Nostalgia Is A Pretty Picture, Still A Myth

Michael Hedges December 14, 2020 Follow on Twitter

Accepting that institutions are ever-evolving and not static underlies stable democracies, not to forget rational thinking. The novel rises, changes, hopefully improves. Times of stress, such as the coronavirus pandemic, lead some to yearn for the simpler past; nostalgia. The horse-drawn buggy disappeared for a reason.

There is what’s called the Interstate Broadcasting Agreement, which governs, usually, the varied relationships among the 16 German Länder (States) and the regional public broadcasters, national public TV broadcaster ZDF, national public radio network Deutschlandfunk and, of course, national TV network ARD. It has been in place for years and credited for the strength of the public broadcasting system. The rise of far-right activism is a challenge.

The Commission to Determine the Financial Requirements of Broadcasters (KEF) recommended raising the household license fee or broadcasting contribution (Runkdfunkbeitrag) by €0.86 per household per month, the first increase in more than a decade. The Interstate Broadcasting Agreement requires all States to agree on the fee increase, which was scheduled to come into force January 1st.

Political wrangling over the broadcasting contribution brought the Saxony-Anhalt state to the brink. Local representatives of the conservative political party Christian Democrats (CDU) blocked a scheduled increase in the monthly without “reforms,” meaning cost-cutting and “focus more on eastern German concerns,” noted German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (December 12). They have been joined, but not officially, by representatives of the far-right xenophobic Alternative for Germany party (AfD). Other political parties in the governing coalition with CDU, the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens, were fine with the increase. The CDU has been on record opposing any commonweal with AfD.

Saxony-Anhalt was part of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) until 1990. It borders Brandenburg to the northeast, Lower Saxony to the northwest, Thuringia to the southwest and Saxony to the southeast. Saxony and Thuringia were also part of the GDR. German States once part of the GDR have seen a conspicuous rise in the AfD. Saxony-Anhalt is set to hold local parliamentary elections next June but the dates could be moved forward due to the political crisis. Coronavirus infections are raging in the mask-resistant eastern German States, reported AFP (December 9).

The increase in the broadcasting contribution levy was not the biggest issue, said CDU Saxony-Anhalt chairman Holger Stahlknecht to local newspaper Magdeburger Volksstimme (December 4). He was most concerned with public broadcasters “moralising on behalf of an intellectual minority,” a grievance of nostalgia common to AfD supporters as well as the far-right elsewhere. Those remarks led to his abrupt exit from that position as well as Saxony-Anhalt Interior Minister by the end of the day.

German public broadcasters, in concert, responded with intentions of sending the matter to the Federal Constitutional Court. “Unfortunately, there is no other option than to appeal to the Federal Constitutional Court,” said ZDF director Thomas Bellut to Der Tagesspiegel (December 8). "I would have liked a different solution and I promoted it intensively. But in this process, public broadcasting has clearly become the plaything of politics in a federal state.”

“The Federal Constitutional Court has precisely criticized this abuse in the past,” noted ARD chairman and WDR director general Tom Buhrow to Handelsblatt (December 11). “There is unconstitutional interference with the freedom of broadcasting.” Previous court judgments have upheld “what a great asset is the independence of public broadcasting from political influence and political intrigues.”

Herr Buhrow admitted “we have made mistakes” in eastern Germany. “But these are the same ones that politicians and businesses have made. Company headquarters, for example, have mostly remained in the west. Now, we are evolving. The story behind the story is how populism has now also reached public broadcasting in Germany from a certain direction. We see that at the BBC, in Switzerland, in Denmark.”

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• Hot Topics - Media in Germany

• Hot Topics - Public Broadcast funding/License Fee

• Hot Topics - Public Broadcasting