are currently scheduled. Any politician who stands between the German geezer and his Mallorca beachhouse is likely to get crushed.

Germany and the Paris Riots

A recent survey of regular readers of this blog found that 50% of them felt recent postings demonstrated a strong pro-German sentiment, bordering perhaps on Germanophilism. That is to say, my wife thinks I've gone a little soft on the Germans. (The other reader, fourteen year old Mike Dennis of Ashtabula, Ohio, is, unfortunately, still under the impression that this is a porn site. His only response to my survey was to complain that I won't give him the password to check out the "naked German babes." Mike, stop harassing me, or I'm going email your mother.)

So, I thought tonight, I'd let loose a little bilious grumbling about the Germans.

First, Berlin restaurants suck. It's almost impossible to find a good meal in this town for a decent price, and when you do find one, the place is likely to screw up everything the next time you come. The Berliners lack reverence for food, so there's really no point in restaurants getting into a sweat over "little things" like flavor or freshness. The immigrants to this city quickly learn about the natives' indifference and become just as slovenly in no time.

Secondly, the German response to the Paris riots has been mostly weird and obnoxious. On the one hand, there is a slight irrepressible touch of pleasure at seeing the French screw up. I gather this comes from something in the cultural bloodstream here. The Berliners still haven't gotten over Napoleon primping around Unter den Linden with his hand in his tunic, turning up his nose like Alice Waters at a Dönerkebab stand.

At the same time, there is palpable anxiety that similar riots could happen here.

How could riots happen here? Well, the logic goes, riots are caused by Muslims. Germany has lots of Muslims. Germany could have riots. There's very little informed discussion of France's riotiting youths -- and whether in fact Islam has anything to do with their anger. And there's very little informed discussion of Germany's Muslims -- who are predominantly Turkish and moderate.

One big problem is that German journalists rarely feel the need to engage in research or, god forbid, reporting. The papers are filled with airy speculation about "Arabia in France." This follows by only a couple months waves of articles on angry Pakistanis in England. Reporters make a point of quoting a few angry teenagers, but you never get the sense that they've whiled around the immigrant neighborhoods to get a feel for everyday life. It's the same kind of superficial in-and-out reporting that leads to the awful, stereotype-strewn reports on the USA, which then lead hyperventilating American reactionaries to accuse Germans of anti-Americanism.

Worse than the journalists on the topic of the Paris riots, however, are the politicians. Leaders of the German Conservative Party (CDU) are trying to take advantage of the riots to advocate their own dubious ideas about forcing the "integration" of Muslim youth into German society. They propogate the myth that Turkish migrants are systematically not learning German, while imbibing extremist ideas in the mosques. A leader of the CDU's parliamentary fraction, Wolfgang Bosbach, just said that it's time for "us" to "look and listen more carefully to what's being said behind closed doors at the mosques."

No evidence offered for this particular bout of paranoia. Just a feeling, apparently. Of course he might have read something in the paper.

SPD's new party chief

SPD just announced that Matthias Platzeck would be the new head of the party. He's been Minister President of the Province of Brandenburg. An Ossi! And young. He's also known for having strong ties to the Green Party, where he started his political career. Amazing, however, is that the choice is already being applauded by the Conservatives. Apparently, they see him as a moderate on most issues and someone who plays well with others.

Handsome too. They could use a little sex-appeal in that party.

Collapse of the 'Grand Coalition'?

Germany's "grand coalition" seems to be in trouble. The moderate SPD Party chief, Franz Müntefering, has quit his post. The fear is that the leftwing of the party is staging a revolt and that negotiations with the Consevatives will get derailed.

In almost the same moment, the wild Bavarian - Edmund Stoiber - has announced his retirement from national politics. He's not going to join the grand cabinet but will instead return to his position as governor of Bavaria. On the one hand Stoiber's a loose-cannon who constantly endangers interparty peace. On the other hand, he too is a "moderate" when it comes to social and economic issues. His influence in these areas might have helped hold together a strong concensus for steady but cautious reforms.

Already "grand coalition" seems like a dated term (Oh, that's so...October!), one that better described the larger than life personalities trying to make post-election peace than the rather mundane task of forming a government with a pragmatic reform agenda. The alliance of superheroes is no more. Bring on the young unknowns.

My out-of-step optimism continues unabated. Perhaps it's incurable. I think the revolt that's going on is mostly about young politicoes pushing aside battle-hardened geezers with too many chips on their shoulders. I don't think the young SPD is about to push hard left, and if they do they'll fail. The right is ironically, in even greater disarray. Victory does funny things to people. This is Merkel's great opportunity. If she'd get a bullhorn and start providing a little inspiration, there's no reason she can't rally sufficient troops back to the center.

What Would Sam (Walton) Do?

The Berliner Zeitung reported that the new German government will consider a measure to forbid retailers from selling food "below cost." The goal would be to stop large supermarket chains (Aldi in particular) from underselling small grocers and driving them out of business.

The measure has the support of both the Conservatives and the Socialists.

All I can say is, wow. Looks like we're not in Kansas (or Missouri) anymore, Toto.