1 post tagged “economy”
When I went to Dusseldorf airport recently, one problem at the heart of the German Krankheit (German disease) beacme crystal clear to me: It's all about appearence and no or little substance.
Some weeks ago, i visited the airport in the West German city of Dusseldorf. Not that Dusseldorf differs in many ways from other German cities, on the contrary: It seems to be German society in a nutshell, hosting the well-off 10 per cent and extremely poor parts of the society.
Walking through the departures hall, the following image lept to my eye:
Now, one has to keep in mind that this is the official departure hall of Lufthansa at the Dusseldorf International Airport, not Erich-Sixt-Airport. The ads are by German car rental group Sixt. Actually, not only here, but also at the gangway-fingers, and all over the rest of the place, you will find quite obtrusive Sixt ads. Not only that. Also take a look at the following movie:
This is an aerial approach to the Düsseldorf ariport terminal, not the Vodafone headqarters in that town, as you may think.
Now, not to be mistaken: Ads are and will always be part of a traveller's world, and other airports do display advertisements as well. But what you see in Dusseldorf, as happens all over Germany, goes further: Public assets and their dignity as public places are being sold off to a cheap make-beleive of an advertiser's wonderland.
This goes so far that often projects having been financed and funded publicly are no longer recognizeable as such, or that form follow the advertiser's needs, not necessarily function. Football stadiums in Germany, almost wiithout exception, are named after beer brands or other corporate sponsores. Of course, this does not prevent that more often than not these projects have received heavy public funding before.
Corporates are not so much citizens in Germany than a-socially behaving parasites, joy riding on the back of taxpayers' Euros.
Which brings us to two quite important observations of symptomps of what I would call the "German Krankheit", the German Disease:
- on one hand, appearance overrides function, and everything is tailored to the need of sponsors. The world of make beleive that does not deliver on its promises, as long as the consumer can be billed and bombarded with obstrusive messages. It seems that the country is being sold off as a huge billboard,
- on the other hand, such behavior sheds some light onto the way that Germany ticks these days: Everything is measured to its market value. Even if you ask, what's so special about that. Beleive me, Germany is going to the extremes, as it always does in implementing a concept. Which means that people are getting forced into a hypercommercialized environment, and funny election results to the tunes of the 1930's should only be a question of time - actually tacitly, Germans are quickly getting fed up with the way globalization is implemented in preemptive obedience towards corporates by courage-less politicans.
Actually, in a TV broadcast in September, former German chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, has compared today's Germany to the Weimar Republic Germany in the 1930's. There is little to join to that remark, except for the observation that German politicians 2006 AD seem to be willing to strectch their good luck to the extreme and seem to go on living carelessly on borrowed time.
