November 9th is a complicated day in German history. In addition to marking the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it was also the day in 1938 when Nazi-led mobs attacked synagogues, Jewish businesses and Jews on the streets of Germany. In 1918, it was the day the Weimar Republic was founded and in 1848, it was the day the last of the German revolutionaries of the 1848 revolutions was executed, marking an end to Germans’ first attempts at creating a constitutional government. That’s German history for you, the highs are stratospheric, the lows hellish.

While there is plenty of coverage of the day, including some of my own, I’d like to share one story, told to me by a neighbor.

She and her husband have lived on my street for 42 years, when the neighborhood, Prenzlauer Berg, was in such disrepair that balconies often collapsed without warning. Many buildings were still heated by coal and bathrooms were often shared between several apartments.

In the fall of 1989 one of their two daughters fled to the West via Hungary, like so many East Germans did that autumn, precipitating the regime’s collapse. The second daughter had remained and was barely out of school, just 19 or 20. It was early November and suddenly, perhaps like any teenager, she wanted an apartment of her own.

She went with her mother to the nearby office that doled out apartments to see if one was available but none were even though there were dozens of empty apartments nearby because so many people had left the country in the past few weeks. They leave the office and the daughter turns to her mother and said, “Mother, this is the last straw, I’m going to the West, too. I just can’t be here.”

The mother looked at me while telling this story and said, “I had just lost one daughter a few weeks before and didn’t know if I would ever see her again. And then my other daughter says she wants to go to the West too. Because she couldn’t get an apartment. It was the worst day of my life.”

The mother walked back into the housing office. One of the women working there was an acquaintance and sees that the mother is near tears and pulls her aside to ask what’s wrong. The mother explains and the housing woman says, “I can take care of this.”

She goes into a back office and returns a few minutes later with a key, saying, “This one will work.” The mother goes outside and gives the key to her daughter, who’s overjoyed about the apartment and stops talking about going West. It was November 7, 1989.

Two days later, it’s all irrelevant, the mother tells me, the Wall is gone and the fear that families could be separated, never to reunite again, is gone. And she says that day, November 9, 1989, was one of the happiest days of her life, not just because they could travel freely, but because her newly shattered family was made whole once again.

Angela Merkel officially got sworn in today for a second term as Chancellor. Instead of the hapless Frank Walter Steinmeier of the Social Democrats at her side as Foreign Minister and Vice-Chancellor (as is traditional for the smaller coalition partner), she now has Free Democrat Guido Westerwelle (or, WesterWave as fans of his English skills would like him to be known as).

Yay Guido, right? I don’t think so. Despite a record share of the vote last month, I think Westerwelle and the Free Democrats played their hand terribly in the coalition negotiations. They probably could have gotten the Finance Ministry if they had been stubborn, but Westerwelle followed tradition and took the Foreign Ministry, even though he has little background or interest in foreign affairs (favorite WesterWave word so far: the “outland”). Not that I necessarily think their program of massive tax cuts and slashing social services would have been particularly sound policy, but I think that if you’re as fanatically devoted to these things as the FDP is, you might have fought a bit harder to make sure you control all the levers of government that will allow you to attain your goals instead of handing them off to another political party. Plus, the Chancellor traditionally sets the foreign policy agenda enough as it already is, so if Westerwelle turns into a weak foreign minister, as I believe he will, the important parts of the portfolio simply become assimilated into Merkel’s office.

Going back to the Finance Ministry (the building itself being the single biggest point of continuity between the sweet, soft lovey-duddy Germany of today and the Nazis), Wolfgang Schaeuble, elder spokesman, dark knight and illegal campaign contribution bagman extraordinaire of the Christian Democrats is Finance Minister instead of Westerwelle or another FDP member. Why this matters is that even though the CDU signed onto tax cuts, Schaeuble’s the kind of guy who’s likely to lock up the national credit card and sic the dogs on anyone who tries to spend more than Schaeuble thinks is possible.

The FDP’s weakness shows elsewhere too. Philip Rösler, the new FDP Health Minister may be a photogenic 36 year-old but he’s barely been in politics and now he holds what’s likely to be one of the more contentious ministries in government (though the health care system is way better here than in the US, there are big financing holes right now that are going to have to be fixed). It’s not clear to me that Rösler is going to be able to unite the FDP and CDU on some kind of common health policy that’s going to make anyone happy. In which case the status quo will hold, which Merkel by temperament probably prefers.

In other words, even though Merkel’s CDU (and their Bavarian CSU allies) holds the smallest share of seats ever in the Bundestag, she seems to have managed to concentrate power even further in her hands and rather than assert themselves, the FDP simply rolled over and asked to have its tummy scratched with some tax cuts that may not even happen. Nice work, Angie.

Germany's election is as interesting as East German architecture, informed sources say. (Photo: Brett Neely, 2008)

Germany’s election is officially boring, the NYT has spoken. The headline says it all:

In Dull German Race, ’08 Dinner Is an Issue

I’ll grant the Timesfolk the dullness, but no one should be that surprised. Having gotten over the idea that political leaders should inspire fevered passion about 64 years ago, German politicians often play it safe and gray. But yeah, given that the economy just went through the worst recession in 60 years, the state’s finances are shot and no one really knows what to do with the banks, I guess you’d expect a bit more passion out on the stump.

Today, cycling through the Tiergarten, I finally saw the first big collection of election posters I’ve seen all season. Given that we’re at T-minus 31 days until the election, that’s sort of wild by American standards. Then again, I’m sure 80 percent of the electorate will vote, so maybe it doesn’t matter that it’s boring.

Modded Trabant in Eisenhuettenstadt, Germany, Fall 2007

It was small, cramped and ugly, made partially out of plastic, powered by what was essentially a very dirty lawnmower engine and was the epitome of the East German consumer economy – the legendary Trabant.

The waiting time to get one was sometimes over a decade. They weren’t especially reliable but mechanically simple enough to fix yourself. And they last forever, around 40,000 of them are still on the road nearly 20 years after production stopped.

For years, there have been rumors in Germany that someone would come up with a new Trabant, not unlike the new Mini. And now my friend Kristen has confirmed that it’s happening: A German company says it’s making an electro-Trabi with a solar cell on the roof to help charge the battery (I guess that will atone for the old Trabi’s horrible emissions).

I’m guessing they hope this will work a lot like the  Mini reinvention did. There’s certainly a built-in audience worldwide that came to love the ugly little ducklings. There was a movie, Go Trabi Go, there are Trabi clubs across the country and you can even get a guided tour of Berlin in one.

I’m going to try and track down the story and see if I can get a ride in one. I’ll be curious to see if they can sell the idea of merging eco-chic with East German retro-ugly.

And now for something completely awesome, the Knight Rider intro, as re-imagined for a Trabi:

I had a story air on Marketplace recently about Germany’s experience with it’s cash for clunkers program, known here as the scrapping bonus.

These programs were sold to both the German and American public as stimulus and environmental measures. In the German case, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that the program won’t achieve either goal, though the program’s wild popularity seems likely to help German Chancellor Angela Merkel secure a second term.

First, I made the point that many of the people who took advantage of the program would have bought a car anyway. Instead of buying a car next year, they bought one this year. So long as domestic and foreign demand stay weak, the measure only defers the pain for the auto industry, but doesn’t prevent it.

Second, though I didn’t make the point in the piece for time reasons, the measure spurred sales of small cars, which didn’t help most of Germany’s car companies that specialize in high-end vehicles. As one of my interviews made it clear, Germany’s an open economy and policymakers get that they can’t write “Buy German” regulations. But why should German tax money subsidize companies like Hyundai, which profited the most from the program?

Obviously, a subsidy for luxury cars wouldn’t make much sense (though the slogan “Porsche für Alle!” would be cool) but if the goal is maintaining employment and/or preventing mass unemployment, why not give the money to those likely to be affected? Or if the goal was a car in every garage, why the big gift to the middle-class, who can already afford a car or two?

My most recent story for Marketplace is about a German foundation‘s plan to build giant solar-thermal power plants in the North African desert. The plan’s backers say it could provide 15 percent of Europe’s electricity.

It’s an interesting proposal and I wish I had had more than two minutes to cover it. There are plenty of things to like about this project. First, the technology is already in use in the Mojave Desert, so at least one pie in sky aspect of this proposal is feasible. Also, it’s got the backing of big companies, including Siemens and Munich Re, which means they have resources to sink into something of this scale.

Yet there’s a way in which I wonder if this is too big of an idea. Presented as it is, Desertec needs dozens of governments, the European Union and thousands of companies to cooperate. It will take decades to produce results. That’s fine but the organizers are clearly trying to build excitement around the concept and sadly, when people get excited, they tend to expect short-term results.

There’s also some some strangely nationalistic PR that’s going into selling this to a German audience. I went to a press conference in Berlin on this a week and a half ago, where Desertec presented a study it did with Greenpeace saying the solar industry could produce hundreds of thousands of German jobs. Max Schön, the Desertec board member I spoke to, said this was vital for German industry because they had missed out on other high-technology industries such as mobile phones. Though it’s not incompatible with his vision that this will also create jobs in North Africa, it was a bit dissonant to me.

One part of the story about General Motors’ bankruptcy that has been relatively under-covered in the US has to do with GM’s European unit, Opel, which is based in Germany but has factories across Europe. I visited Antwerp, Belgium, where Opel has a factory that is in danger of closing.

I did two stories for Marketplace about what’s going on there. One story is about the impact of the German government’s bailout of Opel. It’s an election year here and the bailout came, big surprise, with strings attached. Namely, that no German factories should be closed. Which means that the plants outside of Germany are at a much greater risk of closure. It’s causing an ugly, little spat within the European Union, albeit one that’s been kept relatively hushed-up.

The second story was about current and former workers and what they’re thinking while the whole long, drawn-out sale process (once the final deal is announced, it will be pretty clear what gets shut and what stays open) is underway. The story is really about what’s it like to worry about losing your job in Europe, as opposed to the US. As you can probably imagine, it’s stressful, but less so than in the States.

Listen and enjoy!

Germans don’t forget the war because too many people died, too many institutions were shattered and Germany itself was split into two with previously core parts of Germany handed off to Poland and Russia. Even though the generation that lived and fought through the war is almost dead, the scabs aren’t far below the surface.

So while Americans think it’s well and fun to stage civil war reenactments in the US, the idea that that would happen in Germany is unthinkable. Until last weekend, when a group of military enthusiasts dressed up Waffen-SS uniforms and joined a historical parade in Sachsen-Anhalt.

History here tends to be taken very seriously, I’ve never seen newsstands so filled with historical magazines. Things are thawing. In the past few years, Germans have also become masters of spoofing Nazis. The video below is one my favorite examples. If you don’t understand the German, all you need to know is that the narrator is explaining why neo-Nazis deserve our sympathy…