Who Governs in Deep Crises?

The Berlin Republic of today is neither Weimar (1918–1932) nor Bonn (1949–1990). It is by all standards the best democracy ever on German soil. Nevertheless, during the COVID-19 crisis there was a shift from democracy as a mode of governance to what the controversial legal theorist Carl Schmitt (1922) affirmingly described as a “state of exception”; a state that is desired and approved by the people (through opinion polls). It was the hour of the executive. The parliament disempowered itself. There was very little, if any, contestation or deliberation during the first eight weeks of the COVID-19 crisis. This article reflects on the implications of this mode of governance on institutions and actors of democracy in Germany, and offers a way of assessing the wellbeing of democracies in times of deep crisis.

Das Berliner Schloss: mythologisches Relikt in einer mythenarmen Zeit

In 1990, Joachim Fest’s plea for the reconstruction of the Berlin City Palace unchained one of the most heated architectural debates in German history, a debate that has been raging on to this day. This so-called Stadtschlossdebatte not only testifies to the remarkable revival of the Prussian legacy after German Reunification, it is also symptomatic of the difficult search for identity by the new Berlin Republic. With its prevalent rhetoric of the ‘lost’ or ‘empty center,’ the debate is particularly suitable for an analysis of the imaginary mechanisms and strategies of fictionalization that are necessary for a political community to constitute itself. By means of a rhetorical analysis of the reconstruction debate, I argue that Prussia functions as a mythological relict in our alleged society without myths. In this regard, special attention is devoted to the Schlosssimulation of 1993 by the French artist Catherine Feff. Functioning as a phantasmatic projection screen, this fake city castle is used here as a starting point for a reflection on the constitutive relation between community and fiction. The article concludes with a coda on the Wrapped Reichstag by Christo and Jeanne-Claude.