By Alexander Smoltczyk in Rome
The journey through Berlusconistan ends where every Grand Tour ends, on the Gulf of Naples, where Mt. Vesuvius towers threateningly over Italy's most impossible city, and where the islands of Capri and Ischia can barely be made out in the hazy light above the waves.
When we meet Peter Kammerer, he is wearing a light-colored linen suit. In the 1970s, he and Ekkerhart Krippendorf wrote the bible of the Tuscany faction, the "Travel Guide to Italy," published by Germany's Rotbuch Verlag. A first generation of Germans, Kammerer's book in hand, hitchhiked down to the utopia on the other side of the Brenner Pass, to red Bologna and Unità. Once across the border, they discovered all the things that didn't exist in the typical middle-class German city: class-conscious workers, cooperatives, anti-psychiatrists, cheap wine and free drugs.
Kammerer is a sociologist who wears his hair closely cropped and roams the sociotopes of Italy while conversing in his lively southern German accent. He is currently staging a performance with Neapolitan youth that draws heavily on Pasolini and German dramatist Heiner Müller.
"In the 1980s, the Italian left saw Germany as a fascist country. Everyone said that authoritarian structures were unthinkable in Italy. Well, today, Italy has become sinister for us Germans," Kammerer says cheerfully. "Back in the 1980s, I abandoned the notion that everything could be better here."
Italy, the Political Laboratory
Today, Kammerer still commutes between homes in Umbria, Naples and Berlin. Italy, he says, is like a giant Alexander Calder mobile: Everything is moving, and its dynamics are unpredictable, but in the end the structure is very secure -- provided, that is, that no individual part is too large. Questions of style, says Kammerer, are very important in Italy, and the things Berlusconi gets away with today could cost him his head tomorrow.
Italy has always been a political laboratory. Hitler studied Mussolini, leftists admired Euro-communism, and Germany's Red Army Faction terrorist group looked up to Italy's Red Brigades. According to Kammerer, Germany could have its own Berlusconi in 10 years. The symptoms are already recognizable: the SPD's plunge in popularity, the lack of substance in all political platforms, the arbitrariness of discourse and the mediocrity of politicians.
For this reason, says Kammerer, it is important to study Italy, to visit people like Sandra Canes and Nichi Vendola, and to listen to what Giuliano Ferrara and auto parts dealers have to say.
Berlusconi is not Italy's sickness. Italians look at him as if they were looking into an omnipresent mirror, sometimes horrified, not always willingly and constantly concerned about what could be hiding behind it.
It is precisely because of its outrages and impertinences that Italy still holds a fascination for Kammerer. "Nothing here is unambiguous," he says. "For example, I am in favor of corruption. If rules are too rigid, one has to step across boundaries, or else vitality quickly falls by the wayside. Corruption prevents standards from being enforced."
And standardization, Kammerer believes, spells a loss of charm. In this sense, Europe needs this country more than ever -- as an imposition and a laboratory, as a challenge and a rehearsal stage where things are presented in grotesquely exaggerated form. It's good to know that something else exists only an hour's flight away. Italy is still an exciting country, says Kammerer, and it's worth careful observation.
"What do I love about Italy? That's easy," says Kammerer. "You can't depend on anything in this country." Not even the truth. And not even the country's demise."
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan.
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