The EconomistSeptember 7th 2019 Europe 332 option seems to be a “Kenya” coalition with
the spdand the Greens (the parties’ colours
match the country’s flag), which would
leave more parties sitting in government
than outside it. Big differences over educa-
tion, policing and energy will hamper the
negotiations; success is not guaranteed. A
similar combination looks possible in
Brandenburg. A Kenya coalition in neigh-
bouring Saxony-Anhalt has been a miser-
able experience for everyone. But awkward
governing contraptions are increasingly
unavoidable if the afdis to be kept out of
office, as all other parties insist. By the
year’s end four of the five states of the for-
mer East Germany may be run by three-
party coalitions. That bolsters the afd’s
claim to be the only genuine alternative.
Many members of the Saxon cdu, per-
haps the country’s most conservative
branch, grumble about the cordon sanitaire
their leadership has erected around the
afd. But the populists’ radicalisation
makes co-operation impossible: Andreas
Kalbitz, the afd’s leader in Brandenburg,
was plagued throughout the campaign by
evidence of past links to neo-Nazi groups.
That he nonetheless secured a score of
24%, including 100,000 previous non-vot-
ers, ought to concentrate minds. The party
doubled its score in Brandenburg, and
nearly tripled it in Saxony. In Saxony it
came first among every age group below
- This may represent the limit of its sup-
port, which has in fact been flat for two
years. But electoral maps of the two states
show their eastern halves painted almost
entirely in the party’s royal blue.
That has fuelled an anxious national
conversation about the persistence of Ger-
many’s east-west divisions. November 9th
will mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of
the Berlin Wall (just two weeks after Thu-
ringia, a third eastern state, holds an elec-
tion). What ought to be a moment to cele-
brate German unity may become an
occasion to highlight its rifts. 7
Phew!Source: Wahlrecht.de *Provisional results †126 seatsGermany, state elections, seats in parliament*Brandenburg ,total seats=88Saxony,total seats=119CDU
AfD Die LinkeSPD Greens
BVB/Free voters20142019 25 15 10 23 10 530 17 21 11 6 3Possible coalition Majority2014†2019 45 12 10 38 1459 18 27 14 8Possible coalition MajorityT
o grasp thepast and the hoped-for fu-
ture of Katowice, visit Bogucice. The
Warszawa II coal mineshaft, the largest of
the southern Polish city’s old Hard Coal
Mine, has long dominated this northern
district. Its skeleton and giant winch-
wheel loom over a tangle of highways and
communist-era tower blocks. Such, for de-
cades, was the image of the capital of the
coal-mining region of Silesia: unbeautiful-
ly industrial, pollution-scarred and hope-
lessly reliant on hydrocarbon. When, last
December, it hosted the latest global cli-
mate conference, it seemed a preposterous
choice. In the week beforehand, Green-
peace reported, it had the second-worst air
quality of any city in the eu.
Poland is an environmental laggard. Its
right-populist government remains emo-
tionally fond of coal and resists tighter eu
rules on emissions. Mateusz Morawiecki,
its prime minister, wants to make Katowice
the backdrop to his party’s anti-greenery
campaign in parliamentary elections in
October; he has chosen Katowice as the
constituency from which to run for a new
seat. And yet it is worth paying attention to
attempts to reinvent Katowice.
What is now Katowice was for centuries
a cluster of German farms that passed be-
tween Polish, Czech, Austrian and Prussian
control. From 1839 Franz Winkler, an in-
dustrialist, turned these into a coal-mining
metropolis by basing his empire there. Therailway came, then city status and then,
after unification under Bismarck, “Germa-
nising” cultural institutions like schools
and a theatre. Polish-ising institutions fol-
lowed when this part of Silesia became part
of the young Polish republic in 1922, still
evident today in the rational lines of the Si-
lesian Parliament and the New York-style
“Cloud Scraper” tower block. The latter was
briefly used as a sniper station in 1939 when
the Germans invaded.
The ravages of first Nazi and then com-
munist control deprived the city of many of
its most beautiful buildings. Since the fall
of communism the city has slowly come to
terms with the decline and closure of many
of the mines that had thundered and
churned since Winkler’s time.
Katowice’s leaders are inspired by the
post-industrial reinvention of cities like
Glasgow, Lille and Essen, but especially Bil-
bao. The Basque city has used cultural in-
stitutions like its monumental outpost of
the Guggenheim Museum to strike out on a
new path since the 1990s. Katowice wants
to do the same with the National Polish Ra-
dio Symphony Orchestra on the site of the
old kwkKatowice coal mine in Bogucice
and the new Silesian Museum in Warszawa
II nearby. New cycle paths twist through
the city’s centre, parks have been devel-
oped and former industrial sites like the
Guido mine in Zabrze have reopened as
tourist attractions. New business parks on
the city’s fringes are speeding its transition
from mining (only two of the once dozens
of shafts are still open) to services.
Many cities want to achieve the “Bilbao
effect”. Doing so takes an alchemical mix of
creativity, ambition and luck. But Katowice
stands a chance. Even by the standards of
Poland’s booming economy, it is doing very
well. Overall unemployment is low (2.3%),
and the city’s squares, not to mention its
futuristic Galeria Katowicka shopping cen-
tre, teem with workers and shoppers. Not
for them the empty streets and boarded-up
shops of other former coal-mining regions
of Europe.
Can it last? The Polish boom will not en-
dure forever. The final mines will eventual-
ly close. With its mighty unions and vener-
ation of Saint Barbara (the patron saint of
miners), Katowice remains at heart a coal
city. But Alicja Knast, the director of the Si-
lesian Museum, reckons it can reinvent it-
self. The city passed through many hands
over the centuries. It has experimented
with various religions. Once Protestant, it
is now Catholic. It hosted an important
congress in the development of Zionism
and is home to Poland’s first Buddhist tem-
ple. Poland’s first big hip-hop artists, Ka-
liber 44 and Paktofonika, emerged from its
reacquaintance with capitalist forces in the
1990s. Surveying the city’s history from the
mighty Warszawa II mine, Ms Knast is opti-
mistic: “I’m not worried at all.” 7KATOWICE
An occasional series on European
countries’ tenth-largest citiesThe tenth city: KatowiceSilesian synthesis