At first glance, the election run by Robert Habeck, the Green candidate for Chancellor, and the events around the critical of Steinmeier's speech, delivered by writer Marko Martin November 7 at Bellevue CastleThey don't have much in common. However, they are a sign of a crisis trend that is not conducive to democracy: a publically demonstrated refeudalisation of the political system. And we have no direct mention to Martin's behaviour or measurable financial differences. Speaking of refeudalisation in the sense discussed here, we think of a political form of the public sphere, which became a phenomenon known more widely erstwhile Jürgen Habermas described it in his early works as a historical kind called the "representative public sphere"[1].
In a paper referring to the title of 1 of its early books, entitled "Ein neuer Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit und die deliberative Politik", 2022) Habermas writes about “a typical public sphere manifesting itself in power embodyed in the people of emperors, kings and princes.” In addition to this short mention, the category of typical public sphere, present in the historical tradition, no longer plays any direct function in this current work. Habermas is more afraid with the current dangers of "defeating and fragmenting" the political sphere of the public. The thesis of refeudalilization, referring to the kind of "representative public sphere" and wishing to describe real constellations, in Habermas' habilitation work on "structural changes of the public sphere" (1962) was presented as a central diagnosis of the crisis. At the time, he meant – as present – the dangers of "criteria of reason", but caused not by digitisation, but, for example, by the return of "aura of authority represented in person". Then, “the public sphere becomes [...] a court of “before” whose audience can be demonstrated its prestige – alternatively of criticism in it”.
Criticism at the Castle
In the national Republic, it is the work of the national President, if he does not exercise his formal prerogatives, to be "honorable" (Walter Bagehot) a democratic force integrating in the state, while not accepting the individual attitude of monarchic power. Therefore, those who hold this office talk much about the value of democracy. In the case of Steinmeier and Martin, it became clear how large a disparity could be between these rhetorical fundamental values and the external attitude of the institution taking the form of an individual.
The national president invited guests to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Wall to its authoritative headquarters, Bellevue Castle. On the platform he entered dressed in blue-yellow Marko Martin. He gave a fifteen-minute speech, a fiery accusation combined with a critical historical analysis against Germany. Martin's speech was, of course, an affront. He blamed Steinmeier and others for his naive attempts to soften Putin and combined specified a imagination of things with a diagnosis, referring to the worst historical traditions, colonialist perception of Central and east Europe, and thus the people whom we greatly owe the fall of the Wall and the peaceful revolution. Along with Egon Bahr, the peace - loving East Germany besides became convinced that they were fighting for their liberation. Dancing on Martin's lines was a linguistic and intellectual feast in the face of existential challenges, which could be of large benefit, but besides that and that.
The national president had the chance to prove to be an inclusive factor, to deny, to defend himself and others, to face a democratically reasoning speaker, arguing on the same level. He did not gotta clap, which he did not do, but specified an answer would mean moving distant from the order of the day (or the protocol) and possibly politically not rather open to consensus the action of the replacement monarch – including possibly even the spontaneous outbreak of anger without the prompter. Steinmeier did not do this and left his critic with an interpretative initiative: Martin later comprehensively spoke in an interview with "T-Online" about the banquet that took place after the celebrations, during which Steinmeier accused him of individual insult and even abuse of hospitality. "And Bellevue Castle is besides a temporary residence for Mr Steinmeier," said Martin. In his interview he besides spoke of Steinmeier's "real policy"-based objections to "experts he called "experts from calibrated barrels"—which is actual even if these presidential words fell elsewhere.
In September 2017, Steinmeier spoke in another tone. A series of meetings entitled “The Bellevue Forum for the Future of Democracy” opened, according to the script of the speech, with the words: “That is why we request the places where we will be able to have the essential debates, with passion, clearly, but, hopefully, with reason and with the will to search the truth. You are here present due to the fact that specified a place should be the Bellevue Forum.” By 2022, a full of thirteen specified discussions were held with the national President, various intellectuals and experts and experts. The consequence of these meetings was a book by Steinmeier himself, who wrote: “I asked my guests to compose and update their views—and thus spread the initiatives that they had created. At the same time, in the best sense of Republican disputes, I peculiarly value those views which I do not share and which provoke opposition.” Apparently, no of the invited persons abused his hospitality.
Marko Martin told reporters "Tagespiegel" that after his speech he was treated differently by the president's colleagues too: many of the President's Office employees greeted me warmly before my speech, even verbally pampered me. Then they turned their backs on me or looked at me with the same offended face that the national president looked at me with, just as the outside looks at the resisting uninvited guest. After all, Bellevue should be the centre of democracy and debate.
Welcome to the kitchen table.
Steinmeier seeks not only the proximity of intellectuals, but besides the proximity of society. For example, it has a format called ‘Meeting at Coffee’, which means that it meets various people at the set table at its authoritative premises or during business trips. While his own press services during the first word of office (until 2022) besides made short films public, in the center placing the host; the continuation of these meetings was somewhat renamed the “Cash Debates” and the accounts of them match advertising spots less. These meetings are included in the “Local Time” programme devoted to Steinmeier's several-day stays in different regions. The way between typical and democratically integrated public sphere can be narrow.
During the beginning of this coffee cycle Steinmeier said in 2018 in accordance with the script of the speech: “For only if you sit at a table can you find various matters on this table – besides hard matters.”
He accepted this motto in his current election run as his Robert Habeck – as a PR tool. In ‘Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit’, Habermas describes this as a refeudalization formula, consisting in ‘assurance of electoral support by showing showy or manipulated publicity among media-styled audiences’. The deficiency of a "publicity" of political decision-making and a tiny discursive openness of political processes – that is, the pursuit of political actors and organizations to power – are masked in accordance with this explanation by the PR. Habermas writes: “The civic public sphere, in so far as it is shaped by public relations, takes on feudal features again: ‘Offers’ present typical exultations in front of customers willing to follow their voice. Publicity imitates this aura of individual prestige and supernatural authority, which erstwhile was given by a typical public sphere. In this sense, ‘refeuding the public sphere’ is the same as ‘integrating mass amusement and advertising, which, in the form of public relations [...], takes on a political character’.
Without going into the full genesis of the concept of “representative public sphere” which Habilitational work by Rüdiger Altmann (1954), it should be noted that the content parallels with the election run of the Alliance of 90 and the Green Chancellor candidate are fascinating. Bracelet with the inscription ‘Kanzler Era’[2] It was shown in a short, yet deleted video on the X platform, initiating its run in the form of a mixed subliminal image. Without the shadow of irony, Habeck praised in the ARD his talks at the kitchen table in Caren Miosgi's program as a “opening of the political cultural space”, in which besides “the Vice Chancellor and leading candidates perceive attentively”. Miosga then read to him the banal “questions asked at the kitchen table”, for example “the footwear utilized by him in the kitchen”. At this point, the program seemed as if its script had been invented in the editorial works of the right-wing populist NiUS channel Julian Reichelt as a starting point for his own propaganda aimed at ecological regulation, promoted by the Greens or as a satire titled “more incense please”.
On the “talk at the kitchen table” Habeck rides along with his own squad at the invitation of his interlocutors and interlocutors. Of course, it does not accept all invitations, and video documentation is usually limited to short summaries issued on candidate channels. The speakers, amazingly enough, cannot boast straight about Habeck and his ability to make contact "as equal as equal". He himself always reciprocates these commendations and pretends to introduce to the conversation fresh impressions. It's a media-designed identity fiction for advertising purposes. Why was the authentic format not adopted, based on the case, without its own squad and with full documentation? possibly Habeck would then find any angry citizens or, like Merkel, a “reem refugee”[3]. Rather, it focuses on fast success, and in this respect, as many indicate, it recognizes the trends of the era. Habeck announced on 9 December on Instagram that 3 million euros had already been collected from tiny donations, and 20 000 fresh members were enrolled in “Green”, as he briefly calls the party. It is “something not only extraordinary, it is something extraordinary.”
Circle of chairs alternatively of criticism
A organization convention was broadcast in full, at which the Alliance 90/Greens officially appointed Minister of Economy as their candidate for Chancellorship. The Democratic Party, coming from fresh social movements and the civilian movement of the GDR, granted its leader the support of 96 delegates (48%). Here, however, it was besides essential to simulate democratic standards, due to the fact that without it, the model of an obedient team, in which they sought refuge after fresh election disasters, would become besides visible. As in the case of large stone bands, which have been building (second) estrades among the audience for respective years, Habeck took part in talks in the mediate of the hall after giving his speech. The lights were extinguished, and the elected delegates did not throw at him, as they erstwhile threw at Joschka Fischer, bags filled with colored paint, but thanked the leader for listening to them ("Hey, Robert, thanks for having found the time).
Habeck, too, after little than an hr of intensive talks, was immersed in praise over the peace of the room, “the attention of the listeners” and “the ability to talk to 1 another”, and after all, organization reunions are mostly “insane”. No 1 thought – or at least it was not visible – that the personalization of the party, which began during the erstwhile elections with the election of a candidate to the office of Chancellor, made in an unpublished conversation between Baerbock and Habeck, possibly contradicted the primary values. Emphasizing emotions beyond proximity and the possible of power and success, equally impoverishing long-term reasoning promoting the sustainable improvement of a organization without wings.
What happens if the staging of specified an knowing of representation individual wants to sneakly disrupt, revealed another scene of a national conference of delegates. The unknown candidate Mathias Ilka stood for the board election. He criticized his own organization for its ecological and social inconsistency. Furthermore, Ilka went on to say to “Robert” that he knows many people who do not even have an flat where a conversation could take place at the “kitchen table”. The Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth reacted to this speech with violent shoulder swings, resembling the motion of car wipers, prying her remarks and not hiding from her friends the irritant behaviour of an undisciplined colleague. After his speech, she sought comfort in richly lined chocolate products, coming from a maker who inactive does large business with Russia. During the proceeding of Ilka by delegates, loud laughter was heard first, especially Roth's laughter, which pointed to the responder. erstwhile the camera turned to the speaker, this 1 said: “For me all people have the same value, I can say nothing else.”
This re-feuding staging can produce effects in the short term, but it destroys the image of an equal and democratic organization in the long term, due to the fact that political integration remains shallow and coupled with distorted projection surfaces. In this sense, putting on a typical public sphere is not a appropriate consequence to reactionary and anti-democratic challenges within and outside liberal democracies. During the 2013 election campaign, the CDU showed a large-sized poster in Berlin with Merkel laying her hands in a typical diamond shape. She won, but at the same time the triumphant march of the far right AfD began. At the beginning of January 2025, the Alliance 90/Greens illuminate the triumph Gate in Munich with a large projected image of Habeck, removed later on request by the police. Who at Spiegel-Online read the account on this subject could see another 1 of the latest news at the same time: "A retreat from moderation and checking facts: Mark Zuckerberg announces a change of course on Facebook and Instagram".
In late January Friedrich Merz showed where personalized loyalty models could lead. He imitated Donald Trump's decision-making firmness, broke with his old promises, referred to the experiential will of the people and enabled majority decisions together with the far-right AfD. Plebiscite leadership democracy is simply a more authoritarian version of identity fiction – so in a sense related to a romb (Angeli Merkel), a kitchen table and infantile stagings.
translated by Tadeusz Zatorski
[1] See the Habermas theory, its concepts and their Polish counterparts. Paweł Ciołkiewicz, Structural changes in the public sphere according to Jürgen Habermas – concept, criticism, applications, in ‘Media, Culture, Society’ No. 1 (4), 2009, 175–189. The text is besides available here: https://bazhum.muzhp.pl/media/files/Media_Cultura_Cultura/Media_Cultura_Cultura-r2009-t-n1_(4)/Media_Cultura_Cultura-r2009-t-n1_(4)-s175-189/Media_Cultura_Cultura_Cultura-r2009-t-n1_(4)-s175-189.pdf (p.m.).
[2] A word game readable primarily for the recipients of mass culture. In German ‘era’ is ‘die Ära’. By changing this spelling, Habeck's place authors referred to the concept of "the era" present in the interpretations of Taylor Swift's work: as "the era" the various stages of her work are defined there. And that's how it's written, the word circulates in the atmosphere of fans of the singer, frequently exchanging self-made bracelets. “In the case of Habeck’s bracelet, therefore, the phrase “Kanzler Era” would mean that in a career politics is coming to run the office of Chancellor (among others).
[3] exile Reem – Reem Sahwil, who came to Germany as a 15-year-old from Lebanon in 2019. She had the chance to meet Angela Merkel, whom she told about her destiny as a Palestinian immigrant and about her fear of deportation. At 1 point, she cried, and Merkel tried to calm her – rather unsuccessfully – which made the relation from the gathering quite a few interest. yet Sahwil and her household were allowed to stay in Germany. Reem returned to the top of the newspapers after the Hamas attack on Israel, erstwhile she began publishing anti-Semitic slogans denying the State of Israel any right to exist. It has thus become a symbol of the unpleasant surprises that, sometimes late, bring with them specified spontaneous meetings of politicians with “victims” of various injustices (among others).
