What is wrong with Germany?

In 2023, Juli Zeh published a new novel: “Zwischen Welten” (Between worlds). Juli Zeh is a German writer born in 1974. She grew up and went to school and university in the old Federal Republic of Germany, but now lives in the eastern German state of Brandenburg. She is not only a multiple award-winning author, but also holds a doctorate in law. She is an honorary judge at the Brandenburg Constitutional Court. What is very rare is that Juli Zeh wrote the novel together with another author: Simon Urban – an equally award-winning German author who is also a copywriter and journalist.
  The novel is very personal and very political. The protagonists’ language is often aggressive, confrontational, provocative – but then again thoughtful and seriously analytical. There is no happy ending, but instead escalation and corruption. Because the protagonists are up to their necks in water: real, but also emotional.

A novel by Juli Zeh and Simon Urban

At the centre of the novel is a woman in her mid-40ies who has moved to the countryside. Around 20 years before the novel’s plot, she had taken on a small organic agricultural co-operative in Brandenburg with 200 dairy cows and a few workers who are also permanent members of the co-operative. Her father, who had died prematurely of a heart attack, had left it to her.
  This woman, Theresa, has a counterpart, a man, Stefan, a city dweller who, at the beginning of the novel, has no sympathy at all for the decision of his former fellow student and housemate. He is the deputy editor-in-chief and head of the culture section of a large German weekly newspaper in Hamburg and represents a “woke”, but nonetheless well-behaved and opportunistic way of life – even though halfway through the novel he begins to suspect that he will not be able to get rid of the spirits that he has summoned. The revolution devours all its children.
  In terms of her background, Theresa is actually also “woke” – initially mainly “against the far right”, also against Putin (which she slightly relativises in the course of the novel) and all “populists” – but also against German arms deliveries to Ukraine and in favour of a quick end to the war.
  At the end of April 2022, Juli Zeh co-signed an appeal by 29 German “intellectuals” calling on Chancellor Olaf Scholz not to supply heavy weapons to Ukraine and – in view of the threat of a third world war – to do everything possible to end the war as soon as possible.

Life in the countryside

Life in the countryside has made Theresa more down-to-earth, more open and more human (Juli Zeh’s novel “Über Menschen” (On humans), published 2021, had already made this clear with a different protagonist) – even if her behaviour is often aggressive, confrontational and provocative. But her everyday actions are always based less on some ideology or guidance from the media world and more on what she has actually experienced and learnt. She even allows herself to find the political party Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany), AfD voters somehow sympathetic: because they are helpful fellow human beings, regardless of their political views.
  Juli Zeh does not act as narrator. The novel is a modern form of the epistolary novel. The two protagonists only write emails and WhatsApp messages back and forth – towards the end of the novel, the protagonists switch to Telegram and encrypted emails for security reasons.

A reflection of today’s Germany

While reading the novel, I kept thinking: That’s exactly how it is – even if it is a little exaggerated in places. Many manifestations of today’s Germany become very clear: messed-up interpersonal relationships and many other craziness of “modern” everyday life; but also, that life in the countryside can be more down-to-earth, more realistic and more relational, that mutual help can be better experienced. Above all, however, that life is being made increasingly difficult for the rural population, mainly the farmers there who do not practise industrial agriculture, who have to fear and struggle for their existence every day and are at the mercy of merciless politics. And that on the other side there are big city intelligentsia who – although (or because) they believe they stand for the “Good” – unscrupulously fight their power struggles in ideological clouds. The consequence in the novel: desperate, activist resistance, which defies the old left-right scheme.
  The protagonist’s impressive descriptions of the situation could be an excellent backdrop to the current farmers’ protests and the responses of the power elites to them – and the many demonstrations “against the far right” could be another coup for the “Woken” in the novel.
  However: The novel only hints at the question of “Why and wherefore all this?”, for example with references to the rotten fruits of globalisation. After all, a thorough literary investigation into causes and purposes need not be the task of literature. Perhaps it is even better this way for writers who want to survive in the literary market. But citizens who are really awake cannot be satisfied with this.
  So the question remains: What is wrong with Germany? How can we explain everything that Juli Zeh and Simon Urban’s novel describes so vividly and impressively and that we have been enduring for many years, but now at an exponential rate?

More questions than answers

Here more questions than answers!
  Is the decline not only of German agriculture, but also of German industry and the entire German middle class the result of failed German policies and political incompetence? Or is this decline part of a “planned” change, a planned “transformation”? And if so, who wants and who is steering this change? Who benefits from it?
  We know from the first half of the 19^th century: The “social question” of the time (the impoverishment of highly indebted farmers after the so-called peasant liberation (abolition of serfdom), the pauperisation of cottage workers and the emerging industrial workforce) was closely linked to the onset of industrialisation and its dictum of liberal economic thinking. There were similar upheavals later on.

“Creative” destruction? …

On the German Wikipedia you can read: “Creative destruction is a term from macroeconomics whose core statement is: All economic development (in the sense of not merely quantitative development) is based on the process of inventive risp. creative destruction. Through a new combination of production factors that successfully asserts oneself, old structures are displaced and ultimately destroyed. Destruction is therefore necessary – and not only a system error – so that a new order can take place.” (author’s emphasis) The “woke” man in Juli Zeh’s novel would fully agree with this, at least in the first half of the novel – but now no longer limited to economic life, but comprehensive for all areas of life that must be destroyed from a “woke” point of view. Is this the “Zeitenwende” that the Germans should prepare for? For example, is the war in Ukraine provoked by the West also a welcome “crisis” for German politics?

… or the hegemon’s plan?

Or is Germany’s decline not primarily wanted from within, but from outside? Not from Putin’s Russia or Xi Jinping’s China, as our politicians and mainstream media constantly claim – in order to distract and deny their own responsibility. But rather from the transatlantic “partner”? The thesis stands that since the founding of the German Empire in the second half of the 19^th century, the Anglo-Saxon maritime powers have feared one thing above all: a merger between Russia, which is rich in raw materials, and a technologically and industrially highly developed Germany. Are we witnessing the realisation of the Anglo-Saxon counter-strategy? Is German politics now becoming the willing executor (“servant leader”) of US geopolitics? Who would have thought a few years ago that a German government would take the lead in mobilising war against Russia and – isolated in the non-Western world – cover up Israel’s war crimes?

Do the Germans have a “brown” gene?

Do Germans have a “brown” gene in them that makes many of them – especially in the east of the country – susceptible to fascist temptations time and again? Against which the vociferous “fight against the far right” is the only effective means? Or is this “fight against the far right” an event orchestrated by the power elites and servile NGOs? For which a mixed bag of intelligence-manipulated right-wing extremist scenes and hyped-up “events” such as the one in Potsdam is being thrown around? Also, as a distraction from the power elites’ anti-civic political course? Was it a coincidence that immediately after the impressive and widely supported protests in favour of the legitimate concerns of farmers and the middle classes, a completely exaggerated public campaign “against the far right” was reheated? At the forefront were the governing parties and their heads – together with the Antifa*.

What and who divides?

Are the “divisions” and dialogue problems, the increasing rudeness and unforgiveness in the public debate within German society, as expressed in the novel by Juli Zeh and Simon Urban, the result of a failure on the part of German citizens, a lack of ability or even a refusal to engage in dialogue? Or is the constant talk of the division of society the result of manipulation on a grand scale, too: to distract from the real division, namely between the citizenry and the power elites? With the purpose of really dividing society: divide et impera, divide and rule! As I said, more questions than answers.

An open letter
to the Federal Chancellor

On 29 January, 16 presidents of East German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (CCI) wrote an open letter to Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz. This letter demonstrates once again that there is a great awareness of the problem – particularly in the East of the country – and not just among writers. At the beginning it says: “At the outset of the 2024 election year, we are very concerned about the future of our business location, social cohesion and democratic culture. The federal government also has a considerable part to play in this. The regional economy, for which we as Presidents of the East German Chambers of Industry and Commerce are responsible, is in a permanent state of crisis. We attribute this above all to the fact that a tried-and-tested principle of the Federal Republic of Germany that has flanked prosperity is increasingly being lost, namely the active involvement of various interests in the political process. […] Instead, a culture of ‘decision-making without involvement’ and a glaring difference between the words and deeds of the Federal Government are spreading.”
  The letter refers to the real problems faced by many professional groups: “Farmers and parts of the middle class are rebelling against increasing burdens decided at very short notice. Cuts are being made to important key economic projects and there is no planning security for cost developments in the energy and construction sectors, neither for consumers nor for companies.” In addition, there is a questionable German energy policy, bureaucratic restrictions on companies, a high tax burden and disproportionate incentives for not working.
  All of this is leading to “Germany’s international competitiveness eroding. While leading industrialised nations are manifesting enormous investment expenditure, incentive systems and regulatory easing in order to flank transformation processes and increase competitiveness, a lack of political will is causing this to fail in Germany.”
  At the end of their letter, the East German CCI presidents demand: “We must not abandon our prosperity-orientated democracy, which is based on security and freedom, without doing anything. We expect decisions to finally be prepared sensibly again, weighed up and properly explained and justified when they are announced. Direct dialogue between politics and society must not be avoided, but proactively initiated.”

Making cultural
substance resonate again

The voice of the East German CCI presidents will most likely fade away if the political culture of the country does not fundamentally change. This task cannot be accomplished overnight. Too much has happened in the past decades. Development work is necessary. Every citizen bears responsibility for this. The cultural substance of the country is still alive, hardly on a large scale, but often on a small scale, even if there is little public and serious talk about it. This substance can be made to resound again. This begins with the upbringing and education of our children.
  A better culture of public life, a different political culture is possible. That is not yet a different policy, but it is probably the best prerequisite for it. It will be a long but inevitable road to get out of war mode and back to peace and a focus on the common good, away from politics as a performance and towards being factual and finding practical solutions to problems.  •

* The Antifa is a political movement in Germany composed of multiple far-left, autonomous, militant groups and individuals who describe themselves as anti-fascist (Editor's note).