Since reunification, Germany has had its best 30 years. The next 30 will be harder
Happy birthday, Germany: 30 years old on 3 October, the anniversary of German unification in 1990. But hang on a minute, isn’t Germany 71? Counting, that is, from the foundation of the Federal Republic in 1949. Or 149, if we go back to the first unification of Germany, in 1871? Or 1,220 years old, if we take the coronation of Charlemagne, in 800, to be the beginning of what Germans call the Reich, more widely known as the Holy Roman Empire? Or some 2,000 years, if we detect in the brilliant former FC Bayern Munich midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger a remote descendant of those warlike but also proto-democratic tribesmen that Tacitus described in his Germania?
Answering the apparently simple question “How old is Germany?” is far from simple. But let me venture this bold claim: the last three decades have been the best in all that long and complicated history. If you can think of a better period for the majority of Germans, and their relations with most of their neighbours, I’d be glad to learn of it. In today’s world, roiled by populism, fanaticism and authoritarianism, the Federal Republic is a beacon of stability, civility and moderation – qualities personified by Chancellor Angela Merkel.
But the national and regional challenges that Germany has faced over the last 30 years pale in comparison with the global ones it will face over the next 30. Unlike some other democracies, including southern European members of the Eurozone such as Greece and
Spain, this German democracy has not yet faced the test of a really major economic crisis. That is a result of its own great economic strengths, but also of the growth of export markets such as China opened up by globalisation, the advantages of having the euro (rather than a less competitively valued Deutschmark), and a reservoir of cheap skilled labour in east-central
Europe. There is no guarantee of equally favourable geo-economic circumstances in the years to come, nor of a benign geopolitical environment.
At the recent online launch of John Kampfner’s book, Why the Germans Do It Better, the British author was asked what the Germans thought of Brexit. After rightly observing that they were first amazed, then appalled, and then contemptuous of the mess Britain is making of it, he went on to say that if the Germans had done something like Brexit they would immediately have convened a cross-party Bundestag commission and worked out a sober, rational plan for implementing it.
It’s an interesting thought, but we must avoid the fallacy of extrapolation. If Germany had voted to leave the EU, that would presuppose the triumph of a nationalist movement that would make the Alternative for Germany (AfD) look like a vegetarian NGO. Such a movement would not abide by the current, sensible, consensus-seeking norms of German politics. Moreover, being embedded in the European Union has an existential significance for Germany that it does not have for Britain, and Germany is more important for the EU. It is possible to imagine a post-Brexit Britain somehow muddling through on its own outside the EU, and an EU without Britain. It is impossible to imagine a Germany resembling today’s Federal Republic without the strong European framework – let alone an EU without Germany.
This is a lesson that emerges clearly from a new short history of the Germans, Wie wir wurden, was wir sind