Images and touch
Pictures influence politics, there is no doubt about that, just think of the presidential photographer in the USA, the only peephole into the White House, strictly controlled and curated: Pete Souza, for example, was able to use his pictures to portray Barack Obama as a loving family man and politician to portray with humor.
The popularity of this president also came from Souza's pictures.
The images also developed their power in the German election campaign, as in 1990, when Helmut Kohl was seen with Michail Gorbatschow and Hans-Dietrich Genscher walking through the woods in the Caucasus, and on October 3rd on the balcony of the Reichstag with Willy Brandt, Hans-Dietrich Genscher , Richard von Weizsäcker and Lothar de Maizière.
The Chancellor of Unity as a historical figure, of course two months later he was re-elected.
In 2002 it was the pictures of a chancellor in rubber boots at the Elbe flood that ensured that Gerhard Schröder won the election and Edmund Stoiber, of whom there were only pictures in a polo shirt, was defeated after all.
Armin Laschet also wore rubber boots and a rain jacket over his white shirt when he visited the floodplains of his state, but a different image will remain in the collective memory: Laschet, who is pounding himself with his people in the background during the Federal President's speech.
To this day it is not entirely clear what the cause of this eruption of happiness was.
Now too human things can happen to a politician, a fit of laughter at the inopportune moment is certainly one of them.
The CDU boss and candidate for chancellor also apologized for this, and yet the impression remains that he is missing Gravitas at the right moment.
As an experienced politician, he should have known the angle at which the cameras were at that moment and simply moved out of the picture.
It was a momentous loss of media self-control.
The moment that made the rounds on social media during the Chancellor's first visit to the crisis area is of a completely different quality.
Her hand, which takes the hand of Malu Dreyer as she wanders through the ruins of the Eifel village with the Rhineland-Palatinate Prime Minister.
A spontaneous gesture with an emotional impact, not only because it symbolizes support and solidarity with Dreyer, who has multiple sclerosis and who has difficulty walking.
It also symbolizes silent emotion in this environment of total destruction.
The Greens, on the other hand, shied away from the danger that a picture of their candidate for chancellor could pose in the disaster area - and that is why there was actually not a single press photo of Annalena Baerbock and her conversations with those affected and their helpers.
That, too, is perhaps a new quality in this election campaign: the deliberately created optical space as a sign of humility and restraint.
Will the voters honor it?
I am not sure about that.
Philipp Amthor, on the other hand, the young CDU member and state head of his party in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, is not necessarily known for humility. In 2019, a photo showed him in a New York luxury hotel when he was poured champagne from a large bottle. At the time he was doing questionable lobbying work for a US security company, and the champagne image became a symbol of the Amthor affair.
And now a photo attracted attention that showed Amthor with two young men of apparently right-wing minds.
One wears a T-shirt with the likeness of the Holocaust denier and right-wing extremist Ursula Haverbeck.
A quick photo taken at an event.
Amthor later said he didn't pay any attention to the T-shirt, and there is no reason to doubt that statement.
What remains, however, is the impression of naive carelessness and a lack of attention.
Qualities that politicians are reluctant to attribute to themselves.
Climate and Civil Protection
The election campaign found its topics, the flood tragedy dictated them to him: climate and civil protection.
The one question is acute: why did so many people have to die when the drama was about to begin?
There was no lack of warning messages from meteorologists, but there was a competent assessment of what they mean.
This points to a problem in our security, crisis and disaster policy.
For threats from outside, from terrorists, hackers, criminals, our system of observation, evaluation and action works reasonably well, with a few tragic exceptions.
But the pandemic has already shown that we were not prepared for this new type of crisis, although it was forecast in detail years ago in various scenarios.
There were even exercises for the fictitious case of a global epidemic.
The same now applies to the consequences of climate change and the weather: The trend (more frequent extreme weather conditions) has often been described, modeled, and argued, but the answer to the question of what this means in concrete terms for people's lives in Germany is with them People not yet arrived. And the federal government has failed to build an effective structure for dealing with these crises - with expert committees, with a close and continuous exchange between the federal, state and local governments - and with a warning system that reaches people in various ways and gives them concrete advice, what to do. The politicians' declaration of bankruptcy on this point was manifested in one sentence by the Chancellor: “Perhaps,” she said on her visit to North Rhine-Westphalia, “the good old siren is more useful,than you thought. "
What's new in Republic 21?
How much state can it be?
This is the current key question of our SPIEGEL project, in which we are dealing with the major political and social issues of our time before the federal elections.
The SPIEGEL Live Q&A will be about migration today (Wednesday) from 5:15 p.m.
What does it mean for our society?
Should the state intervene more - or simply differently?
Discuss with migration expert Petra Bendel and racism expert Stephan Anpalagan in our comment area.
In the podcast “Voices Catch”, our colleague Ole Reissmann goes looking for broadband connections in Germany.
Where's the fast internet?
Apparently, money is no longer an issue - the federal and state governments are providing billions and, with low interest rates, investments in infrastructure are worthwhile.
Nevertheless, the network expansion is dragging on.
From Thursday you can hear here why the way to the gigabit society is still a long one and where politics should act.
What the polls say
There are changes in the first week after the disaster.
The Union loses two percentage points on the Sunday question from the polling institute Civey for SPIEGEL compared to last week, the Greens win one.
The SPD cannot continue its upward trend, but loses two percentage points.
The AfD can improve by one.
The differences compared to last week are even clearer when it comes to the question of whom the respondents would vote for in a direct election for their chancellor.
Last week, Armin Laschet was clearly ahead by five percentage points, now the candidates are on par.
However, this has only to a limited extent to do with the fact that climate policy has come back to the fore again as a result of the tragic flood disaster.
Every third party says that after the floods and storms, the topic has become more important for the voting decision.
Most remain unimpressed.
It seems to be similar with two candidates for chancellor, if one follows the assessment of the interviewees.
Just a quarter believe that Armin Laschet would make a decisive contribution to tackling climate change, with Olaf Scholz it is 35 percent, with Annalena Baerbock 56 percent, an astonishingly low figure for a green candidate.
Whether the tide only affects the surveys temporarily or lastingly - you won't see for a few weeks.
Constituency of the week: # 295
This is called tradition: the federal constituency 295 Zollernalb-Sigmaringen has been in the hands of the CDU without interruption since 1949, and Thomas Bareiß has been a member of the Bundestag for the Union since 2005.
The Germans got to know the Parliamentary State Secretary in the Ministry of Economic Affairs during the pandemic as a flabbergasting tourism officer, who had to declare in May of last year: "I think the big long-haul trip will be canceled this summer." After all, an honest statement.
Enlarge image
Thomas Bareiß (CDU)
Photo: Frederic Kern / imago images / Future Image
So one can assume that Bareiß will get the direct mandate again, but the naturalness of this assumption is somewhat clouded.
First of all, the image of the CDU politician has been damaged since it became known that he has a rather uncritical attitude towards Azerbaijan, whose autocratic regime has attracted some Union politicians.
Second, Bareiß has a powerful opponent in this election who could benefit not only from the popularity of his party, but above all from that of his father.
Johannes Kretschmann, son of Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann, runs for the Greens.
Berlin wouldn't be a new place for him, here he studied religious studies, Romanian and linguistics and co-founded the Berlin Central Chapel as a French horn player.
He is a member of the district council for his party and is currently writing his first novel, a science fiction adventure.
Anyone who visits his website also gets an impression of Kretschmann's literary streak.
"Feel completely at home and roam through my still young virtual domain," writes the candidate there.
"Maybe one or the other cricket is good for you for edification or even inspiration."
The social media moment of the week
A video clip showing Christoph de Vries is making the rounds on Twitter. The CDU sociologist and member of the Bundestag for Hamburg-Mitte says the following: »Germany is not a country of immigration, simply because there is a genuinely German people. We have had a lot of immigration in the last few decades, which is why Germany is a country of immigration. But the USA, for example, is a country of immigration, Australia, which did not have a people of its own, but was formed solely from ethnic groups who had emigrated. "
The excerpt from a discussion event on July 5th on the subject of »Political Islam« is irritating: What does the CDU man mean by the »genuinely German people«?
Why is the distinction between immigration and immigration so important to him?
And why does he forget that there are Aboriginal and Native Americans?
It goes without saying that the criticism was not long in coming.
“From the nonsense level, that's only one step below the› Aryan race ‹,” wrote the blogger and author Mario Sixtus, who was not at a loss for provocation.
The green member of the Bundestag Konstantin von Notz commented: “Says someone whose name is de Vries.
Can't make up your mind… «.
And Ruprecht Polenz, the former CDU general secretary, wrote: “What folk shit.
That is how the identities speak too. "
De Vries now replied in detail on Facebook.
The very short excerpt was distributed by Islamists and does not reveal the context of the statement, he complains.
He is sorry to have concealed the existence of indigenous peoples.
He rejects the allegations of racism and ethnic thinking.
"I'm the last one who has anything to do with extremist thinking and acting."
So much excitement about nothing?
The question remains why de Vries became so furious, why he resorted to this strange choice of words and what he actually wanted to say with it.
With regard to his thesis that Germany is not a country of immigration, a committee of experts from the federal government, the so-called Süssmuth Commission, already stated 20 years ago: "Germany is in fact a country of immigration."
The stories of the week
I would particularly like to recommend these politically relevant stories from our capital city office to you:
How important are iconographic images in election campaigns?
My colleague Sandra Sperber and my colleague Sebastian Fischer talked about it on the podcast.
Don't you feel like going through all of the parties' election programs?
Then read the easily understandable analysis by my colleagues here.
When Annalena Baerbock returned from the flood areas, she first spoke to SPIEGEL.
Read the interview here.
Sincerely,
Martin Knobbe
And once again the note on our own behalf: You can order this briefing as a newsletter in your e-mail inbox here.