On June 30th Germany elected a new federal president (Bundespräsident in German). The 10th federal president of Germany is now Christian Wulff, 51, until now the prime minister of Lower Saxony, a German state. Christian Wulff is a member of the CDU (Christlich Demokratische Union). The media outside Germany have scarcely been aware of this event, yet it was accompanied by a great deal of drama in Germany. What happened? What's the role of the German president? Is there any wider significance? What does the German Federal President do? The German Federal President (I'll refer to the office as Bundespräsident from here out for simplicity) has a largely ceremonial office. Like the Queen of England, the Bundespräsident is the offical head of state. Like the Queen of England, most of his activities (there has not yet been a female Bundespräsident, who according to the rules of German grammar would be the Bundespräsidentin) are ceremonial - greeting foreign heads of state, giving...

Stunning my readers by emerging from long silence, it's time to finally make another topical post. My nose and sinuses are nicely recovering from recent surgery (as my Facebook friends know), work is a bit quieter, and there are no looming concerts. So I thought I'd take advantage of all that to comment on the current world financial crisis, which revolves around the Euro . Not that I'm particularly well qualified to comment on financial matters. I mean, I read the Economist every week, and I possess a modest number of Euros in my bank account. But I didn't study economics or political science, I'm not one of the famous German "5 Wise Men of Economics" . I know, I should probably translate the name with "5 wise persons" - but unfortunately they've never had a female member. Anyway, you should take anything I say here cum grano salis , as they say. So anyway, at issue here is the fact that the Greeks are in a bit of a pickle because as a ...

Germany is governed by a coalition of three parties - the CDU/CSU and the SPD (see my previous post ). Depending on the situation, the CDU and CSU like to think of themselves as one political party or as two political parties. When it comes to divvying up the minister positions in the government, then they're two parties. Which party gets which office is set down in the coalition contract; according to this contract, the CSU fills the office of Minister of Economics. So far so good. When the current government took office in November 2005 the Minister of Economics was Michael Glos , an experienced CSU politician from a small town in lower Franconia. Glos has not enjoyed high visibility as Economics Minister, you might say that he hasn't had a good economic crisis. Making his situation worse were the difficulties he had with the head of the CSU, Horst Seehofer . Did I mention that Glos is from a small town in lower Franconia? Foreigners tend to think of Bavaria as one big ho...

Europe has generally been lagging behind the US in supporting and implementing non-smokers' rights. Over the last few years this has started to change - Italy, Ireland, France and the UK have all passed more or less strict laws banning smoking from many public places. Italy is an interesting example - the Italians are generally not known for obeying the law rigorously, but the smoking law (which bans smoking in most public places) has been a general success. I remember well a vacation in Italy soon after the smoking ban went into effect; how pleasant it was to eat dinner in a restaurant without being bothered by clouds of smoke from the next table, or having our clothes stink like smoke after leaving the restaurant. "If only Germany would pass a modern smoking law," I thought. I'm a not smoker. I used to smoke a pipe, but I gave that up about15 years ago. Once in a great while I'll smoke a cigar. Just so you all know where I'm coming from. So in 2007 Germa...

I want to provide a brief primer on the German political system to provide background for a series of articles I'm thinking about. This may not be everyone's cup of beer, but I'll do my best to make it as entertaining as possible. To reward you, dear reader, for your perseverance, there'll be a multiple choice quiz at the end with cash prizes. Ready? Off we go! 1. Representative bodies, elections, etc. Germany is a federal republic; this means that a significant number of powers are delegated to the 16 states (Bundesländer). Each state has its own parliament (generally known as a Landtag, with a few exceptions). The federal government has a main parliamentary body, the Bundestag (known in English as the Federal Diet; this does not imply that government spending is on a diet). In a federal election each citizen has two votes - the first serves to elect a representative directly based on election districts (there are 299), the second vote is directly for a party (more ...

Why don't Germans get as excited about high taxes as Americans? The coalition government in Berlin is increasing the national value-added tax from 16% to 19% on January 1 2007 (imagine paying a hidden sales tax of 19% on nearly everything you buy), gasoline prices, much higher than in the US anyway (how would you like to pay $6 a gallon? We do over here), are going to rise another 6 Euro cents a liter on January 1st (that's $0.27 a gallon), the tax deduction for interest income is being sharply cut - the list goes on and on. And yet no one seems to notice very much. No American politician who voted to increase taxes like that would be re-elected.