EXBERLINER Issue 163, September 2017
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ELECTION <strong>2017</strong><br />
POLITICS ON THE STREET<br />
Signs of<br />
the times<br />
“<br />
Even in the digital age, political parties rely<br />
on posters as the surest way to reach voters.<br />
Over 200,000 placards line Berlin’s streets this<br />
election season, put up by eager volunteers<br />
or the candidates themselves. As the starting<br />
whistle blew on the campaign back in August,<br />
Malte Rohwer-Kahlmann joined party members<br />
for the postering ritual.<br />
These old lanterns are always crumbling,” says Astrid<br />
Hollmann, as she rubs tiny pieces of rubble out of<br />
her eyes. It’s a mild August Saturday evening. Next<br />
to her, on the ladder she holds with her left hand, stands<br />
59-year-old Peter Fäßler. Pliers stick out of the back pocket<br />
of his saggy jeans. He’s got a piece of cable in his mouth as<br />
he fumbles to tie a cardboard poster to the street lantern.<br />
Hollmann and Fäßler are SPD militants. Tonight, they have<br />
volunteered to put up some 30 out of the 47,000 posters the<br />
party is planning to hang around the city.<br />
Every four years, on a Saturday exactly seven<br />
weeks from the Bundestagswahl, volunteers<br />
from all parties meet up to prepare for the<br />
action: it’s postering night! Officially, they’re<br />
supposed to wait until 12am Sunday to start<br />
spreading their political gospel. In reality, a lot<br />
of the action goes down well before midnight.<br />
Since it’s a first-come, first-served game and<br />
all parties that have filed the paperwork can<br />
participate, it makes sense to start early to grab<br />
the best spots. So at 9pm on August 5, Mitte’s<br />
Münzstraße is already covered with the face<br />
of SPD candidate Eva Högl. On nearby Schönhauser<br />
Allee, two fortysomething Free Democrats<br />
(FDP) are busy adding their own candidate’s<br />
portrait to the cityscape. In a rented<br />
DriveNow convertible with a small stepladder<br />
on the back seat, they hop up the avenue, stopping<br />
at every lamppost in a well-coordinated<br />
drive-hang-go duet. They started at 9:30pm<br />
and, at this tempo, it shouldn’t take them long<br />
to cover their 4km patch. Taking a small break,<br />
they ask a passerby to take a picture of them<br />
Big parties<br />
and their<br />
Berlin ads<br />
under the poster they just put up: a black-and-white picture<br />
of candidate Christoph Meyer with the slogan “Tegelretter”<br />
(Tegel saviour) that hangs less than two metres above the<br />
ground. Most parties prefer hanging the posters high so that<br />
they don’t get stolen or torn down, but the duo isn’t worried:<br />
“We’re a small party, we have a small ladder,” they joke. All in<br />
all, the FDP is planning to put up 8000 posters across Berlin.<br />
SPD:<br />
47,000 posters<br />
700 billboards<br />
CDU:<br />
50,000 posters<br />
1000 billboards<br />
Die Linke:<br />
42,250 posters<br />
300 billboards<br />
Die Grünen:<br />
28,000 posters<br />
250 billboards<br />
FDP:<br />
8000 posters<br />
350 billboards<br />
The SPD machine<br />
Hollmann and Fäßler indeed have a taller ladder. The two are part<br />
of a well-oiled machine by which hundreds of SPD volunteers will<br />
put up their party’s posters. Fäßler is responsible for overseeing<br />
the collective effort around Rosenthaler Straße: assigning teams<br />
to streets, ensuring enough ladders and other equipment are at<br />
hand, pre-sorting posters and cable ties. He also rented a station<br />
wagon, which he’s now driving down an empty side street at walking<br />
speed. The ladder that stretches from the back to the front of<br />
the car rattles in sync with the cobblestones beneath<br />
as Fäßler and Hollmann search for the right<br />
spot. Street lanterns with road signs on them are<br />
off limits. So are traffic lights, trees and “posterfree<br />
zones” specified by the neighbourhood (a<br />
designation applied, for example, to the lanterns<br />
around Charlottenburg’s Savignyplatz or the area<br />
in front of the Jewish Museum in Kreuzberg).<br />
“You hang up a poster and all of a sudden<br />
politics become visible,” marvels Hollmann.<br />
She darts across the road to the car and grabs<br />
some more cable ties out of the open boot.<br />
“It’s like an analogue Facebook post,” she<br />
adds. When she first joined the SPD in 2007,<br />
she remembers, she couldn’t wait for the first<br />
election, so she could finally go plakatieren. She<br />
enjoys the togetherness of it, she says. Fäßler<br />
isn’t into small talk, but a boyish sparkle in his<br />
eyes gives away that he’s having fun as well.<br />
The two climb up many more lanterns that<br />
night, often debating how high their poster<br />
should hang or which direction it should face.<br />
After three hours and 30 posters tightly fastened,<br />
they’re done. “That’s it,” says Fäßler and lights<br />
a cigarillo. “What a shame… it’s over again,” Hollmann sighs.<br />
“But I’ll go to sleep tonight with the good feeling that I’ve done<br />
something for democracy.” She ran for office in the local Berlin<br />
elections last year, campaigned hard, but eventually lost to the<br />
Green candidate. In four years’ time, she wants to try again.<br />
A few blocks away, Eva Högl herself is out on the streets. “I<br />
always participate in this, it’s part of running for office,” says<br />
Ruth Schneider<br />
Right: Bergpartei’s<br />
Beni Richter in<br />
front of his party’s<br />
handiwork: “Don’t<br />
let the scene get<br />
cleaned up.”<br />
14<br />
<strong>EXBERLINER</strong> <strong>163</strong>