Two Germanies and a major crisis. A dictionary of mistakes and fears

The black wave has been halted in Berlin thanks to the red wave and Elif Eralp, the Rosa Luxemburg with the Koran in place of Das Kapital; in Pomerania she met Manuela Schwesig, leader of a Social Democratic Party that remains popular; whilst Friedrich Merz’s weakness has become a source of stability: no one wants to take his place. Yet the crisis is far from over, because the ‘Grand Centre’ that has kept the country afloat is now shaking at its very foundations and rattling the whole of Europe. Is it all down to the car industry crisis? Hardly: it is an earthquake. Zero growth? Certainly, although this is nothing new; at the turn of the new century, now bereft of Helmut Kohl, Germany was labelled the ‘sick man of Europe’. The division between East and West? That too; with a 30 per cent income gap, reunification never really took place. Is the countryside encroaching on the city? That is nothing new either; it is happening everywhere on both sides of the Atlantic. But above all, there is the question of all questions: is a new Hitler really knocking at the Brandenburg Gate? Shouldn’t we perhaps be more concerned about France, where Marine Le Pen could win in a few months’ time? There are many reasons for Germany’s deep-seated unease; it is pointless to seek a single explanation. Rather, we must examine the way in which the Zeitgeist is understood, interpreted and experienced in the largest, most powerful (even today), restless and unsettling country in Europe. To do this, we have selected a number of key words and definitions in German, because that language has more words than Italian (400,000 compared to 300,000) – words that are often difficult, if not impossible, to translate: simple words and compound words, words to express the nuances of things, and concepts that are expressed using multiple words.

Angst. Anxiety and fear, unease, existential anguish; to translate it, we need a phrase, but the British have given up on this and use the original term. Yet ‘A’ is also the first letter of Alternative für Deutschland, the far-right party that nurtures Angst as a source of support and as a spectre that will only be exorcised when it is possible once more to sing ‘Deutschland über alles’. The party presents itself as the avenger of the poor, the marginalised, the workers and the lumpenproletariat, founded by a group of university professors; it rails against ‘woke’ culture, gender fluidity and the degeneration of authentic Germanic customs – including sexual ones – yet it is led by a lesbian. A motley crew held together by this shared sentiment: the anxiety generated by fear.

Blut, blood. The ius sanguinis principle remains the rule: a child of at least one German parent becomes a German citizen by birth; however, on 1 January 2005, under the red-green coalition government led by Gerhard Schröder, a new law came into force whereby citizenship can be obtained through birth, adoption, naturalisation, or if one has been regarded by the public administration as a citizen of the Federal Republic for 12 years. The measure is not as permissive as its opponents claim, but this reform, together with Angela Merkel’s decision to admit 200,000 Syrians fleeing the civil war, has unleashed a resurgence of chauvinism. That sentiment also extends to certain first-wave immigrants who, once they have crossed the border, advocate closing it to others. Nor is this a uniquely German phenomenon; it happens everywhere, but the AfD has provided a battle cry and a flag.

CDU, the Christian Democratic Union. The first fundamental pillar of democratic Germany is crumbling; a Germany which, once the Berlin Wall had fallen, thought it would swiftly absorb the other Germany – the one that had passed seamlessly from Hitler to Stalin. Instead, Günter Grass’s prophecy seems to be coming true; the writer, who was critical of reunification, argued that the ‘bad’ part would end up infecting the ‘good’ part. Konrad Adenauer’s CDU had found a worthy successor in Helmut Kohl. Angela Merkel had been, in many respects, an underdog. Friedrich Merz, a respectable and competent figure, fails to stir the emotions. The Economist, relentless as ever, wrote that he is “a clumsy politician, a poor manager and a terrible communicator”. An exaggeration, perhaps, but the party finds itself without a strong leader and with its support base drifting towards the right.

Deutschland. Germany is known as the land of the Germans; ‘deutsch’ derives from an ancient term meaning ‘the people’ and has always referred to a people rather than a political entity. Italy could never have been called the land of the Italians. Both countries established a state very late in the day: Italy first, in 1861, under the leadership of Piedmont; Germany in 1870 under Prussia (the Italian example had influenced both German nationalists and the Prussian political class). The German nation has always been almost as divided as the Italian one, but there was nevertheless an awareness of belonging to an extended family encompassing all the lands where the same language is spoken. In short, the Germans were there; Germany had to be created, just as the Italians had to be forged within the ‘boot’. That sense of belonging is now being called into question, because language no longer coincides with cultural, religious or ethnic origins. For a party like the AfD, this is a betrayal.

Europe. It was known as the Franco-German axis and was the result of an agreement reached in 1963 with the Élysée Treaty, signed by Charles de Gaulle, President of the French Republic, and Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. Born out of the pledge of ‘no more wars’ between the two countries that had plunged Europe into bloodshed at least since the time of Napoleon, it provided the impetus that would lead to the European Union and the euro. Today, this driving force has stalled, and this is not a recent development. The most widely accepted explanation is economic: both models are in crisis. But the political factor is decisive, because the pillar parties of the two countries are now disintegrating: the Gaullists and the Socialists in France, the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats in Germany. European integration is also their brainchild, and this is where Brussels comes into play: the EU’s sudden burst of energy during the pandemic was short-lived; the Russian invasion of Ukraine formally created unity, but there are too many ambiguities in Paris and Berlin’s stance towards Moscow. This also applies to other countries – take Italy, for example. There are glaring contradictions regarding relations with Beijing and Washington. Not to mention Putin, towards whom Paris and Berlin share the same objective but adopt different approaches.

The Führerprinzip. It did not originate with Nazism, even though Hitler made it his mantra. Post-war West Germany shunned it like the plague, building a legal and political system based on collective leadership, even though the head of government is a chancellor, not a primus inter pares as in Italy. In East Germany, as in the Soviet Union, the idea that the Führerprinzip was embodied in the Communist Party gave way to a cult of personality centred on Walter Ulbricht, a small but no less terrifying Stalin. However, as Archie Brown, a professor at Oxford and a member of the British Academy, has written, “the cult of the strong, charismatic leader remains very much alive even in democracies”, including the American democracy under Donald Trump, and even more so in late-developing democracies emerging from fascism and Nazism. The approach based on coalition governments – often a motley mix, right up to the Grosse Koalition – has lost its appeal following the departure of Angela Merkel – loved and hated, but nonetheless affectionately known as ‘Mutti’ (mum, or rather ‘mummy’). Merz’s attempt is feeble due to the inherent weakness of the parties, as well as the perceived lack of charisma of the leader.

The Greens. What has become of the Greens? What happened to the party that had revolutionised politics in Germany and across Europe? Joseph Martin Fischer, known as Joschka, formerly a left-wing leader, then Germany’s Foreign Minister and Deputy Chancellor under Gerhard Schröder from 1998 to 2005 – a shrewd thinker with great vision, the leader who guided the movement towards political maturity – has failed to find worthy successors. Following the electoral disaster of 2024, the entire leadership resigned; today, they are figures in search of a cause.

Heimat. Home, one’s place of origin, an ancestral, pre-rational bond. The difference between this and Vaterland, the other word for ‘homeland’, is profound: the latter indicates belonging to a state, a political dimension that is also the result of a choice, not merely one’s place of birth. Heimat, as in the series directed by Edgar Reitz, is the place to return to, where one feels truly safe, even from history. It is not only the AfD that refers to this notion of homeland, but the far-right party has made it its rallying cry.

Islamism. The Muslim population in Germany accounts for just over 6 per cent, yet it is perceived as a threat that is not only cultural but existential. This is the case in much of Europe (think of France) and now also in the United States. “Freiheit statt Islamismus” is written on a CDU poster in Berlin, where a Muslim woman of Turkish origin was elected. There is confusion between Islam and Islamism, and it is precisely this that has fuelled tensions. As The Economist wrote, it is the latter that poses the threat; it is the ideology that preaches jihad. But the lack of clarity has encouraged the worst instincts on both sides. With paradoxical results.

Jena. The city of Zeiss, the cradle of German Romanticism and nationalism, where a group of young thinkers and poets in the early 1800s transformed the thinking of a generation across Europe (the Schlegel brothers, Novalis, Schleiermacher, Tieck, Hölderlin, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel), is today the stronghold of the liberal party led by Thomas Nitzsche (without an ‘e’), but not even he can reverse the downward trend, let alone the old lion, the 70-year-old Wolfgang Kubicki. The Liberals have long since ceased to be the arbiters of German politics; the FDP is represented in only six out of 16 regional parliaments. Its crisis reflects an extreme polarisation that leaves no room for the middle ground.

Kaputt. The letter K is a consonant that abounds in the German language; we could have chosen Krieg to signify the return of war and the new rearmament, or Kultur in the European country where the printed press was born and where people read the most (including newspapers), to ask ourselves why the new, unified Germany has not produced the intellectuals and artists who flourished in that divided state, even in the Communist East. But we have chosen ‘Kaputt’ – meaning ruined, destroyed, finished – an expression that originated in military circles as early as the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). We have borrowed it from the German-born Financial Times journalist Wolfgang Münchau: it is the title of his book published last year, a brilliant – yet ruthless – analysis of the crisis facing the once-brilliant German model. For too long, Germany’s growth has been too sluggish, despite its reputation as the engine of Europe. Since 2000, GDP has risen by an average of 1.1 per cent. Unemployment stands at just 4 per cent, half that of France (Italy is at 6 per cent). Public debt stands at 65 per cent (France 117 per cent, Italy 138 per cent); per capita income hovers around 44,000 euros a year, slightly higher than in France and almost double that of Italy. The government has allocated 900 billion to infrastructure and defence, in the hope that this will act as a driving force for the entire gross domestic product. Germany has abandoned its constitutional requirement for a balanced budget and has started to spend, to the extent that the deficit has reached 4 per cent. But it will take time to see the effects of this. The crisis is not merely cyclical, because it affects the four pillars that have driven the country’s progress: exports, cheap Russian gas, China, and traditional manufacturing (such as the car industry) – protected even at the cost of slowing down technological innovation. And once Walpurgis’s cauldron was opened, ghosts emerged that no longer want a free market, but a stronger state; not an open country, but one closed to outsiders. Abyssus vocat abyssum?

The Left. The Left is the ‘red’ variant of populism. Led by the radical socialist Oskar Lafontaine and the former communist Gregor Gysi, it has completed its long march from east to west and from outright opposition to the corridors of power – albeit only at local level for the time being. But this journey has dispelled the whiff of mould and coal. Its economic policy could be described as Keynesianism taken to the extreme. Its foreign policy is oriented towards old-school pacifism. Pro-European, it criticises the Commission’s ‘neoliberalism’; on Russia, the party is divided, partly due to the influence of those nostalgic for the past, but it supports Ukraine’s independence. Gysi, who had played an important role in the SED (United Socialist Party) in East Germany, had already denounced the annexation of Crimea as illegal. Putin’s regime, he said, is one of “state capitalism”. At the Bielefeld congress in 2015, he struck everyone with his speech: “Precisely because I have lived under a dictatorship, I can advise you to value and defend the rule of law”. For the new generation—represented by Elif Eralp, the daughter of Turkish political refugees, a law graduate and, needless to say, a Pro-Pal supporter—social protest is the breeding ground and Zohran Mamdani is their prophet.

Mitbestimmung. Co-determination: the trade unions’ great achievement has now become a millstone. Even in Italy in the 1970s, it had been more of a myth than a cause to rally behind. Introduced in 1951 in the coal, steel and mining sectors, it stipulated that in companies with more than a thousand employees, workers’ representatives were entitled to the same number of seats as shareholders. The head of human resources is appointed following a binding vote by the trade unions. In 1976, the government led by the Social Democrat Helmut Schmidt, in coalition with the Liberals, introduced a new law extending co-determination as part of a reform of corporate governance based on two bodies: the supervisory board is composed half of shareholder representatives and half of representatives elected by the workers by secret ballot every four years; the executive board, on the other hand, is composed of managers. The system long ensured social peace and regulated wage dynamics, but at the turn of the new century it began to falter, although it remains in place today.

No. How many times has Germany said ‘no’? It said ‘no’ to Italy when it needed financial support (for a loan in 1977, it demanded that crates of gold bars be taken to the Bundesbank; once returned, they bore the eagle’s hallmark). It even said ‘no’ to France – on nuclear energy, on NATO – even after Mitterrand and Kohl walked hand in hand in Verdun. The policy of ‘No’ was the central bank’s policy. And even when it was clear that a compromise would be sought anyway, it seemed more useful to start with a resounding ‘Nein’. Now it would be almost obvious to react with ill-concealed satisfaction to the avalanche of ‘no’s’ rising from the darkest and deepest recesses. But if Germany has once again fallen ill with Europe, the rest of Europe should give it the right medicine: that of understanding and support – something the AfD certainly does not expect.

Ossies. This is the derogatory term used for the inhabitants of the East, the former communist republic, who in turn call the inhabitants of the West ‘Wessies’. The East has never integrated, not only economically, but also culturally and socially. Travelling a few kilometres from the centre of Berlin reveals the grey, derelict rationalist phalansteries that still stand; Renzo Piano’s regeneration project has remained nothing more than a splendid façade. The Wessies complain about the money they spent to help with reunification – a special levy, the mark being treated as equal in value even though the East German mark was worthless, and so on. The Ossies believe it was a form of colonisation, as was said until recently (and is often still said) with regard to southern Italy. An ageing workforce, now difficult if not impossible to retrain, initially turned to the nostalgic party of the former communists, Die Linke. From the moment it became integrated into the system, resentment and mistrust have been channelled towards the AfD, the Alternative for Germany in name and in fact. More than the clash between the countryside and the cities, therefore, it is the East-West divide that determines the future of a country which, united by language as we have noted, is divided on so many – far too many – issues. One has to wonder whether the ‘Wessies’ have really done enough – not in economic terms, but in cultural terms, which are proving to be the most important everywhere.

Partisan. It is within this rift that the resurgence of Carl Schmitt and his theory of the partisan is playing out. The jurist and philosopher served as the mentor for the most sophisticated version of Nazism and has been revived by new technocrats such as Peter Thiel (German, philosopher, entrepreneur). Even beyond Germany, the theory of the partisan has long since been accepted to the point of becoming the political bible of the first quarter of the 21st century, based not only on the friend-enemy dialectic, but on the rejection of the rules dictated by international law because, as Schmitt wrote, ‘one fights partisans in the partisan manner’. Perhaps it is due to the events of 11 September 2001, as Thiel himself argues, but the search for compromise as a means of coexistence in a pluralist society has come to an end. Today, everywhere, the victor wants to take it all – and often does so even in Germany, which had once been the foremost laboratory of compromise.

Those, the source. It takes us back to some of the previous themes: blood, the homeland, the principle of the leader, identity, belonging – everything that, piece by piece, is forming an ideology opposed to that which prevailed after the Second World War. The source that nourished the Federal Republic of Germany has run dry. From the banks of the Oder to those of the Rhine, the country that is the leading light of philosophy (just as France is for politics and England for the economy) spreads – whilst distorting it – the philosophy born in Jena.

Russia. Hated and fought against, Russia has very often represented in German history on the eastern front what France has been in the west. Lenin carried out the revolution using the Kaiser’s resources. The army of the Weimar Republic rebuilt the Soviet army, which Stalin then decimated, thereby exposing it to Operation Barbarossa. But without going that far back, Germany’s ambivalence towards Tsar Vlad remains an unresolved issue. It is not merely a question of gas; the issue runs deeper, as was evident in the case of Angela Merkel and the 2014 Minsk Agreement. They were speaking in German, but ‘Mutti’ did not understand what Putin was telling her, let alone what he did not want to tell her.

The SPD, the Social Democratic Party and the system’s second pillar, is also in tatters. The Bad Godesberg turning point in 1959, with the abandonment of Marxism, had made it fit to govern. Willy Brandt, mayor of Berlin with his Ostpolitik; Helmut Schmidt, who called for American Euromissiles in 1979 to counter Soviet expansionism; Gerhard Schröder with his economic reforms, which Chancellor Merkel would later build upon; then darkness. Olaf Scholz recognised the immense task facing not only him but the country as a whole – nothing less than changing the ‘Modell Deutschland’ – but he lacked both the political talent and the necessary support to achieve it. Now the party founded by Ferdinand Lassalle in 1863 is torn between slogans of the past and a lack of vision for the future.

Tanks. Tanks are back; they are no longer the Panzers of yesteryear, but military-technological platforms. Yet war in Europe – if Russia is once again the enemy – is waged with drones, artificial intelligence and powerful tracked vehicles. They are, in a way, the symbol of a country that has, with great difficulty and pain, abandoned pacifism to embark on a path from which there is no foreseeable return. Chancellor Merz may lack charisma, but he has been determined in launching a major plan for defence and infrastructure, which are essential in the event of enemy aggression. And now he is paying the price for this too, particularly amongst the East Germans. Does German rearmament send shivers down your spine? But isn’t Berlin simply doing what all other European countries ought to be doing? There is talk of European defence, yet only the convoluted reasoning of a leadership subservient to Giuseppi Conte’s agenda would suggest that this cannot be achieved by strengthening the armies of individual countries. We simply cannot do without Leopards, Panthers and whatever else they are called.

‘Unterweg’ – on the move – an expression that suits a population that is constantly on the move. The ‘Wanderer’, the wayfarer, is both an institution and a symbol. On the move, then, but where to? The answer is not straightforward. Germany’s political and economic crisis brings the old dilemma back to the fore: is it the driving force of Europe or a solitary mini-power?

Volkswagen – All sorts of things have been written, even in these columns. What goes wrong at VW goes wrong for Germany, as was once said of General Motors and Fiat. The Chinese paradigm has been turned on its head, and now it is Beijing that is sweeping Wolfsburg aside. Has the German giant relied too heavily on China? Perhaps, but for thirty years it has reaped a windfall of profits. Fiat didn’t believe in it and pulled out long before. VW is streamlining and will recover; it faces a major social – as well as industrial – problem, but above all, the new ‘Modell Deutschland’ will no longer revolve around the ‘people’s car’.

Weidel, like Alice Elisabeth, is the political figure riding the wave of the far right. Her paternal grandfather, Hans, was a member of the SS who volunteered as a senior military judge under Hitler and evaded post-war trials. Born in 1979, she spent her first ten years living under communism; a model student, she worked for two years at Allianz (the German insurance giant), before becoming a business consultant and moving to the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland, where she could live more peacefully with Sarah Bossard, a film producer of Sri Lankan origin. But when did she first become captivated by politics? As early as 2013, with the founding of the AfD, which at the time presented itself as a Eurosceptic, conservative party, though more moderate than it has since become. Four years later, Weidel was already at the top, the lead candidate in the Bundestag elections. Since then, nothing has stopped her: first as spokesperson, then as chairwoman, she is ‘The Alternative for Germany’; it may seem a paradox in a Germany that harbours nostalgia for its Nazi-Communist past, yet it is a modern country with all its contradictions, embodied perfectly by Alice herself: pro-Russian, yet nationalist; her partner is a woman, yet she champions the traditional family; she champions law and order yet pays her Syrian domestic worker under the table; she wants to close the borders yet lives on the shores of Lake Constance, straddling three borders; in a short space of time she has crushed all her internal rivals, and there are those who call her a ‘Bismarck in trainers’ – made in Switzerland, of course.

Zeitenwende, a turning point in history. History may well remember Olaf Scholz only for this phrase, uttered immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Germany had hoped it would never come to this; now it cannot escape it. Its turmoil, its upheavals, its regional, generational and ideological divisions make it a normal, Western democracy – which is reassuring. But we must be careful not to succumb to the all-too-human pleasure in others’ misfortunes; let us guard against Schadenfreude, one of the many words for which we must use an entire sentence to translate.