Putting the party back in Partei

In music, there is a band called The Band. And in German politics, there is a party called The Party. In German, the word for political party is Partei. It is slightly different than the word for party, (surprise!) Party. Someone in the German language purity tower decided that these two very similar words could not be spelled the same way. I think that means that politics is not allowed to be confused with fun. There is a movement, however, to stir a little laughter back into politics. And they are having so much fun that you could just take them seriously.

The party is just called "Die Partei". The Party's platform is neither right nor left. It's just satire. They were founded by a satirical magazine called Titanic. The American equivalent would be a political party founded by The Onion.

To me, German politics seem to lack drama. There are no animals to represent parties and make for funny political cartoons. They just use colors. All the candidates' campaign posters look more or less the same - with photos of competent looking people in suits with earnest slogans (see my post Election day. It happened. for more). But the oddest part is that parties often form coalitions. Rather than hating their opponents for the dirty, mud-slinging scum bags they must be, these parties join forces and govern together. Right now, the CDU (right-ish) and the SPD (left-ish) are in a coalition. Maybe they still hate each others' guts, but they overcome those feelings to work together in a mature, adult manner. Funny.

Die Partei breaks the mold. Their agenda includes the following:

• Abolish daylight savings time
• Construct a wall on the border with Switzerland ("the Swiss have earned it")
• Cap personal assets at 1 million euros
• Allow fracking and apply it particularly to overweight environmental minister Peter Altmaier to unleash tremendous amounts of energy inside him
• Limit pay of executives to 25,000 times that of his/her (who are we kidding, his) worker's pay
• Initiate a war of agression against Lichtenstein 
• Put Angela Merkel on trial (there is a sub-committee called MILFs Against Merkel)
• Rebuild the Berlin Wall
• Change the voting age to 12-52 years. Anyone older than 52 shouldn't vote.

Hi Hintner!

Die Partei also has a youth wing, called the Hintner Jugend (Hintner youth). Hintner is the party's general secretary. The young members of the party have an official greeting: "Hi, Hintner!" I can only imagine them saying this in uniform, with feet together, shoulders back, arms stretched out at an angle, with goofy smiles and fingers waving crazily.

There are probably a lot of clever and funny points on the party's agenda that I don't appreciate. That's because I don't understand all the historical/political references and because I don't really get the German sense of humor. There's a stereotype out there that Germans don't have a sense of humor. I don't believe that. I do believe that in a culture where people don't laugh out loud in public (unless they are drunk) and a language with 15 letter words and layers upon layers of connotation, it's hard for anyone else to know what the punch line is.

It's even hard to know if Die Partei is a joke or not. Last year they were certified as a legitimate party. They won 0.2% of seats in the 2013 federal election, and one of Germany's seats in the 2014 European parliament elections. If this trend continues, in about 100 years we might have a Berlin Wall again, or a war against Lichtenstein. It's hard to know what the future holds. But for now, in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way, they are putting the party back in Partei.

Recruiting some Hintner youth at a Hannover street festival