When the Bundestag holds its first regular session in Berlin this week, Bury will be only one of a growing number of young M.P.s promoting a reform agenda for “The Berlin Republic.” Along with a dozen other Social Democratic Party “youngsters,” as they call themselves using the English word, he signed a recent position paper that called for an end to ideological debates and the junking of “obsolete” notions of big government. “The Berlin Republic is bringing a new generation to power,” says Nina Hauer, another SPD youngster. “This will make it less conventional, different.” That sentiment cuts across party lines. “I’m 34 and I’m not even one of the youngest members anymore,” says Thomas Dorflinger of the opposition Christian Democratic Union, pointing to several twentysomething M.P.s. “This has created a new climate. You feel stronger when you’re one of several young people.”
Not that the young people feel all that strong. “We don’t have any real power yet within the party,” says the SPD’s Carsten Schneider who at 23 is the youngest parliamentarian. “But a generational change is beginning to take place.” Nor are the young always united in their approach. Opposition M.P.s like Ursula Heinen, the leader of the CDU’s youth wing, charge that her SPD counterparts uncritically accept the Schroder program, which she says doesn’t deliver enough in the way of reforms. The ranks of the young parliamentarians also include old-style leftists who bemoan any cutbacks in the welfare state. “I have less in common with Carsten Schneider of the SPD than with someone who is 40 or 50 in my own party,” declares 26-year-old Sabine Junger of the Party of Democratic Socialism, the refuge of the East German communists.
Still, most of the younger politicians do share a common background. Unlike their elders, the children of the German postwar economic miracle, they have grown up with an economy plagued by high unemployment. “I know how it feels to keep getting rejected,” says the CDU’s Dorflinger, who spent nine months without a job. “You don’t forget that feeling.” Younger Germans know that they are paying more to support a state pension system than they will ever get out of it; and they will also assume a tremendous debt burden from an older generation fighting to keep its generous benefits. “We have an unbelievable 1.5 trillion marks in debts,” says Klaus Muller, a 28-year-old financial specialist of the Greens (favorite sport: paragliding). “It’s going to be my generation that inherits this.”
That leads many to dismiss old dogmas, especially those from the traditional left.“Before, the left represented progress,” says the SPD’s Hauer. “Now they represent those, like the unions, who want to stop change.” Having grown up with computers, young Germans see modern technology and aggressive start-up companies as part of the solution, not part of the problem. And they are less committed to party positions than their elders. “I don’t believe that whatever my party says is true, and whatever others say is wrong,” says Cem Ozdemir of the Greens, who was the first Turkish-German to win a Bundestag seat. Ozdemir is one of the founders of “the Pizza connection,” informal gatherings of young CDU and Green parliamentarians that started at an Italian restaurant in Bonn and will be continued in Berlin. “We talk about the old politicians and we make fun of them–and we drink good wine,” he says.
The younger generation’s looser, sometimes irreverent tone has begun to seep into newspaper coverage of politics. Mathias Dopfner, the editor of the Berlin-based Die Welt, perfectly captured the country’s current mood in a recent front-page commentary. Writing as if he were a woman who had been dazzled by Schroder’s designer suits and glib promises, he portrays her bitter disillusionment now that she sees he’s all talk and no action. Opinion pieces like that, coupled with fast-paced news sections, have made Die Welt the country’s hottest daily. And it’s run by a very young crew. Dopfner is only 36, and his two deputies are both younger than he is. “We want to be provocative and entertaining at the same time,” Dopfner explains. “Serious doesn’t have to mean boring.” In Germany, that’s revolutionary talk.
Paradoxically, for young German politicians, being normal amounts to a cry for radical change. They share Schroder’s desire to prove that Germany should no longer be considered a freak among nations because of the legacy of the Third Reich, even if that history imposes special obligations. “We’re a quite normal generation in a normal country,” insists Dirk Niebel, 36, a parliamentarian from the small Free Democratic Party.
Even when it’s pushing a tough agenda, the new generation employs very different tactics than the protest generation of the 1960s. The Greens’ Muller insists that Germany must abandon nuclear power for economic as well as safety reasons–without ever resorting to the language of confrontation. “You have to be radical in your goals, but you have to be pragmatic in how you achieve them,” he says.
Is there an overarching aim of the new breed? If so, it is to keep pushing Schroder to stop waffling and deliver the reforms necessary to spur economic growth. The chancellor claims he wants to get rid of the “nanny state” as much as his younger colleagues do. But he’s running into plenty of flak, and his party is likely to take a pounding in a series of upcoming local elections. Bury and the other youngsters keep insisting that short-term sacrifices are necessary to produce long-term gains. They know they have a lot at stake; if Germany is transformed, they’ll be the main beneficiaries.
