Said. But also done?

Our columnist Klaus Brinkbäumer is program director of the MDR in Leipzig. You can reach him at Klaus.Brinkbaeumer@extern.tagesspiegel.de or on Twitter at @Brinkbaeumer.

The upcoming government speaks differently than previous governments. “Sometimes it goes back and forth, you get a little red ears. But you learn, ”is how the future Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck describes the coalition negotiations, and the“ Süddeutsche ”asks:“ What surprised you about Christian Lindner? ”“ That he can praise, ”says Habeck.

It’s a different sound and the words are different from those in the Merkel years. Habeck quotes Habermas, Lindner lets opportunities to praise himself pass by and praises the others for it, Habeck simply speaks out when something goes wrong.

It is a liberated political language. Maybe this will continue; perhaps it is the temporary effect of the zero hour, in which everything is possible and nothing is arranged. “A dynamic can now arise with which we can make up all the lost years,” says Habeck.

Political language should capture reality

The upcoming government also writes differently than previous governments. The coalition agreement is so free-spirited that it allows spelling mistakes such as a missing n in its patriotic passages of all things: “More than 30 years after German unification, it remains our task to complete the inner unity socially and economically.” If I ever do mine Author’s life would have wanted to use the term “joking aside” if this had been the moment.

Because this coalition agreement dares to design the society we can be: a tolerant, imaginative, courageous, educated one. Words like queer hostility (it is important to fight …) and rainbow families (… to strengthen) are there too.

So what … is wrong then?

If political language is to have an impact, it should be accurate on at least two levels.

It should capture reality and therefore describe the present in which we live. And it should correspond to action; what is announced should be tried and vice versa.

The self-portrayal of the Scholz team does not go well with a national and international catastrophe, an endless pandemic that is only becoming more and more merciless; their pace, nor their priorities; not even this fragrant, colorful coalition agreement.

None of that does justice to the urgency of the real situation and anyway this vain debate about whether there will be a Health Minister Lauterbach at some point – while the allegedly managing director Jens Spahn is talking about these vaccines and tomorrow those vaccines, big or small, instead of nationwide and nimble bring about.

The speeches and texts of the coming Scholz government describe a country that should be without seeing what it is. In Saxony we are experiencing a social collapse in this pandemic. Democracy and its authorities are no longer accepted in entire regions.

Why? I keep hearing that two kinds of experiences are deeply anchored. That the media only conveyed half truths anyway, once in the sense of Honecker, and that urgent news, if it hurts, would be suppressed anyway, has been learned and embedded in political thinking and feeling. In addition, for decades the talk of
Solidarity and collective have been hollow and hypocritical – so calm down now.

This republic left by Angela Merkel does not work in this crisis, every new day only leads us deeper into it. The SPD, FDP and Greens look to themselves and are proud. But they will definitely get to work the morning after the party.