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The Clown Army has been on the march only since the summer of 2005, but already the state it protects is in imminent peril -- Christiania, a 34-hectare, 35-year-old experiment in communal life, the self-governing "freetown" in the heart of Denmark's capital. ... ...despite its best efforts, it becomes an army-in-exile at midnight tonight -- because, officially, today is the final day in the life of the freetown. On Jan. 1, the roughly 900 members of the collective, the neighbourhood's fundamental organizing entity, become individuals under a Danish law passed in 2004.
"It's our whole life and our whole way of living they want to attack," says Peter Plett, who has lived in the freetown since its founding. Christiania might be the last gasp of 1960s-style idealism, or it might be the final unincorporated corner of the consumerist West -- or both -- but it is, at any rate, the last stand of a certain kind of freedom. Its passing would not be incidental.
The new law is one of a host of ways that Denmark's centre-right coalition government has deviated sharply from the orderly social democracy that has characterized Scandinavian politics for the past 50 years. Since it swept to power on a wave of anti-immigration sentiment shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, the regime has moved issues of nationalism and the rule of law to the centre of Danish politics, and the room for oddities like Christiania has shrunk dramatically.
"They will kill the idea of Christiania," says Mr. Plett, who serves in the negotiating group meeting with the government to discuss the implementation of the new law.
Bulldozers may not arrive at dawn to demolish the couple of dozen homes that have been ruled illegal -- Christianites have a year to come into compliance.
But there is a sense that something irreplaceable soon will be lost. The phrase "anarchist commune" -- evoking ramshackle crash pads and short-lived country encampments -- can't account for the elaborate, enduring structure and broad scope of the Christiania experiment.
Here, a short walk from the heart of one of Europe's most obsessively orderly capitals, lies a sprawling warren of funky loft apartments and eclectic, handmade showpiece homes, but no private property. A functioning urban neighbourhood that -- but for the most basic of services like water and power -- regulates everything from its commerce to its recycling via public meetings, citizens' committees, and direct democracy. A truly communal, all-but-lawless, free city.
Was it inevitable, then, that the order it so openly challenged would eventually demand the last word on its fate?
At its core, this is a story about freedom and control -- and how the latter appears to be trumping the former in this anxious and unstable age. It might seem a trivial matter whether a quirky collective in a colourful little corner of Copenhagen survives. But Christiania's crisis echoes many of the explosive forces that are convulsing cities and tearing old social fabrics to shreds across Europe. ...
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posted 01 January 2006 12:08 AM
