[발췌] Industrieentwicklung, Promotion of Industry: An Anglo-German Dialogue (2009)

출처: Franz Bosbach, John R. Davis, Andreas Fahrmeir, ed., Industrieentwicklung, Promotion of Industry: An Anglo-German Dialogue (Walter de Gruyter, 2009)

자료: 구글도서

of which: Dominik Geppert, 

"Panacea or Charlantanry? Thatcherism in German Political Debate

※ 발췌(excerpts): 

For a long time, there was no serious political debate about Thatcherism in Germany. Thatcherism was associated with unfettered capitalism, massive social cut-backs, strategies of political confrontation and what the former British Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis Healey called "sado monetarism"[1] More importantly for the subject of this volume, it could be argued that Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister, far from promoting industry, actually presided over a period of dramatic de-industrialisation in Britain.

As post-war Germany has always been extremely proud of its industrial power, extensive welfare state, social market economy, and consensus politics, Thatcherism, and all its unpleasant attributes, were something that Germans would not seriously discuss as a remedy for their own country's political, economic, or social ills. The former Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt once referred to Thatcher as a "rhinoceros", and the prominent journalist Rudolf Augstein, editor of ^Spiegel^ news magazine, called her a "self-righteous housewife". Referring to Thatcher's market-oriented industrial policy, the German Social Democrat Peter Glotz criticised her for turning Britain into an aircraft carrier for Japanese firms.[2]

Disapproval was not confined to the political left, where it could be expected. Right-of-centre politicians in Germany were nearly as disparaging as their left-wing colleagues. Towards the end of his period in office Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl, for instance, used to put forward Thatcher's Britain as an example of unbridled capitalism which should not be followed. The former chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary party, Friedrich Merz, was criticising his party's lack of "Thatcherite" reformist zeal by suggesting that a Social Democrat would rather profess his faith in Fidel Castro than a Christian Democrat in Margaret Thatcher. And indeed, when Edmund Stoiber, the former Barvarian Minister-President, travelled to London as candidate for the Chancellorship in 2002 he was very keen to stress that he would much refer to work with Tony Blair's New Labour than with Thatcher' heirs in the Tory Party.[3]

It was only between the Bundestag elections of September 2002 and September 2005 that this gap abruptly closed. The Iron Lady was enjoying a veritable renaissance in Germany. She became an object of admiration, mainly amongst Christian Democrats, but elsewhere too. The most notable case in point was the Federal President, Horst Koehler, who advised the CDU leader, Angela Merkel, to take Thatcher's reforms as a model for her own politics.[4] And Merkel, though publicly distancing herself from Thatcher, seemed indeed to be playing with the role model of radical reformer in the Iron Lady mouldㅡso much so tht some of her political opponents dubbed her the "Maggie of Mecklenburg" and both the domestic and the international press began to run stories about the "Iron Maiden" from Temlin.[5] ( ... ... )