Michael Naumann
Encyclopedia
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
secretary of culture from 1998 until 2001. He is married to Marie Warburg, daughter of Eric Warburg and granddaughter of Max Warburg
Max Warburg
Max M. Warburg was a German-born Jewish banker and from 1910 until 1938, director of M.M.Warburg & CO in Hamburg, Germany. Prior to his directing of the Warburg banking company, he developed apprenticeships in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris, and London...
.
Education
Naumann graduated with a Ph.D. (Dr.) in political science from Munich University in 1969 and continued his studies as a Florey scholar at Queen's College, Oxford. Naumann wrote his dissertation on Karl KrausKarl Kraus
Karl Kraus was an Austrian writer and journalist, known as a satirist, essayist, aphorist, playwright and poet. He is regarded as one of the foremost German-language satirists of the 20th century, especially for his witty criticism of the press, German culture, and German and Austrian...
's Der Abbau der verkehrten Welt ("On overcoming a wrong world"), his habilitation on Structural Change of Heroism, from Sacred to Profane in 1978; he has also written a number of academic essays on theories of revolution.
In publishing and the media
Naumann worked for Der SpiegelDer Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
and still does for Die Zeit
Die Zeit
Die Zeit is a German nationwide weekly newspaper that is highly respected for its quality journalism.With a circulation of 488,036 and an estimated readership of slightly above 2 million, it is the most widely read German weekly newspaper...
, for the latter mainly as a publisher. In 1985 Naumann became Publisher of the publishing house Rowohlt Verlag. In 1995 he went to New York, first leading Metropolitan Books, then Henry Holt. He hosted a highbrow political talk show in German television, Talk im Palais from 2004 until becoming SPD candidate for mayor in 2007.
Secretary of Culture
Between 1998 and 2001, he served as the first Secretary of Culture (German title: Beauftragter der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien) for the federal government before returning to the publishing world. His most remembered act is declining the first design for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of EuropeMemorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe , also known as the Holocaust Memorial , is a memorial in Berlin to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, designed by architect Peter Eisenman and engineer Buro Happold. It consists of a site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or "stelae", arranged in a...
in Berlin on grounds of its monumental abstraction, and choosing the second proposed design by Peter Eisenman
Peter Eisenman
Peter Eisenman is an American architect. Eisenman's professional work is often referred to as formalist, deconstructive, late avant-garde, late or high modernist, etc...
instead, including an underground "Ort der Information", a place of information, which provides the visitors with introductory informations on the history of the Holocaust.
Mayor candidate in Hamburg
In late 2007 Naumann became the official Social Democratic Party of GermanySocial Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
candidate for the mayor election in Hamburg 2008 on February 24 that year.
The 2008 election in Hamburg caused setbacks for the Social Democrats in advance. After a recent election
Hesse state election, 2008
The state election to elect members of the Landtag of Hesse was held in the German state of Hesse on 27 January 2008.-Background and issues:...
in Hesse
Hesse
Hesse or Hessia is both a cultural region of Germany and the name of an individual German state.* The cultural region of Hesse includes both the State of Hesse and the area known as Rhenish Hesse in the neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate state...
just a few weeks before, which failed to bring a majority to the Social Democrats, party head Kurt Beck
Kurt Beck
Kurt Beck is a German politician , serving as the Minister-President of Rhineland-Palatinate since 1994 and as President of the Bundesrat in 2000/01. On May 14, 2006, he succeeded Matthias Platzeck as Chairman of the German Social Democratic Party...
left it open to local Social Democrats in West Germany to form local Minority government
Minority government
A minority government or a minority cabinet is a cabinet of a parliamentary system formed when a political party or coalition of parties does not have a majority of overall seats in the parliament but is sworn into government to break a Hung Parliament election result. It is also known as a...
coalitions with the Greens
Alliance '90/The Greens
Alliance '90/The Greens is a green political party in Germany, formed from the merger of the German Green Party and Alliance 90 in 1993. Its leaders are Claudia Roth and Cem Özdemir...
and/or the FDP
Free Democratic Party (Germany)
The Free Democratic Party , abbreviated to FDP, is a centre-right classical liberal political party in Germany. It is led by Philipp Rösler and currently serves as the junior coalition partner to the Union in the German federal government...
that would be tolerated by the emerging, controversial Left Party
The Left (Germany)
The Left , also commonly referred to as the Left Party , is a democratic socialist political party in Germany. The Left is the most left-wing party of the five represented in the Bundestag....
(in eastern parts of Germany, full-blown coalitions with the Left Party's predecessor PDS had been commonplace for years since German reunification
German reunification
German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. The start of this process is commonly referred by Germans as die...
in 1990 but always taboo in the West). The election in Hamburg was not far off when Beck made these ambiguous statements in favor of such minority coalitions tolerated by the Left Party, whereas before, he had utterly denied it.
This caused a huge controversy in the media in the final crucial week of the Hamburg election, overshadowing the issues of Naumann's campaign themes - social welfare, better education, and improvement of Hamburg's infrastructure. A specially pronounced issue Naumann dwelled on during his campaign was acceptance of referendum
Referendum
A referendum is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal. This may result in the adoption of a new constitution, a constitutional amendment, a law, the recall of an elected official or simply a specific government policy. It is a form of...
s and honesty on behalf of the city's government, as incumbent conservative mayor Ole von Beust
Ole von Beust
Carl-Friedrich Arp Ole Freiherr von Beust, generally called Ole von Beust, born April 13, 1955, in Hamburg, Germany, was First Mayor of the city-state of Hamburg from 31 October 2001 to 25 August 2010, serving as President of the Bundesrat from 1 November 2007 on for one year...
was known for having had ignored a number of referendums and lying about the issues they were involved with, especially selling off of community property to private investors, such as the city's public state hospitals and parts of the Hamburg harbor.
Beck's ambiguous statements about local co-operations with the Left Party forced Naumann to repeatedly and adamantly deny any co-operation with the Left Party after the elections no matter what election results would follow, even going so far as stigmatizing them as Soviet Communists several times during his campaign, repeating the line, "I will say it in a way even they will understand: Nyet!" ("Ich sage es ihnen so, daß es sogar die zahlreichen alten Freunde [...] von der KPD
Communist Party of Germany
The Communist Party of Germany was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956...
unter ihnen verstehen: Nyet!") Naumann could credibly do so, as he emphasized having escaped the Communist regime of East Germany as a child with his family, and also because of his treatment of these issues as a journalist, such as when he had been the editor-in-chief of the Leftist, but strictly anti-Communist political journal Der Monat (founded by Melvin J. Lasky
Melvin J. Lasky
Melvin Jonah Lasky was an American journalist, intellectual, and member of the anti-Communist left. He was the older brother of the influential entertainment lawyer Floria Lasky and Joyce Lasky Reed, the President and founder of the Faberge Arts Foundation and former Director of European Affairs...
) from 1978 until 1987. von Beust retorted Naumann's authenticity on the issue by saying that he believed Naumann's personal honest intention on not co-operating with the Left Party, but alleged that it wouldn't be up to Naumann in the end, rather to "more radical" figureheads in the SPD.
Presenting himself as a liberal and honest, cosmopolitan intellectual throughout his campaign, Naumann personally invited bad luck when he proved not the best orator in public and in TV interviews; a TV clip of him stumbling and stuttering when asked to deliver a particularly short yet concise message about his campaign promises was uploaded to YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
numerous times. In above-mentioned interview, von Beust also mentioned a secret meeting between Berlin chapters of the SPD and the Left Party. Shortly thereafter, one reporter approached Naumann asking him whether he personally had been present at the meeting, to which Naumann indignantly swore "by the lives of my children" that he had not been there, which the media in turn generally took as a tasteless, pretentious kind of oath not to co-operate with the Left Party after the elections, even though Naumann had only spoken on whether he had been at that particular meeting. According to pollsters, approximately 3% of the crucial swing votes in the final week deserted the Social Democrats, and either stayed at home or switched to the conservatives. This deprived Naumann of the chances to form a coalition with the Greens.
Still, the election numbers in Hamburg were good for the Social Democrats. They gained 3% compared to 2004, and even about 10-15 percent compared to the polls made at the time when Naumann had been nominated as mayor candidate in late 2007. In fact, the only demographic that prevented Naumann from becoming mayor were senior citizens of 60 and older, which prompted Kurt Beck to say that the SPD would be "the coming force of the future" in Hamburg. Nevertheless, Naumann stuck to his promise not to form a coalition with the Left Party, or even just form a minority coalition with the Greens tolerated by the Left Party.
In the end Naumann's desired partners, the Greens sided with what they'd expressed as their second choice in advance, von Beust's conservative CDU
Christian Democratic Union (Germany)
The Christian Democratic Union of Germany is a Christian democratic and conservative political party in Germany. It is regarded as on the centre-right of the German political spectrum...
, even though this prior announcement during their campaign had cost them 2.7%, dropping from 12.3% in the previous 2004 elections down to 9.6%. According to the Statistical Office of Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein, almost all of the votes lost by the Greens went to the Left Party, in spite of Naumann's expressed appeal to the voters not to do so, repeatedly saying that "every single vote for the Left Party will be one more vote that will keep von Beust in office." ("Jede Stimme für die Linkspartei ist eine Stimme für den von-Beust-Senat.")
As he'd previously said, Naumann nonetheless took a seat in the SPD fraction of the Hamburg parliament directly after the elections that had taken place on February 24. On May 22, he announced to resign from his seat on June 15 to go back to his former occupation as publisher of Die Zeit.