An indomitable drive to win – preferably in the very last minute. Whether on the football field or in the workplace, Germans are known as hard workers. Driven by a strong work ethic Gründlichkeit and team spirit we get the job done, or in the famous words of ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel: We will buy that. That statement (‘We can do it’, 2015) now seems like an echo from the past.
Christian Lindner sees the opposite happening today. According to the German Minister of Finance, there is something seriously wrong with the competitive spirit of working Germany. The German people must, according to Lindner in a TV program, ‘get the urge’ to work overtime again. Germans are increasingly pushing the limits, says Lindner. While Germany is aging rapidly. And the army of retirees of 25 million is growing every year. According to the minister, there is an urgent need for a change in mentality. “Work is more than that, it is also a meaning,” he added, almost desperately.
The image of a lousy work ethic fits into a negative spiral that Germany finds itself in. The energy is out of the economy. In the Bundestag, political bickering takes over. Coalition partners SPD, FDP and De Groenen feel trapped in a forced marriage. There is division over child benefits, hospital reform, arms exports to Ukraine, closing nuclear power plants, relaxing the cannabis policy and – just this week – the violence of radical right-wing gangs against left-wing politicians.
And while Germany has been running like a well-oiled machine for the past twenty years or so. Growing Chinese demand sent German car manufacturers’ sales through the roof. The widespread diesel scandal, which also shocked foreign countries, mainly showed that no country produced such excellent engineers. Moreover, the football performances at the World Cup finals of 2006 (third place), 2014 (world champion) and the 2016 European Championship (semi-final) proved that the German multicultural society with players of Polish, Turkish and African descent had succeeded.
Corona crisis
But at the beginning of 2020, the corona crisis put an end to all orderliness. The notorious German Angst – the real fear of losing everything you own – emerged, followed by the melancholy that characterizes the national character. While Germans frantically hid behind face masks (and reprimanded others if they did not wear one), shortages in healthcare increased. The sacred debt brake was released to come to the aid of German business. Conspiracy theorists were given free rein online. And the extreme right benefited from the political and social unrest.
A political miracle doctor, like SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder at the beginning of this century — now vilified as a result of his unwavering support for Putin — is absent. Schröder’s party colleague and current Chancellor Olaf Scholz looks indecisive. Fellow generation and CDU opposition leader Friedrich Merz (68) hardly offers an alternative for the voter. Just like at the beginning of this century, Germany is again the sick man of Europe. But this time, partly due to the complex government systems and aging population, there is no successful transformation of the labor market.
How different the mood was in 2016 and 2017. We will buy that had put Germany on the map as an international conscience. The East German physicist Angela Merkel proudly appeared on the cover of Time Magazine.
Leash
After the financial crisis, the other EU member states in the eurozone followed Berlin’s lead. Germany hammered home the strict budget rules. Because wasn’t it the wasteful Southern European countries that had caused the euro crisis? Germany had its affairs in order. The shame and guilt of the last great European war had momentarily faded away.
In 2018, the first public rebuke came from key ally the United States. US President Donald Trump warned that Germany faced serious risks with its continued import of natural gas from Russia. “Germany will become completely dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course,” Trump admonished at a United Nations meeting. Surrounded by a delegation of diplomats, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) heard it with a mocking look.
Trump would be partly right. Germany even had a second gas pipeline built from Russia, but Nord Stream 2 would never come into use. When Putin gradually turned off the gas tap, blind panic broke out in Germany. The gas crisis even overwhelmed the competent German regulator so much that it ordered citizens to use water and electricity sparingly. The German adage Walk through trade (change through trade), which clung to the false hope that Russia could turn Germany into a model country through industriousness, fell definitively out of favor.
As if the Russian invasion of Ukraine wasn’t bad enough, the war in Gaza followed on October 7 last year. This divides Germany to the core. The older generations support Israel unconditionally because of the Holocaust. German youth are more committed to the Palestinian cause. Weekly Der Spiegel dismissed Germany as “a manic-depressive model student, not a lighthouse of freedom”.
Displaced people are now saddled Germany with the highest refugee numbers since 2015. The shelter is squeaking and creaking. Compared to nine years ago, the tide has turned: this time no Willkommenskultur, but strict border controls with Austria and Switzerland. The CDU, under pressure from the far-right AfD, is even calling for more border control.
Waiting times
Anyone who arrives in Germany as a newcomer is shocked by the things that do not fit with the richest and most modern country in Europe. The long waiting times at airports are notorious, as are the increasing delays of trains. Germany used to be able to compete with the trains in Japan and Switzerland, the newspaper writes Welt. “As punctual as the train,” was a myth about the German train, according to the weekly Die Zeit. But in 2022, only 65 percent of long-distance trains in Germany ran on time – not even counting delays of less than six minutes. Historic, because German trains had never experienced so many delays before.
The national scapegoat on the trail is 65-year-old Claus Weselsky. A stubborn, almost retired union leader, who has already had his staff strike six times this year in the fight for a shorter working week. To the chagrin of millions of travelers, but also the port of Hamburg, which suffered millions in damage every day because freight traffic came to a standstill. With the strikes, Weselsky has lost the little credit that Deutsche Bahn still had, despondent train passengers explain.
Autobahn
Things are stuck again on the Autobahn in Germany. Anyone driving through the south of the country on their way to holiday this summer will probably experience considerable inconvenience from construction work and roadblocks again. The list of infrastructural tasks for the German Ministry of Transport is endless.
4,000 bridges in Germany are in poor condition. Speeding along the German highway without limits – the ultimate feeling of freedom for German motorists – is not an option. Because many highways are also in need of maintenance. And in cities like Berlin, cars also have to hit the brakes due to the growing population pressure on the existing infrastructure.
The fact that rich and modern have a different meaning is evident from the long-standing digitization dossier. Dutch directors and self-employed entrepreneurs complain a lot about the poor mobile coverage. An understatement. Germany is at least five years behind the Netherlands, it sounds.
Volker Wissing, the Minister for Digitalization (FDP), insists that 4G coverage in Germany is 97 percent and 5G coverage is only 7 percent less. Nevertheless, so-called remain funklöcher persistent. Between Hamburg and Berlin, for example, train passengers are completely offline for the first fifteen minutes.
The fact that Germany is lagging behind digitally is not a financial issue, the federal government insists. “Digitalization goes wrong in people’s minds, including in politics. I would like those who want more digitalization not to put on the brakes in specific cases,” says Wissing in an interview with the South German Zeitung.
According to Wissing, the states are opposed to bills. “If we continue like this, we will lose our technological leadership.” By this he mainly refers to AI, artificial intelligence. Germany is now said to be the largest after the United States, with more than five hundred start-ups and multinationals such as Aleph Alpha.
In bad mood
Things are not that harsh in Germany, according to American trend watcher Amy Webb. “I love Germany, enjoy spending time here,” Webb said recently at a conference in southern Germany. The quality of education and living standards are high, the economy is still strong, she summed up. But why are Germans always so bad-tempered, she openly wondered. “That, in my opinion, is actually the problem in Germany, this sleepy feeling of not feeling well. Everyone has a depressed view of the future.”
Yet this apparently deep-rooted German gloom can easily change. At the end of March, Die Mannschaft defeated both France and the Dutch team in one week. Die Welt: “The will to win is back.”
