Germany

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Germany’s Far Right AfD Party Stages a Comeback

      by

      With Germans facing an era of political and economic turbulence, the Alternative for Germany is resurgent. Mainstream politicians are struggling to respond.The tables were packed at the Waldhaus, a restaurant on the wooded outskirts of an east German town, as the regulars — workers shaking calloused hands, retirees clutching purses in their lap — settled in for a pub gathering of the far-right Alternative for Germany.But the die-hards worry Germany’s political leadership less than people like Ina Radzheit. An insurance agent in a flowered blouse, she squeezed in among platters of schnitzel and frothy beers for her first visit to the AfD, the German initials by which the party is known.“What’s wrong?” she said. “Where do I start?” She feels unsafe with migration rising. She is uncomfortable with Germany providing weapons to Ukraine. She is exasperated by government squabbling over climate plans she fears will cost citizens like her their modest but comfortable way of life.“I can’t say now if I would ever vote for the AfD,” she said. “But I am listening.”As anxieties over Germany’s future rise, so too, it seems, does the AfD.The AfD has reached a polling high in Germany’s formerly Communist eastern states, where it is now the leading party, drawing around a third of voters. It is edging up in the wealthier west. Nationally, it is polling neck and neck with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats.If the trend lasts, the AfD could present its most serious threat to Germany’s political establishment since 2017, when it became the first far-right party to enter Parliament since World War II.The turnabout is surprising for a party whose political obituaries filled the German media a year ago, after it had sunk in national elections. And it reflects the unease of a country at a crossroads.Locals arriving for an AfD meeting at the Waldhaus restaurant in Gera, Germany.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesAfter decades of postwar prosperity, Germany is struggling to transform its 20th-century industrial exporting model into a digitized economy that can withstand climate change and competition from powers like China.“We are living in a world of global upheaval,” said Rene Springer, the national AfD lawmaker speaking at the Waldhaus in Gera. “Our responsibility to our children is to one day leave them better off than we are. That’s no longer to be expected.”When it was elected in 2021, Mr. Scholz’s three-party coalition vowed to lead Germany through a painful but necessary transformation. Instead, the country was plunged into deeper uncertainty by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.At first, the coalition seemed to beat the odds: Allies praised its pledge to overwrite postwar pacifism with military revitalization. It found alternatives to cheap Russian gas — nearly 50 percent of its supply — with unexpected speed.But then the country dipped into recession. Migration numbers reached all-time highs, mostly driven by Ukrainian refugees. And the coalition began fighting among itself over how to return to the course it set for Germany before the war.The AfD, a party that mostly drew support by criticizing migration, found new appeal as defender of Germany’s economically precarious class.“With migration, the AfD offered a cultural narrative and identity to those anxious about their future,” said Johannes Hillje, a German political scientist who studies the AfD. “Now, the cultural threat is coming not just from the outside, but within — that is, the transformation policy of the government.”An AfD demonstration on energy security and inflation, outside of the Reichstag in Berlin in October.Christoph Soeder/DPA, via Associated PressThe AfD has resurged despite domestic intelligence classifying it a “suspected” right-wing extremist organization, allowing it to be put under surveillance. Its branch in Thuringia, where the Waldhaus gathering was held, is classified as “confirmed” extremist.A month earlier, its national youth wing was also classified confirmed extremist, though that label was recently lifted as a case regarding its status is settled in the courts.In April, the domestic intelligence agency head, Thomas Haldenwang, said in the agency’s yearly report that of 28,500 AfD members, around 10,000 are believed to be extremists.Yet a full third of Germans now view it as a “normal democratic party,” Mr. Hillje said. “The paradox is that, at the same time, it has become more and more clear that this is really a radical party, if not an extremist party.”In previous years, the party seemed ready to sideline extreme figures. No longer. This April, co-leader Alice Weidel spoke alongside Björn Höcke, party leader in Thuringia and seen as one of the AfD’s most radical politicians.Mr. Höcke was recently charged by state prosecutors for using the phrase “everything for Germany” at a rally — a Nazi Storm Trooper slogan.None of that dampened the enthusiasm at the Waldhaus in Gera, a town of about 93,000 in eastern Thuringia, where the AfD is the most popular party.Anke Wettengel, a schoolteacher, called such labels the equivalent of focusing on hooligan fans of a soccer team — not a reflection of normal supporters, like her.Nor did she see a problem with Mr. Höcke’s language.“That was a very normal sentence,” she said. “We should be allowed to be proud of our country today without immediately being accused of being extremists.”From the stage, Mr. Springer railed against not only immigrant labor reforms, calling them a “traitorous system against native citizens,” but also criticized new climate measures.The audience thumped their tables in approval.A question-and-answer session for AfD supporters and locals at the Waldhaus in Gera. The town in eastern Thuringia is one of many seeing a rise in support of the party across the country.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesStefan Brandner, Gera’s AfD representative, shared statistics that he said overwhelmingly linked foreigners to murders and food handouts, eliciting gasps from the crowd.Many guests said it is such “real facts” that drew them to AfD events. (The federal government wrote in a document providing statistics to the AfD that the data was not substantial enough for such conclusions.)Political analysts say Germany’s main parties share the blame for the AfD’s rise. Mr. Scholz’s coalition failed to convincingly communicate its transformation plans — and instead appeared locked in internal battles over how to carry them out.Their mainstream conservative opponents, including the Christian Democrats of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, are edging closer to AfD positions, hoping to regain voters themselves.They are adopting the AfD’s antagonism to gender-neutral language, as well as tougher stances on migration. Some Christian Democratic leaders are even calling to remove asylum rights in Germany’s constitution.AfD supporters have noticed their views becoming normalized even as rivals try to marginalize the party — and that makes it more difficult for mainstream parties to regain their trust.“They are getting hardened,” said Julia Reuschenbach, a political scientist at the Free University of Berlin. “No group of core voters is as unreachable as those of the AfD.”Björn Höcke, a party leader in Thuringia and one of the AfD’s most radical politicians, marching at a rally in Thuringia last month. Martin Schutt/Picture Alliance, via Getty ImagesLast week, the German Institute for Human Rights, a state-funded organization, released a study arguing that the language and tactics used by the AfD “to achieve its racist and right-wing extremist goals” could meet conditions for banning the party as a “danger to the free democratic order.”Yet such proposals create another dilemma for democratic society: The tools Germany has for fighting the party it sees as a threat are the same that reinforce sentiments among AfD supporters that their country is not actually democratic.“How can it be that an organization funded by the state can stand up and try to stigmatize a significant part of its voters?” Mr. Springer asked in an interview.It is a question to which those in the crowd, like Ms. Wettengel, have found unsettling answers.“Mainstream politics are against the people,” she said. “Not for the people.”The real test of AfD support won’t come until next year, when several east German states hold elections and it has a chance at taking the largest share of the vote.In the meantime, every week, AfD politicians fan out across the country, hosting information booths, pub nights and citizen dialogues, as if it already were campaign season.Outside the train station of Hennigsdorf, a Berlin suburb, the state AfD lawmaker Andreas Galau handed out pamphlets to visitors with an unwavering smile. Some passers-by shouted insults. Others were curious.“Many come here just to get their frustrations off their chest,” he said with a chuckle. “They come and tell us what is on their minds — we’re a bit of a therapy group.”More and more people, he said, no longer feel ashamed to show interest in the AfD. It is this sense that the political establishment is not listening to ordinary people that may be helping fill out the AfD’s ranks.In Gera, Mr. Springer’s address to the crowd seemed an exercise in catharsis and validation.“They think we are stupid,” he said. “They’ll think again when the next elections come.” More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Meet the New Mayor: How a Refugee Won Over a Conservative German Town

      by

      The election of Ryyan Alshebl, a young man who fled Syria, offers surprising lessons for a Germany wrestling with its multicultural identity after an influx of refugees in 2015.The beer was flowing, the bratwurst were sizzling and the brass band at the village May Day festival led the crowd in ever tipsier renditions of the local drinking song.Clinking glasses all around was Ryyan Alshebl, a lanky, bearded 29-year-old from Syria.Eight years ago, Mr. Alshebl was part of the historic influx of refugees who crossed the Mediterranean Sea by dinghy and trekked the continent on foot, seeking asylum in Germany and other countries.Now he is the new mayor of Ostelsheim, a village of 2,700 people and tidily kept streets nestled in the rolling hills near the Black Forest in southwestern Germany.Ostelsheim appears to be the first German town to elect a mayor from the nearly one million Syrian refugees who reached the country in 2015, a wave that provoked a right-wing backlash and upended the political landscape. And the story of how this small, tight-knit village chose a refugee as mayor holds clues for a nation wrestling with an ever more multicultural identity.“If you look at our state elections, Ostelsheim is the kind of place that votes so conservatively. I thought it was going to be very, very tough for him,” said Yvonne Boeckh, a tax accountant, shouting over a rowdy polka number at the festival. “It’s just remarkable.”When Mr. Alshebl reached Germany with a college degree in banking, politics was hardly on his mind. Alone without his parents, who stayed behind in Syria, he threw himself into his new world and its traditions.Yet like many of the 2015 refugees, now gaining citizenship and building new lives, he never wanted to hide where he came from or apologize for it. And he rejected Germany’s old notions of integration.“Integration​ ​was a term that meant: We have a group of people that we need to find a way to teach some of the language and get them working,” he said. “And what kind of jobs? To work for the baker, the butcher, the shoemaker. But not to become mayor.”An aerial view of Ostelsheim, which dates to the fourth century and is nestled in rolling hills near the Black Forest.Ingmar Nolting for The New York TimesThe 2015 refugees were welcomed at first with an exuberant “Wilkommenskultur” — and former chancellor Angela Merkel’s famous line, “we can do it.” But wariness among parts of the population was leveraged by the far right, who became a force in German politics. That trend has regained momentum — even pushing mainstream politicians into harsher positions — as the numbers of people seeking asylum are again rising.A leader of Germany’s center-right Christian Democrats recently argued for removing Germany’s constitutional commitments to offer asylum. Today, over half of Germans polled believe the disadvantages of immigration outweigh advantages.Yet a majority of 2015 refugees have successfully found jobs and learned the language. And some have not simply integrated, but become leaders. For these newcomers, however, electoral success has been more elusive — even in large, multicultural cities like Berlin.Another Syrian refugee ran in the capital as a Green Party candidate for the federal parliament in the autumn of 2021. He faced death threats, was attacked at a subway stop and ultimately withdrew his candidacy.Mr. Alshebl, meeting with Franziska Binczik, the head of the kindergarten, in Althengstett, Germany, a village near Ostelsheim, in May.Ingmar Nolting for The New York TimesMr. Alshebl’s journey from Syria began in Sweida Province, where his middle-class family was passionate about politics, but kept their conversations secret. When President Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarian government drafted him into the army, he fled the country.Joining him was a friend, Ghaith Akel, a jovial tech engineer. The two 21-year-olds escaped to Turkey and spent eight nerve-racking hours on a rubber boat in the Mediterranean. They journeyed by train, bus and on foot across Europe to reach Germany.German officials sent the pair to the town of Althengstett, next door to Ostelsheim, in the rural Swabia region, where many people work in agriculture or the region’s famous auto industry. At first, they found the locals — mostly white Germans, with heavy regional dialects — daunting.“They put up boundaries,” Mr. Akel recalled. “You have to get past each and every one of those barriers to reach them. Anything new or strange, they find worrisome — ‘he’s not blonde, he doesn’t speak Swabian dialect.’”Eventually, they discovered the key to gaining acceptance by the community. They joined the local clubs.Mr. Alshebl volunteered at the recreation center. When a leadership position organizing games opened up, he ran. “People could have said, ‘No, we can’t have this Syrian guy who doesn’t know anything about this place,’” he said. “But they gave me a chance.”Ostelsheim’s town hall. Ingmar Nolting for The New York TimesThat experience rekindled his interest in politics. He vowed to perfect his German, enrolled in a vocational program for government administration and applied for an internship at the Althengstett town council. Eventually, the Althengstett mayor, Clemens Götz, hired him.Mr. Alshebl also learned to appreciate the local food.Ulrich Gellar, an Ostelsheim retiree, beamed at Mr. Alshebl’s enjoyment of spaetzle, a cheesy noodle dish, and maultaschen, the local dumplings. “And he drinks beer with us,” he said. “Little things like that have a big impact.”When Mr. Alshebl heard about Ostelsheim’s mayoral race last winter, Mr. Götz encouraged him to run.The main rival was a wealthy Ostelsheimer, with three children and a large family home.His friend, Mr. Akel, was nervous for him. “It’s a small village,’” he said, adding, “Their views on refugees are not always the nicest.”But Mr. Akel helped his friend campaign, with a simple strategy: Talk to everyone.Mr. Alshebl not only went door to door, he put up advertisements offering house calls on request.The May Day festivities were held at the local soccer club.Ingmar Nolting for The New York TimesSipping beers at the May Day celebration, locals recalled how intently he listened. Mothers unburdened complaints about day care shortages. Seniors were impressed by his familiarity with their retirement home grievances. For the first time since anyone could remember, a mayoral campaign energized the village.Not everyone was friendly. On local news websites, some readers posted comments asking how anyone could vote for a refugee. One family confronted Mr. Alshebl with news reports of refugees committing vandalism elsewhere in Germany. Others spread rumors he would impose Islamic sharia law.Friends in Ostelsheim urged Mr. Alshebl to advertise he was not Muslim; he is from Syria’s minority Druze sect. But he refused: “I didn’t want to stigmatize Muslims.” On election night, he won decisively — with his biggest support from Ostelsheim’s oldest, most conservative residents.Rainer Sixt, head of the band playing the May Day festival, insisted the surprise victory made sense. “The values in some places abroad, like tradition and home, are more like here in the countryside than in our own big cities,” he said.After the celebration, Mr. Alshebl visited his mentor, Mr. Götz. and his wife, Isabel. It was funny, they agreed, how long it has taken Germany to embrace an identity as a country of immigrants; since the 1950s, it has taken in Turkish guest workers, Balkan civil war refugees and Eastern Bloc exiles.A children’s soccer game at the local club, in May. Ingmar Nolting for The New York Times“This was long the reality in Germany,” Ms. Götz said. “Only now, the public finally became aware that Germany is not the same thing it was before.”Sipping his coffee, Mr. Alshebl grinned mischievously: “Or, at least, not since the election in Ostelsheim.”Mr. Alshebl, who officially starts his new job next month, now straddles two worlds — a comfortable one in Germany, and his family’s life in Syria, where they struggle to survive in a country ravaged by 12 years of war.“Everything OK?” he asked his mother recently, quickly picking up her call in his office.“We’re all fine — just waiting for the electricity, like always,” she said. Their diverging paths are palpable. Mr. Alshebl throws German words into the conversation, often oblivious to his family’s confusion.He compares his life to that of Syrian friends who have resettled in cosmopolitan German cities. There, they can create a small community, set up shops to buy familiar foods and speak Arabic together.But driving past Ostelsheim’s charming stone buildings, Mr. Alshebl mused that he was elected mayor not in spite of his l community — but because of it.“Maybe the only place you can become a mayor as a refugee is actually in a conservative country town,” he said. “Because to live here, you have to be a part of them.”“Maybe the only place you can become a mayor as a refugee is actually in a conservative country town,” Mr. Alshebl said. “Because to live here, you have to be a part of them.”Ingmar Nolting for The New York Times More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in World Politics

      Could a Rishi Sunak Rise to the Top in Germany?

      by

      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      As Europe Piles Sanctions on Russia, Some Sacred Cows Are Spared

      by

      The European Union has been severing economic ties with Moscow to support Ukraine, but some countries have lobbied to protect key sectors.BRUSSELS — Eight months into the war in Ukraine, and eight rounds of frantic negotiations later, Europe’s sanctions against Russia run hundreds of pages long and have in many places cut to the bone.Since February, the European Union has named 1,236 people and 155 companies for sanctions, freezing their assets and blocking their access to the bloc. It has banned the trade of products in nearly 1,000 categories and hundreds of subcategories. It has put in place a near-total embargo on Russian oil. About one-third of the bloc’s exports to Russia by value and two-thirds of imports have been banned.But even now some goods and sectors remain conspicuously exempted. A look at just a few items reveals the intense back-room bargaining and arm-twisting by some nations and by private industry to protect sectors they deem too valuable to give up — as well as the compromises the European Union has made to maintain consensus.The Belgians have shielded trade in Russian diamonds. The Greeks ship Russian oil unimpeded. France and several other nations still import Russian uranium for nuclear power generation.The net impact of these exemptions on the effectiveness of Europe’s penalties against Russia is hard to assess, but politically, they have allowed the 27 members of the bloc to pull together an otherwise vast sanctions regime with exceptional speed and unanimity.“Ultimately, this is the price of unanimity to hold together this coalition, and in the grander scheme of things the sanctions are really working,” said Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow in the Brussels office of the research group the German Marshall Fund, citing Russia’s diminished access to military technology as evidence.A Lukoil gas station in Priolo Gargallo, Italy, last month. The European Union has put in place a near-total embargo on Russian oil, but some sectors of trade remain conspicuously exempt from sanctions.Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times“We would love to have everything included, diamonds and every other special interest hit, but I am of the opinion that, if sparing them is what it takes to keep everyone together, so be it,” he added.The Ukrainian government has criticized some of the exemptions, with President Volodymyr Zelensky chiding European nations for continuing to permit business with Russia, saying they are skirting sacrifices.“There are people for whom the diamonds sold in Antwerp are more important than the battle we are waging. Peace is worth much more than diamonds,” Mr. Zelensky said to the Belgian Parliament during an address by video link in late March.Keeping Diamonds ComingThe continued success of Belgium and the broad diamond sector in keeping the Russian diamond trade flowing exemplifies the sacred cows some E.U. nations refuse to sacrifice, even as their peers accept pain to punish the Kremlin.Exports of rough diamonds are very lucrative for Russia, and they flow to the Belgian port of Antwerp, a historically important diamond hub.The trade, worth 1.8 billion euros a year — about $1.75 billion — has been shielded in consecutive rounds of the bloc’s sanctions, despite being raised as a possible target soon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February.The Belgian government has said that it has never asked the European Commission, the E.U. executive body that drafts the measures, to remove diamonds from any sanctions list and that if diamonds were added, it would go along.Diamonds being sorted in Mirny, Russia, at a facility operated by Alrosa, the Russian state-owned diamond company. Russian diamonds have been shielded in consecutive rounds of European sanctions.Maxim Babenko for The New York TimesTechnically speaking, that may be true. But the latest round of penalties, adopted this month, exposed the intensive interventions when a coordination error occurred among the various services in the bloc that are involved in the technical preparation of sanctions.The incident, described to The New York Times by several diplomats involved as “farcical,” shows how the lobbying works. The diplomats spoke anonymously in order to describe freely what happened.The European Commission over the course of September prepared the latest round of sanctions and left diamonds off that list.But the European External Action Service — the E.U.’s equivalent of a foreign service or state department, which works with the commission to prepare sanctions — did not get the memo that diamonds should remain exempted and included in its own draft listings Alrosa, the Russian state-owned diamonds company.Once Alrosa had been put on the draft document, removing it became difficult. Spotting the error, Poland and other hard-line pro-Ukraine countries in the bloc dragged out the negotiations over the package as much as they could on the basis that Alrosa should indeed face sanctions.In the end, the need for unanimity and speed prevailed, and Alrosa continues to export to the European Union, at least until the next round of sanctions is negotiated. In proposals for a fresh, ninth round of sanctions, presented by Poland and its allies last week, diamonds were again included, but formal talks on the new set of penalties have not yet begun.A spokesman for the European External Action Service declined to comment, saying it does not comment on internal procedures involved in preparing sanctions.The Tricastin nuclear power plant in the Drôme region of southeastern France. France is one of several E.U. countries that depend on Russian uranium to operate civil nuclear power facilities. Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesNuclear PowerMost exemptions have not been as clear-cut as diamonds because they have involved more complex industries or services, or affected more than one country.Uranium exported from Russia for use in civil nuclear power production falls under this category. Nuclear power plants in France, Hungary, Slovakia, Finland and other countries depend on Russian civilian uranium exports.The trade is worth 200 million euros, or about $194 million, according to Greenpeace, which has been lobbying for its ban. Germany and other E.U. countries have supported the calls to ban civilian nuclear imports from Russia, making this another issue likely to come up in the next round of sanctions talks.In August, Mr. Zelensky also highlighted the persistent protection of the Russian nuclear exports to Europe just as Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant came under fire.Some supporters of keeping Russian uranium running say that France and the other countries’ ability to generate electricity by operating their nuclear power plants during an acute energy crisis is more important than the political or financial gains that could come from a ban through E.U. sanctions, at least for now.Tankers in the NightOne of the most complex and important lobbying efforts to protect a European industry from sanctions is the one mounted by Greek diplomats to allow Greek-owned tankers to transport Russian oil to non-European destinations.This has facilitated one of the Kremlin’s biggest revenue streams. More than half of the vessels transporting Russia’s oil are Greek-owned, according to information aggregated from MarineTraffic, a shipping data platform.Supporters of the Greek shipping industry say that if it pulled out of that business, others would step in to deliver Russian oil to places like India and China. Experts say lining up enough tankers to make up for a total Greek pullout would not be simple, considering the sheer size of Greek-interest fleets and their dominance in this trade.According to European diplomats involved in the negotiations, their Greek counterparts were able to exempt Greek shipping companies from the oil embargo in a tough round of talks last May and June.Since then, the E.U. has come around to a United States-led idea to keep facilitating the transport of Russian oil, in order to avert a global oil-market meltdown, but to do so at a capped price to limit Russia’s revenues.The Greeks saw an opening: They would continue to transport Russian oil, but at the capped price. The bloc offered them additional concessions, and Greece agreed that the shipping of Russian oil would be banned if the price cap was not observed.The Greek-flagged oil tanker Minerva Virgo. Greek diplomats have lobbied for Greek-owned tankers to be allowed to transport Russian oil to non-European destinations. Bjoern Kils/ReutersEven if the economic benefits of such exemptions are hard to define, from a political perspective, the continued protection of some goods and industries is creating bad blood among E.U. members.Governments that have readily taken big hits through sanctions to support Ukraine, sacrificing revenues and jobs, are embittered that their partners in the bloc continue to doggedly protect their own interests.The divisions deepen a sense of disconnect between those more hawkish pro-Ukraine E.U. nations nearer Ukraine and those farther away, although geographical proximity is far from the only determinant of countries’ attitudes toward the war.And given that the bloc is a constant negotiating arena on many issues, some warn that what goes around eventually will come around.“This may be a raw calculation of national interests, but it’s going to linger,” Mr. Kirkegaard said. “Whoever doesn’t contribute now through sacrifice, next time there’s a budget or some other debate, it’s going to come back and haunt them.” More

    • 75 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      The Disappearing World of Wolfgang Tillmans

      by

      It doesn’t seem like a titillating photograph: an orderly queue of Germans, waiting to enter a nondescript industrial site. It is dark. Just a single light illuminates the door. What does it look like? Like a color remake of Depression-era imagery: the factory entrance, the bread line.But the men in single file — they are all men — are at this factory not to work but to play. This old train shed in the former East Berlin has been reborn as Snax, a raunchy gay nightclub, and that light in the darkness is the gateway to pleasure. It’s 2001 now, the wall is a memory. The world is flat, we are young and proud. We got here on a train, there are no more border controls, or maybe we got here on a cheap new airline called easyJet.We are ready to dance, and to do other things in the dark. The party will go on well past sunrise. It feels like it might go on forever.Wolfgang Tillmans, “Outside Snax Club,” 2001.Wolfgang Tillmans, via David Zwirner, New York/Hong Kong; Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne; Maureen Paley, London“Outside Snax Club” (2001) is one little star in a constellation of photographs by Wolfgang Tillmans at the Museum of Modern Art: one node in a life’s network of tender portraits, straightforward still lifes and streaky abstractions. The sky from a window seat. A boy’s feet in tube socks. An apple tree in the London morning, a kiss stolen in the London night. The German photographer has been taking these deceptively natural pictures since 1986, and linking them in exhibitions and books that absorb different modes of photography into idiosyncratic associations. These have made Tillmans (especially to gay audiences) not just a renowned artist, but someone we feel we know personally. He is just “Wolfgang,” even to many who have never met him; his photos are intimacy enough.“Wolfgang Tillmans: To Look Without Fear,” which opens to museum members this weekend and to the public Monday, is one of the most anticipated exhibitions of the year; actually, it’s been anticipated longer than that. Roxana Marcoci, a MoMA senior curator, has been working since 2014 on this tremendous, pandemic-detained overview, the largest of Tillmans’s career. It rambles across the museum’s sixth floor, vacant for more than a year and a half. It includes 417 works (mostly photographs, though there are a few minor videos) displayed, as always with Tillmans, in asymmetric arrays of large and small prints. He affixes the majority to the wall with Scotch tape or bulldog clips — although, as with the soft lighting and easy cropping of his photography, the ostensibly “informal” hang is actually calculated to the quarter-inch.Tillmans presents his photographs taped to or clipped to the wall, and prints them anew for each exhibition. Left, “Deer Hirsch” (1995). Right, “Smokin’ Jo” (1995). Emile Askey/The Museum of Modern Art, New York“Omen” (1991), printed at small scale and taped to the side of a free-standing gallery wall of the Museum of Modern Art.Lila Barth for The New York TimesThe show is candid, unaffected, breezily intelligent; moralistic, too, in the later galleries. It is required viewing for both photography scholars and sportswear fetishists, and a worthy retrospective of one of the most significant artists to emerge at the end of the last century. (The show will tour next year to Toronto and San Francisco.)It is also — in a way I was not prepared for — one of the saddest museum exhibitions I have ever attended. It is a show of friends lost, of technologies abandoned, of cities grown insular, of principles forsaken. It maps, over 35 years, the ascent of a photographer to the height of his profession, and then the disintegration of almost everything he loved, the art form of photography not least among them.We follow the fragile peace of the ’90s into a century of war, extremism, post-truth and privation. We follow the artist through the last days of the darkroom and the rise of digital cameras, which he adopted with only moderate success. A sunset in Puerto Rico, a club night in Hackney, the transit of Venus, liquid concrete before it hardens: “To Look Without Fear” confirms that Tillmans has always been a photographer of transience, of things here today and gone tomorrow. Now his two hometowns, Berlin and London, are both facing frigid winters with life-threatening power shortages, and his whole world feels on the cusp of vanishing.Tillmans was born in 1968 in the industrial heartland of West Germany. He had a childhood love of astronomy, acquiring his first telescope at age 12, and of British pop groups like New Order and Culture Club that inspired a lifelong passion for London. (In 1983, on an exchange program in the British capital, the 14-year-old Tillmans somehow got past the bouncer at the gay nightclub Heaven, but left early to get the last Tube home.)The artist considers “Lacanau (self),” from 1986, to be his first self-portrait. Lila Barth for The New York Times“Selbstportrait (Self-portrait),” from 1988, when Tillmans was 20.Wolfgang Tillmans, via David Zwirner, New York/Hong Kong; Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne; Maureen Paley, London“Faltenwurf (Keithstrasse),” a 2021 example of Tillmans’s drapery studies.Wolfgang Tillmans, via David Zwirner, New York/Hong Kong; Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne; Maureen Paley, London.Photography came more accidentally. On the beach in France one summer, Tillmans aimed a point-and-shoot camera at his flexed knee and silky black Adidas shorts: a first, abstracted self-portrait. That picture is in the first room at MoMA, and one of the funnier leitmotifs of “To Look Without Fear” is the three stripes of the Adidas logo, a queer sportswear fixation that endures even as cities and bodies change. At the show’s entrance we see the 20-year-old Tillmans in a skimpy red Adidas bathing suit. At its exit is a photograph from three decades later of another, crumpled pair of glistening red Adidas shorts: a drapery study, a memento mori.He moved to Britain for art school but got his break in magazines, shooting raves, festivals, and also fashion editorials. The London indie magazine i-D first published this show’s well-traveled photographs of his friends Lutz and Alex, gripping each other’s androgynous bodies. A giant portrait of the British DJ Smokin’ Jo, her silver sequined dress twinkling in the golden hour, was a commission for Interview. There were new gay magazines like Attitude, for which he photographed Tony Blair, and Butt, which printed his images of half-dressed fashion designers on pink paper, like a not-safe-for-work Financial Times.“Lutz & Alex sitting in the trees” (1992), a double portrait of Tillmans’s childhood friends.Wolfgang Tillmans, via David Zwirner, New York/Hong Kong; Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne; Maureen Paley, LondonHe was shooting on 35 mm rather than in large formats; he disdained the tripod, abjured conspicuous lighting. Nan Goldin comes to mind before some of his halcyon ’90s pictures, and she herself appears with two nudes in a 1996 Tillmans idyll: a millennial remake of Manet’s “Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe.” But he’s far less diaristic than Goldin, and a more relevant influence may be the New Objectivity of 1920s Berlin, where painters and photographers like Christian Schad and Otto Dix made a virtue of hard surfaces and louche life.His partyers are often standing still. His nudes are almost always staged. The same cool, surface-level gaze falls upon the windows of London skyscrapers, the water of pools and oceans, and the great love of his youth, the painter Jochen Klein. Klein appears in two of this show’s largest prints: “Deer Hirsch” (1995), a rare black-and-white photograph of Klein and a young buck, staring wondrously at each other on an empty beach, and “Jochen taking a bath” (1997), shot months before his death from AIDS-related pneumonia. (The memory of that photo haunts a 2015 image of the singer Frank Ocean, another sad young man with closely cropped hair against white tiles.)Wolfgang Tillmans, “Jochen taking a bath,” 1997.Wolfgang Tillmans, via David Zwirner, New York/Hong Kong; Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne; Maureen Paley, London“Frank, in the shower” (2015), depicting the singer Frank Ocean.Wolfgang Tillmans, via David Zwirner, New York/Hong Kong; Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne; Maureen Paley, LondonWhat mattered more than the photographer’s subjects was the photographer’s regard. It was applied equally, unobtrusively, across genres — portrait, landscape, nude, still life — and united in the taped-up arrangements he first tried out in 1993. All together, on the gallery wall, the modest photographs could express a new, politically and sexually charged way of being in the world. They were promiscuous: not (or not only) in the word’s libertine sense, but freely mixing, ready to be rearranged, most themselves when with others. They were urban, too, and came to typify a newly vibrant and international London, where the mammoth Tate Modern opened in 2000 and, in the same year, Tillmans became the first non-British laureate of the Turner Prize.Later, in the 2005 exhibition “Truth Study Center,” Tillmans introduced a new display module that mixed his photographs with newspaper clippings (about war, fundamentalism, and also scientific breakthroughs) on low wooden tables. With these didactic works he meant to resist the absolutes of Bush-Blair rhetoric, but they ended up as preachy show-and-tell displays: a first act in the 21st-century domestication of Tillmans’s youthful freedom. Anyway, by the time of “Truth Study Center,” different and more disruptive photographic arrangements were coming into view on our (desktop) screens. The tacked-up pictures and the carefully laid-out tables would give way to the image-search grid and the social feed. Tillmans’s unframed printouts were becoming atavistic. The independent magazines where he found his voice were on their last legs.“Freischwimmer 26,” 2003. The abstract work is one of a series of pictures Tillmans has made without a camera, by exposing photo paper to lasers and other light sources.Wolfgang Tillmans, via David Zwirner, New York/Hong Kong; Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne; Maureen Paley, LondonHis most powerful response to this century’s explosion of images has been the cameraless “Freischwimmer” abstractions, begun in 2003. So beautiful, these pictures: grand, streaky expanses of color, suggesting bodies or currents, made by exposing photosensitive paper to lasers and other hand-held lights. Yet something began to go sour in the Tillmans method around the time of his adoption of a digital camera in 2008. Large, colorful prints of a Shanghai street or an Argentine shantytown are too crisp, artificially alienated. Recent portraits, such as the Frank Ocean photograph, forsake the soft-focus intimacy of the ’90s for hard-candy sheen. The later party pictures are really dreadful: The black tones have lost all their mystery, the sex appeal has drained, and in a time of ubiquitous cameraphones his no-style style feels redundant.Absent at MoMA, though discussed in Marcoci’s catalog, is Tillmans’s most widely seen digital endeavor: his posters for the 2016 referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union. Made in a season of now justified panic, these balmy images of jet-trail-crossed skies or the cliffs of Dover, overlaid with pleas for apathetic youth to vote Remain, were freely distributed online. “What is lost is lost forever,” read the caption on the most ethereal of these posters, and he wasn’t kidding. With Brexit, the imagery of borders introduced earlier that decade — the concrete walls of Gaza, the customs line at Gatwick — arrived at Tillmans’s doorstep. He thought the lack of artifice, the pictures everyone could read, might inspire people to live together; it turned out he was speaking a language narrower than he’d ever known. A 2021 photo of worn-out maroon passports (the color of all E.U. member states’ travel documents; the Johnson government replaced Britain’s with a blue one) might as well be a grave marker for Tillmans’s London. Some people really did have more freedoms when they were young.Recent works by Wolfgang Tillmans at MoMA, including, at center, “Kae Tempest” (2021).Lila Barth for The New York TimesWe all age. We all lose things. And yet I don’t blame Tillmans at all for considering, as he tells my colleague Matthew Anderson in this Sunday’s New York Times, that he might take a sabbatical and leave art for electoral politics. The democratic impulse in his photography, manifested through simple commercial lenses and unpretentious printouts, has receded into self-righteousness now, and his collisions of self-portraits, celebrity pictures, handsome sunsets and political slogans — well, how can these retain their force when a hundred million social media profiles do the same? He has reached the end of something, summed up with panache and great melancholy in this important show, and his accomplishment, not unlike E.U. membership, is easier to appreciate once it’s lost. Those late, sweaty ’90s nights: then, we were sure we had met the chronicler of a new millennium’s freedoms. What if Tillmans was instead a harbinger of the artist as entrepreneur of the self, and of how we would all go on posting pictures even as our misfortunes piled up offscreen?Wolfgang Tillmans: To Look Without FearOpens to members Sept. 9 and to the public Sept. 12 through Jan. 1, 2023, Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, Manhattan, (212) 708-9400, moma.org. More

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Your Monday Briefing: Europe’s Energy Protections

      by

      Plus Chileans vote on a new constitution and rickshaws lead India’s electric vehicle transition.In Europe, natural gas costs about 10 times as much as it did a year ago.Hannibal Hanschke/ReutersEurope tries to protect its economyThe war in Ukraine has roiled Europe’s economy. Now, as energy costs surge, countries are scrambling to prepare for winter.This weekend, Germany, Sweden and the Czech Republic moved to introduce measures aimed at tackling soaring energy costs and inflation; France is also embarking on its biggest conservation effort since the 1970s oil crisis.Concerns that rising prices could stoke social unrest are growing. Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Prague on Saturday, and other protests are being planned in Germany.The moves came days after Gazprom, the Kremlin-controlled energy giant, announced an indefinite halt to the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which ends in Germany and provides gas to much of Europe. On the same day, finance ministers for the Group of 7 countries had agreed to impose a price cap on Russian oil in an effort to cut some of Moscow’s energy revenue. Here are live updates.What’s next: E.U. energy ministers are preparing for an emergency meeting this week.Other stories:The U.N. stationed two nuclear experts at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, hoping their presence would lower the risk of a catastrophic attack. But the plant lost the connection with its last remaining main external power line after shelling on Friday.Thousands turned out for Mikhail Gorbachev’s funeral in Moscow on Saturday. Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, did not attend.Ukraine’s southern counteroffensive has retaken several Russian-controlled villages. Deadly shelling continues in the east.Some Chileans worry that if the new charter is approved, it will change their country too drastically.Tomas Munita for The New York TimesChile votes on a new constitutionChile voted yesterday on whether to adopt a new constitution that would enshrine over 100 rights, more than any other nation’s charter.In a single ballot yesterday, Chileans decided whether they wanted universal public health care; the right to legal abortion; gender parity in government; empowered labor unions; greater autonomy for Indigenous groups; rights for animals and nature; and constitutional rights to housing, education, retirement benefits, internet access, clean air, water, sanitation and care “from birth to death.”The results of the vote have not yet been released. If approved, the new constitution could transform what has long been one of Latin America’s most conservative countries into one of the world’s most left-leaning societies.What’s next: Polls suggest that Chileans will reject the new charter. Many Chileans worry that it would change their country too drastically, and the country’s leftist president, Gabriel Boric, has faced plummeting approval ratings.The State of the WarPrice Cap: Finance ministers from the Group of 7 nations agreed to form an international buyers’ cartel to cap the price of Russian oil, a move that could drain President Vladimir V. Putin’s war chest.U.N. Inspection: Amid fears of a possible nuclear accident at the Zaporizhzhia power plant, a United Nations team braved shelling to conduct an inspection of the Russian-controlled station.Russia’s Military Expansion: Though Mr. Putin ordered a sharp increase in the size of Russia’s armed forces, he seems reluctant to declare a draft. Here is why.Unusual Approaches: Ukrainian troops, facing strained supply lines, are turning to jury-rigged weapons and equipment bartering among units.Details: The national vote was mandatory and followed three years of protests, campaigning and debate over the new constitution, which was written from scratch. The current constitution has roots in the brutal dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who ruled from 1973 to 1990.Indigenous rights: The most contentious proposal would define Chile as a “plurinational” state representing some of the most expansive rights for Indigenous people anywhere.A driver swapping a fresh battery into an electric moped.Atul Loke for The New York TimesIndia’s electric rickshawsIn India, low-cost mopeds and rickshaw taxis are leading the transition to electric vehicles.The two- and three-wheeled vehicles sell for as little as $1,000, a far cry from the electric car market in the U.S., where Teslas can cost more than $60,000. Even relatively cheap models can cost more than $25,000.In India, where the median income is just $2,400, competition and subsidies have made electric mopeds and rickshaws as cheap as or cheaper than internal-combustion models. The market is growing: Indian automakers sold 430,000 electric vehicles in the 12 months that ended in March, more than three times as many as they sold a year earlier. Most were two- and three-wheeled vehicles.Environmentalists and the government are celebrating the scooters as a way to clear oppressive smog. Their success could serve as a template for other developing countries — supplied, perhaps, by Indian manufacturers.Details: Rickshaw drivers in New Delhi can trade depleted batteries for fully charged ones at swapping stations. Fresh batteries cost about half as much as a full tank on a conventional vehicle.THE LATEST NEWSAsiaA U.S.-made howitzer during a drill in Taiwan last month.Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense, via Agence France-Presse/ Getty ImagesThe U.S. plans to sell more than $1.1 billion worth of arms to Taiwan that are designed to repel a seaborne invasion. Beijing threatened countermeasures.Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was ousted as the president of Sri Lanka this summer, returned to the country on Friday.Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s ousted civilian leader, was sentenced to three more years in prison, with hard labor, on Friday. She now faces 20 years.An explosion at an Afghan mosque killed at least 18 people on Friday, including Mawlawi Mujib Rahman Ansari, a prominent cleric close to the Taliban.News Coming TodayBritain is about to announce its new prime minister. Liz Truss, the fervently pro-Brexit foreign secretary, is the front-runner.Kenya’s Supreme Court is expected to decide by today if the results of the country’s presidential election should stand.Defense hearings are expected to begin in the corruption trial of Argentina’s vice president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, days after she survived an assassination attack.World NewsThe U.S. economy added 315,000 jobs in August, a sign that the labor market is slowing but staying strong.Gazan officials announced the executions of five Palestinians. Two were accused of spying for Israel.Investigators seized 27 artifacts from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, saying they had been looted.What Else Is HappeningJason Allen’s “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial,” which was created using an artificial intelligence program, took first place in the digital category at the Colorado State Fair.via Jason AllenA picture generated by artificial intelligence incited controversy after winning an art prize at the Colorado State Fair.NASA again postponed the launch of its moon rocket on Saturday, this time because of a hydrogen leak.Serena Williams has likely played her final match. After a thrilling run through the early rounds of the U.S. Open, she lost to Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia.New footage of the Titanic shows the ship in detail. It also highlights the next stage in deep-sea tourism: $250,000 for a seat on a submersible to see the wreck.A Morning ReadTulsi Gowind Gowda said she liked trees “more than anything else in my life.”Priyadarshini Ravichandran for The New York TimesWhen India was under British rule, the colonizers led a huge deforestation drive in the mountains of the state of Karnataka, in southern India. One woman, Tulsi Gowind Gowda, has devoted her life to transforming the vast swaths of barren land into dense forests.ARTS AND IDEASShein is officially pronounced “she-in,” though often pronounced “sheen.”Cooper Neill for The New York TimesUnited We SheinShein, the supercheap fast-fashion megagiant, is continuing its rise in America.The craze is real: TikTok is awash with “haul” clips of people showing off their large orders. The Chinese company recently surpassed Amazon as the most downloaded shopping app in the U.S., according to a recent analysis. One couple even got engaged at a pop-up store in Texas.But the brand has also faced many controversies. Shein has been accused by critics of contributing to overconsumption and waste; selling a $2.50 swastika necklace; copying the work of designers; and offering a toddler’s jacket and tiny purse with elevated levels of lead. It has also been accused of working with suppliers that violate labor laws.It’s not enough to deter devotees. One budding fashion influencer said she saw comments about the controversies on videos “all the time,” but suggested that Shein had become a target for being an “underdog.” A video she made about her Shein wedding dress, which cost $39 Canadian, has been liked more than 900,000 times.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookJoe Lingeman for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.This pad krapow gai, a one-pan stir-fry of chicken and basil, is a riff on Thai street food.FashionA Times climate reporter tested clothes designed for rising global temperatures.TravelAsk a flight attendant: Who gets which armrests?Now Time to PlayPlay today’s Mini Crossword.Here are today’s Wordle and today’s Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaNote: Friday’s newsletter was addressed as “Your Thursday Briefing.”P.S. Natalie Kitroeff will take over as Mexico City bureau chief from Maria Abi-Habib, who’s becoming an investigative correspondent.The latest episode of “The Daily” is about Vancouver’s approach to its fentanyl crisis.You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in World Politics

      The AfD’s Duplicitous Attempt to Target Germany’s National Minorities

      by

      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      German Conservatives Win State Election in Setback for Scholz

      by

      Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats scored record-low votes in the first major electoral test he has faced since taking office.BERLIN — Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, in a regional election overshadowed by the war in Ukraine, scored record-low vote percentages on Sunday as Germany’s most populous state went to the polls.The contest involved only legislative seats in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. But with the campaign’s start coinciding with the Russian invasion, the race was unusually dominated by national issues — in particular, the risks that the European land war might spread and the worry about energy supplies.Mr. Scholz has been increasingly criticized as dithering in his approach to supporting Ukraine in the war, which has become a popular cause in Germany across several parties, and his party appears to have paid a price in the first major electoral test it has faced since taking power less than six months ago.Projections showed the incumbent Christian Conservatives easing to a win and likely the governorship as the head of a coalition government. They were expected to take close to 36 percent of the vote versus less than 27 percent for the Social Democrats and 18 percent for the Greens.“It’s a huge disappointment for the S.P.D.,” said one political scientist, Uwe Jun of Trier University.“Given these results,” he said, “the S.P.D. must realize that it is obviously not perceived as the driving force of the federal government, but that it seems to be playing more of a supporting role in the coalition at the moment.”Just days after Russia invaded on Feb. 24, Mr. Scholz addressed the German federal Parliament and promised an epochal change, and signaled more spending on the Germany military. But since then the chancellor has struck many people as dragging his heels on policies that would actually help Ukraine.Supporters of the Christian Democrats after hearing the initial exit poll results on Sunday.Sascha Schuermann/Getty ImagesThere were weeks of debates on whether the German government would allow the export of heavy weapons before the Defense Ministry finally announced the shipment of dozens of armored air-defense systems.Germany was also seen as wavering on punishing Russia over the invasion. Fellow members of the European Union said Germany was trying to block decisions to boycott Russian energy imports, on which Germans are heavily dependent.Mr. Scholz was also criticized for sending his foreign minister on a state visit to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, instead of going himself.A recent poll found that nearly two-thirds of Germans do not consider Mr. Scholz a strong leader, and from respected broadsheets to Germany’s noisy tabloid Bild, commentators took the result of Sunday’s election as a damning verdict on Mr. Scholz’s first six months in office. A headline in the Süddeutsche Zeitung called the outcome “a vote of no confidence against the chancellor,” while Bild called it “a historic slap.”Voter unease seems not to have hurt one of Mr. Scholz’s coalition partners, the Greens. On Sunday, they were the big winners in terms of numbers gained over the last election, bettering their performance in 2017 by nearly 12 percentage points. Mr. Scholz’s two most popular ministers are Green party members who appear to be pushing for much of the popular Ukraine policy within the government coalition. One of them, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, traveled to Kyiv last week.The Free Democratic Party, the third coalition partner in the federal government, did not do well at the polls, claiming less than 6 percent of the state’s votes.At 56 percent, voter participation was unusually low for a state election in Germany.“It’s a test of people’s mood, which just shows what people think about the government’s work at the moment,” said Professor Jun.Voters handed the Christian Democratic Union, which lost the federal election after Chancellor Angela Merkel retired, an important win. It keeps conservatives in power in the industrial west, the former heartland of the Social Democrats, but it could signal a changing tide as voters go to polls in several other big state elections in the coming years.“The C.D.U. is back, our forward-looking course has been vindicated,” the party leader, Friedrich Merz, said on Twitter.The Social Democratic leader in North Rhine-Westphalia, Thomas Kutschaty, on Sunday.Ina Fassbender/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe election does not directly affect federal politics in Berlin, where Mr. Scholz has been running the three-party coalition since December. But the support for the conservative government in the big western state adds to Mr. Scholz’s woes trying to keep his government stable and the Social Democratic brand strong.Russia-Ukraine War: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3Inching closer to NATO. More