Merkel generation stands pat
Their parents grew up in a Germany divided against itself but on a continent coming together after mind-boggling violence. Their older cousins went to university and started working in the 1990s, a holiday from history as the economy became global, and powerful countries mostly got along.
The future looks different to Germans in their late teens and 20s in this medium-sized university town, where modern architecture housing mechanical engineering labs has been cut into the medieval landscape. They are the Merkel generation: Young people who can scarcely remember a time before Angela Merkel, 63, was their chancellor. After 12 years in power, she is poised to claim a fourth fouryear term Sunday.
Her re-election is likely to come with the support of the youth. Fifty-seven per cent of first-time voters, for instance, favour the chancellor, compared with 21 per cent who prefer her Social Democratic rival, Martin Schulz, according to polling conducted by the Forsa Institute.
This sets Germany apart from other Western countries where young people identify with the left, flocking to Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who contested the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, and Jeremy Corbyn, the liberal firebrand who led Britain’s Labour Party to a strong showing in the June election. If their voting habits are distinctive, that is because their world view is as well.
This generation came to political consciousness in the anxious aftermath of the 9/11 attacks but then watched their own country weather the financial crisis later that decade with relative ease. The European Union is suddenly no longer a given, and the United States, which steered Germany to political normalization, is looking inward under a president who promises “America first.”
Students in Magdeburg took comfort in Germany’s stability but voiced pessimism about the safety of the world — somewhat the inverse of the perspective with which earlier generations came of age.
“I’m afraid about the future,” said Philipp Thiel, 27, who is training to become a teacher at the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg. “I don’t expect a third world war but maybe something like that, with North Korea, Turkey, Putin, Trump,” he said.
Merkel, he said, is a contrast to bellicose world leaders. “She’s someone who will say, ‘OK guys, calm down.’ ”
For an engineering student, Erik Spieler, the decision is a pragmatic one.
“The Christian Democrats may not be the best possible option, but they’re the best at the moment,” Spieler said. His father, a teacher, opposes the Social Democrats because of the restructuring they want to pursue in the schools, he said. But for the 18-year-old, the decision is simpler: “We just know Merkel.”
Young people repulsed by nationalist politics admire the chancellor as “the leader of the free world,” a title Merkel rejects, while not understanding that “young people are not at all a priority for the Christian Democrats,” said Eva Schulz, the host of Deutschland3000, a video program distributed on Facebook that aims to explain politics to young people, said.
The party supports more modest taxes for the wealthy than those favoured by the Social Democrats. It does not emphasize the environment as vehemently as the Greens. And many of its members opposed a recent vote legalizing same-sex marriage.
But in travelling across the country to prepare for the show, Schulz said, she heard one view repeatedly: “We are doing fine as a generation.” Germany boasts the lowest youth unemployment rate, 6.5 per cent, of any EU country. Quibbles, Schulz said, are dismissed as “Luxusprobleme,” best translated as “First World problems.”
But this idea — almost a sense of gratitude — may be dissuading young people from getting more involved in politics, Schulz warned. Just six lawmakers in the Bundestag, the 630-member lower house of Parliament, were born after 1985.
Germany overall is a rapidly aging society. Just 15.4 per cent of eligible voters are between the ages of 18 and 30, compared with 20 per cent who are between 50 and 60. Older people are also more likely to go to the polls.
Paul Ziemiak, a 32-yearold candidate for Parliament and president of the youth organization affiliated with Merkel’s centre-right bloc, is trying to bring younger blood into government. “The last century shows what can happen when it’s only about national interests, but for our generation, it’s not as fresh.”