The much-ballyhooed health care reform plan approved by Merkel's cabinet and
immediately panned by health specialists and opposition politicians as lacking
grander vision, slipped into the headlines on July 3, as the nation readied
itself for the nerve-racking semifinal a day later.
But political science professor Peter L?sche says the measures agreed on by
the coalition government are but small steps, and points out that it could have
taken the opportunity to decide on more incisive, and necessary, reforms.
"If they were going to instrumentalize the World Cup as a distraction, they
could have taken some bigger steps, and made bigger (reforms)," says Dr. L?sche,
at the University of G?ttingen.
The moves didn't go unnoticed in Dortmund, however, a former mining and
brewery town that registered an 18.1 percent unemployment rate last year. In the
blue-collar neighborhood around Borsigplatz in the north of the city, landscape
engineer Andreas Claesener leaned against a park maintenance building and railed
against the government's tax increase. Employed part time but still receiving a
monthly welfare check, Mr. Claesener said that for all its good times, the World
Cup created a lot of artificial optimism.
"Eventually we'll have to go back to our daily lives," he says. "And I think
it'll be double the disappointment, because there will no longer be something
like [the World Cup] on which to pull yourself up."
Supermarket employee Christoph Hinsberger agreed. Soccer can't create jobs,
he says: "Only the people in the managerial offices can do that.
"I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist," he continues, walking along a path
outside the Westfalen Stadium. "And I think everyone will see it similarly in a
couple of weeks."
Even Germans who are more optimistic agree that the very real concerns facing
workers like Claesener and Mr. Hinsberger won't be satiated by the good vibes
and rah-rah feelings of the past few weeks.
"When the celebrations are over, they're over," says Gunter Gebauer, a
well-known German philosopher who has written a book on the poetry of soccer.
But he says that the World Cup gave Germans a glimpse of who they want to - and
could - be.
"Germans tend to have a negative image of themselves," says Mr. Gebauer.
"But for four weeks, the image that Germans had always wanted of themselves
became a reality. When something like that happens, you don't forget it so
quickly. You want to have it again."
