Press wars - Bild vs. TAZ (Berlin)

CHECKPOINT CHARLIE is one of those must-see tourist attractions that are best avoided. This crossing-point between the old East and West Berlin features hordes of teenagers and street vendors selling communist paraphernalia. But a detour to nearby Kochstrasse is worthwhile, for it forms a checkpoint of its own—the front line in a culture war featuring two big newspaper names: Bild Zeitung, Germany's leading tabloid, owned by Axel Springer, and the left-wing Tageszeitung (TAZ). On January 21st the district's residents joined the battle by voting to rename part of the street Rudi Dutschke Strasse, after the 1968 student leader shot by a Bild-reader.

Although the two arch-enemies have lived within a stone's throw of each other for a decade, relations have been mostly peaceful. Even many on the left have now made their peace with Bild, which with a circulation of 3.5m is Germany's biggest daily paper. Journalists read the paper to keep in touch with ordinary folk. Politicians use it to get their message across. More recently, the Springer group's chief executive, Mathias Döpfner, agreed to a joint interview in Der Spiegel, a weekly, with Günter Grass, a writer who was a hero of the 1968 generation.

The TAZ, for its part, has gained some respect on the right. After years of internal chaos and catering to leftist groups, it entered the mainstream in the early 1990s. As its clientele grew richer, the newspaper even made its unusual business model work: a relative lack of capital (the TAZ is a co-operative with more than 7,000 members) and low advertising revenues are compensated for by a loyal 50,000-strong subscriber base and low pay (though employees no longer all take the same salary).

Yet relations have deteriorated again, perhaps because both publications are past their prime. Despite its jazzing-up, the TAZ has never moved beyond its traditional (now ageing) readership. Critics argue that the newspaper's campaign for Rudi Dutschke Strasse was largely a nostalgic public-relations ploy when there are few events still mobilising the left. It is certainly fun to force the Springer lot to reside on a street named for an arch-enemy.

Predictably, old reflexes have kicked in at Springer headquarters too. Springer and other businesses have gone to court, claiming that the renaming will be too costly (so delaying the erection of any new street signs). Nor did it help relations when the TAZ published a satirical story claiming that Mr Diekmann had undergone a penis enlargement in Florida. He sued, claiming that his personal rights had been violated, only to be told by a judge that, as editor of a newspaper that is in the “business of violating personal rights�, he must put up with such insults.

But this approach has triggered a new anti-Bild movement. By pointing out the newspaper's factual errors, BildBlog has become one of Germany's most popular blogs, chipping away at the widely held belief that Bild is at least put together by professionals, and giving ammunition for yet more ironic pieces in the TAZ whenever its neighbour gets into more trouble. Not that the TAZ should get cocky: it has yet to find a potion for second youth, even if its street address has become 23 Rudi Dutschke Strasse.

In 1968, he (Rudi Dutschke) survived an assassination attempt by a right-wing extremist, living for another twelve years until related health problems caused his death.
The public assessment of Rudi Dutschke's political activities has undergone several changes, from the very aggressive condemnation by the Springer Press in the 1960s to a broad recognition today that the movement for which Dutschke was a leading spokesperson played an essential role in the democratization of German institutions in the post-World War II period.