A store in Berlin that only sells products made in what was East Germany. (Photo: Brett Neely, 2009)

It’s anniversary time in Germany. Twenty years ago, the Socialist Unity Party lost its hold on power as thousands of East Germans took to the streets in peaceful protests. It was a hopeful time, and certainly the most peaceful revolution German history. But it wasn’t all sunshine and light after thousands of companies were closed and millions thrown out of work afterward.

My most recent story for Marketplace is about the companies that survived what Germans call Die Wende, the turning point. I had much, much more for the piece but when you’re working with three minutes, a lot gets left on the cutting room floor.

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For much of the past year, I’ve been covering the soap opera that is GM‘s troubled European unit, Opel for pretty much every outlet I’ve worked for, including Marketplace, NPR and Deutsche Welle. Now that GM has agreed to sell a controlling stake to Magna, it looks like everything I reported would be a problem with the deal has come true.

The Antwerp factory I visited appears to be on the chopping block, despite being one of Opel’s most efficient production locations according to union leaders. In the zero-sum terms of today’s car business, axing Antwerp means saving German factories (and jobs in a German election season). Indeed, just 4,000 jobs will probably be cut in Germany, less than expected earlier this summer.

Oh right, the German government is underwriting the Magna deal and got testy about funding other bidders when it became clear that they would lay off more German workers.

Belgium, along with Spain and the UK, which all have Opel factories likely to be closed or heavily cut, are…upset. And they’re going to the European Commission and trying to sink the deal now that it’s official and the layoff negotiations are underway.

As for the workers and retirees I spoke to in Antwerp over the summer, they were sanguine then about what could happen but I suspect they’re worried now. My inbox has been getting multiple press releases a day about demonstrations and protests. Ultimately though, the only hope those workers have is if the EU puts the screws on Germany in the next few months. Otherwise, at least they have a European-style safety net to fall back on rather than wind up in the European equivalent of Detroit.

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!