'Nazi' claim as Germans rebel over smoking ban

Outrage greets change to the law - and drinkers forced to cross the border

Kate Connolly in Berlin
Sunday January 20, 2008
The Observer

As he peers through his swollen eyes and shows his bruises to a group of journalists, Gerhard Grünberg is bemused at the way in which he has secured his few minutes of fame. The waiter, 57, was the first reported victim of 'bar rage' in Germany after smoking bans were introduced in bars and restaurants across the country on 1 January.

He explains how he politely ushered a smoker outside the Vienna Bar in which he works in southern Berlin, pointing out to him the couch, red blanket and gas heater set up for smokers. 'But the man said I was taking away his rights, and then he threw the punch,' he recalls.

The new law has triggered a rebellion and many people have taken drastic and imaginative measures so they can continue smoking.

One campaigner went as far as to issue a T-shirt bearing a yellow star of David along with the word 'smoker', comparing the 'persecution' of smokers to that of Jews under the Nazis. The outrage of Jewish groups led to its withdrawal.

Refusing to face reality, some pub and club owners have even tried to turn their establishments into member-owning smoking clubs, like Hamburg's Association for the Preservation of Smoke Culture and Advancement of Tolerance.

The owner of the Mouse Trap pub in Schleswig-Holstein has lodged an application to turn it into a church. 'I consider the burning of tobacco to be a religious practice,' said Dirk Bruckner, who already boasts around 400 followers.

While smoking in bars is technically already illegal, fines of between €5 and €100 for those who continue to light up will not be implemented until July, when orderlies will be sent to inspect establishments. As a result, many Berliners in particular - considered to have one of the most pronounced counter-cultures of any city in Europe and therefore used to putting up a fight - are holding out until then. So where you can smoke and where you cannot could hardly be more confusing.

'We're not really thinking about it until the summer,' said the manager of Diskothek 103 in the traditional anarchists' heartland, Kreuzberg. 'Then we might build a separate smokers' lounge.'

Indeed, another quirk in the law, allowing smokers into establishments with separate rooms, has led to an explosion of creative solutions, from no-smoker tunnels now being mass-produced out of plaster cast to mobile smoker rooms, complete with DJ and sofas, which are touring the city picking up disgruntled smokers.

The reason for Germans' refusal to take lying down a law that has now become the norm even in European nations that have traditionally taken pride in their subversiveness - such as Italy, Ireland and Scotland - is repeatedly put down to German history.

Campaigners for smokers' rights have been quick to draw on the comparison between the recent clampdown and the little-known nationwide tobacco ban introduced by the Nazis in 1941 as part of their quest for bodily and racial purity.

While few Germans would dare to point it out publicly, for fear of appearing to praise the Nazi era, some of the most advanced research into the links between tobacco consumption and lung cancer was carried out under the Nazis.

Under the supervision of the Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research, the ban was imposed in every public building and public space, including air-raid shelters, with Hitler even personally intervening in 1944 to ensure it was extended to trains and buses in order to protect young female conductors. It was even pointed out that Hitler, Mussolini and Franco were all non-smokers, while the 'evil enemies' - Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin - all enjoyed a tobacco fix.

'Some feel a deep necessity nowadays to distance themselves from the Nazi position - according to which cigarettes were damaging to the idea of the "ideal German Aryan" - and to stand up in favour of smokers' rights because that equates to standing up for democracy and the freedom of expression,' says Bernd Schmidt, 38, a member of a newly founded Berlin smoking club. 'But the fact is, for many, they just like their cigarettes too much.'

The renowned British musician Joe Jackson, a defender of smokers' rights who has recently moved from New York to Kreuzberg, says the ban goes against the city's famously rebellious and relaxed nature. 'It is a catastrophic development for Berlin, much worse than for other cities, because this city was always a symbol of freedom and tolerance... It has bars that never close, brothels, clubs in which people have sex... everything is allowed, but smoking is forbidden? It makes no sense,' he told the German newspaper TAZ

But a handful of the one third-plus of Germans who smoke have taken to leaving the country. Bars on the Polish side of the border are full of Germans coming to enjoy their customary cigarette. In the London Pub in Slubice, across the river from Frankfurt an der Oder, a group of middle-aged Germans are swigging and puffing to their hearts' content. 'It's just like in the old days,' says Dieter Neubauer, who strolled over the border after work.

I visited Berlin in 1993.

I wasn't there long, but I realized quickly that it was extremely, extremely liberal. I don't mean that in the way that you hear on Rush Limbaugh. I mean it was "liberal" in terms of the dictionary definition of the word "liberal"; closer to anarchy. Do whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want.

My German friend guided me down an empty alley to a smashed whole in the side of an old brick building. Had to duck down to three feet and walk about ten feet that way. I thought he was leading into a condemned pile of rubble, but I lifted my head to find a hopping, makeshift bar going on, full of people, inside an abandoned, cement room.

Weird and fun as Hell. Had a great time.

I've heard that the strongest resistance to smoking bans has been in Germany. Makes sense; that's where the wall fell, and that's where Hitler took power. They know this shit quite well.