At 10 o'clock in the evening of 19 February 2020, the quiet monotony of the city of Hanau in the Land of Hesse was shocked by the raps of two shootings during which a German citizen of neo-Nazi ideas, Tobias Rathjen, killed with Glock 17 blows, a dozen people before killing themselves, together with their mother, to avoid being caught. As expected, respected in other cases of massacres organized in different parts of the world by elements of the xenophobic and racist ultra-right, even Rathjen, before committing the massacres, had taken care to draft a document in which he claimed both the need to exterminate the lower breeds (especially the people from the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa), both to protect Germany's "biological purity".
The Hanau shooting is only the latest event in a worrying series that should begin to be taken seriously at last, and not only at a "Germanic" level but also at a European level in general. Although many in recent years have identified in the rise of the right-wing nationalist party "Alternative für Deutschland" (AfD) the main threat front, it represents only the proverbial "tip of the iceberg" of a much more serious situation than many think .
As a certain adage teaches, however, crises always start from afar, and we too must adopt a broader vision to understand what the road Germany will take in the future, and to do it, we need once again to make a jump backwards. The end of the Cold War and the bipolar confrontation favored the reunification of Germany into a single sovereign and federal state extended over all the territories belonging to the former German Federal Republic (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
The newly formed Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) has been able to take better advantage of other countries in the period of world economic expansion following the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the opening of new markets in central and southern Europe, in the ex- Soviet Union, China and Southeast Asia.
Although the German economy is in all respects a global economy, it is in the European continent that Germany maintains the centerpiece of its export market and, consequently, of its power and influence both economically and politically.
Pillar of the German strategy to conquer European markets (as well as a topic of heated controversy in the political and other areas, especially in the years following the outbreak of the economic crisis of 2007/2008) was the introduction of the euro as a common currency part of the countries belonging to the European Union.
Germany has recently emerged for a much more assertive policy at the continental level, especially against the background of the debate that opposed the different visions on the way out of the economic crisis (austerity vs expansionary policies) and in the management of the troubled Greek crisis, and lastly in the questionable position adopted during the international migration crisis which since 2014 has made relations within the Community institutions and of the individual countries of the Union very tense, so as to make numerous political commentators and ordinary citizens talk about the existence of a "German neo-imperialism" aimed not so much at the Europeanization of Germany as at the Germanization of Europe.
Despite the undoubted strengths, the "Germany system" also presents significant problems that could in the long run undermine both its internal solidity and the pivotal role assumed in Europe in recent decades. The results of the last German federal elections as well as those which took place recently in different lands have in fact condensed these different drives.
THE LAUNCH POINTS OF THE MERCHELLIAN REICH
From an economic point of view, Germany is classified as a social market economy country, characterized by a highly specialized workforce, a high level of capital stock, a low level of perceived corruption and a high level of innovation. From a macroeconomic point of view, it is the world's fifth largest economy with purchasing power parity and the first in Europe (a record that has been undermined by the rise of Russia in recent years).
The orientation of the German economy has always been oriented towards exports, in whose international ranking Germany is in third place (behind China and the United States). The main export products are vehicles, machinery, chemical and electronic products, electrical equipment, pharmaceuticals, transport equipment, food products and plastics.
The first myth that must be debunked when analyzing the German economy is that it is dominated only by the great "top players", especially those in the automotive sector. Although, according to available data, as many as 30 of the 500 largest companies in the world are based in Germany, they represent only a minimal percentage of the numerical heart of "Rhenish capitalism" which, for 99%, is made up of the so-called "Mittelstand" ; small and medium-sized businesses usually family owned, strongly export-oriented, often focused on innovative manufacturing products with high added value, as well as occupying the leadership in many market segments. They are generally characterized by a restricted social base and are based in small towns or rural areas.
The typical successful “Mittelstand” company combines a cautious and long-term oriented approach to business with the adoption of modern managerial practices, such as hiring professional executives from the outside rather than entrusting management to the members. Often these companies work closely with universities and other research institutes, and group around large companies. The weight of the "Mittelstand" in the German economic context can be effectively assessed by the fact that they employ 70% of the workforce in the private sector and produce 50% of the nation's GDP.
A direct consequence of this particular economic geography is that the success of the German economy is inextricably linked to that of the other European economies. In fact, if the quotas for China, the United States, Russia and Turkey are excluded, the main trading partners, both on the import and export side, are all located in Europe. The German economic and social system has proven to be adequate to guarantee a prolonged period of prosperity and development both for West Germany before and for the new unified Germany today. Proof of this is the progressive rise in incomes at national level, the low unemployment rate (5.6% in July 2017) and a series of positive economic expansion of 22 years over the last 25 years.
It is worth noting that a factor that strongly influenced, and perhaps slowed down, the development of the German economy throughout the 50.000s and XNUMXs was the reabsorption of the former East Germany; a process that was far from painless from a political, social and economic point of view for the whole community. In fact, in the first three years following the reunification, the federal government is estimated to have spent over XNUMX German marks for every single inhabitant of the former East Germany. Any comparison with the contemporary economic performance of the countries of southern Europe which are also characterized by profound differences local and regional structural (Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal) is merciless. The German success is even more evident if one takes into account that the realignment of Germany on the global markets has not been resolved at the expense of the middle class as in the other developed countries swallowed by the vortex of globalization.
Considering both absolute and relative data, Germany is the only country in the world that, despite recording an increase both in the number of billionaires and millionaires (as in all other developed countries and in the BRICS), in the last 27 years has been also managed to protect and expand the middle class base; in times of globalization, it was absolutely stunning.
As for national and individual wealth, Germany is the richest country in Europe and the second in the world after the United States. According to data for 2014, the value of the total assets of the 10 richest men in the country amounted to a total of 162,4 billion dollars while a survey carried out by the Institute for Economic Research in Cologne in 2013 identified the average annual income of the 10 richest cities in Germany:
1 - € 92.594 ($ 128.000) Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony
2 - € 82.675 ($ 114.281) Frankfurt am Main, Hesse
3 - € 78.382 ($ 108.347) Schweinfurt, Bavaria
4 - € 75.092 ($ 104.000) Ingolstadt, Bavaria
5 - € 71.576 ($ 99.389) Regensburg, Bavaria
6 - € 66.936 ($ 92.525) Düsseldorf, North Rhine Westphalia
7 - € 66.892 ($ 92.464) Ludwigshafen on the Rhine, Rhineland-Palatinate
8 - € 65.799 ($ 91.630) Erlangen, Bavaria
9 - € 65.262 ($ 91.121) Stuttgart, Baden-Wurttemberg
10 - € 64.163 ($ 88.692) Ulm, Baden-Wurttemberg
The population of millionaires is also noteworthy. The 2014 World Wealth Report surveyed 821.900 which place Germany in fourth place in the world rankings of the top ten countries by number of millionaires immediately behind the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom. Of note, however, is the fact that almost all the millionaires in question are German citizens while a substantial share of those surveyed in the first three countries are foreign residents.
THE UNKNOWN ABOUT THE FUTURE
Alongside its thousand lights, however, the German system is also characterized by the presence of shadows which in the medium and long term risk damaging Germany's primacy in Europe. The first and most immediate threat with which Germany must deal is the possibility of a collapse of the "Europe system".
As already pointed out at the beginning of the previous paragraph, the fulcrum of German economic and political interests lies in the European continent, in particular in the states that are neighboring to Germany. The constraints linking the German economy to those of other European countries are simply irreplaceable, as evidenced also by a careful study of continental economic relations throughout the Contemporary Era. The consequence of this is that any shock that permanently affects any of the members of the European Union inevitably reverberates in Germany with effects that can vary depending on the intensity of the aforementioned shock.
When in 2009 the long wave of the financial crisis originating in the United States began to affect Europe, starting from its peripheral and more unstable countries (the famous PIIGS; acronym for Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain), the contagion it spread rapidly also to Germany, whose economy recorded for that year a very unenviable -5%, (first negative result in a positive series lasting 6 years), testifying that, however resilient, the German economy is not at all impervious to crises.
The second, less evident, but potentially much more dangerous in the long run, is the demographic one. With a total fertility rate recorded in 2019 of 1,57 children per woman, Germany has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, also lower than the European average (already known for its birth anemia), and the demographic increase recorded from 2015 onwards, equal to 1.2% (in 2014 it had been equal to 0,23%) was due only to the generous migration policies promoted by the government and the reception guaranteed to refugees from the Middle East and North Africa which, however, also created significant problems of public order and national security.
The demographic contraction in ex-West Germany began already in the late 1990s thanks to the reduction of birth rates which were instead artificially kept high in East Germany due to the invasive pro-natalist policies of the communist government. The collapse of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of XNUMX have largely standardized the situation and delivered a demographic picture that, in perspective, can reserve very negative surprises.
As of March 31, 2019, Germany registered a population of over 83 million inhabitants, making it the demographic giant of the continent. However, only 65 million of them are "ethnic Germans" while 18 million are immigrants and descendants of immigrants, first or second generation, with or without citizenship. The difficult relationship that the German people has developed with its history has translated into a wait-and-see approach to the problems related to the perceived need for growth of the German "ethnic" basin with consequent preference for acceptance policies of an inclusive nature rather than in an attempt to stimulate "endogenous" demographic growth as has happened, for example, in France and Ireland.
According to prudential projections made by the IMF, the World Bank and the Pew Reseach Institute, by 2060 Germany risks losing both the demographic primacy in Europe, to the benefit of France and the United Kingdom, as well as seeing the ethnic core compromised (which it would lose an additional 10 million individuals!) which has ensured its progressive cultural and linguistic development over the past 2000 years.
German law defines "person with a migrant background" all those who migrated to the territory of the current Federal Republic after 1949, plus all foreign nationals born in Germany and all those born in Germany with the status of German citizens but with at least one parent who immigrated to Germany or who was born in Germany as a foreign citizen.
A separate case is the category of "ethnic Germans" whose personal past is not directly related to "German soil". According to data published by the Federal Statistical Office, from the point of view of citizenship and ethnic background, the population of Germany can be divided as follows:
- “German citizens”, 74 million (92,3%), of which 64,7 of German origin (79%) and 9,9 of foreign origin (11%);
- “Permanent resident foreigners”, 9 million (10%).
However, the official statistics on citizenship do not focus on another problem which, on the contrary, is well present in the collective consciousness of the Germans; the scarce fusion of the dominant ethnic element, the more properly German one and its progressive erosion. To understand the complexity of this problem it is necessary to take a step back in time, to the origin of the German national identity. The events that favored the birth of this consciousness were undoubtedly the Protestant Reformation and the political developments that followed the spread of a common language and literature.
The five hundred years following the Protestant Reformation served to create the philosophical, cultural and conceptual framework for defining "who is German"; however, these concepts, although incorporated into the collective consciousness of the people, leave several questions unresolved. In the words of Diana Forsythe, who wrote an acute essay on the problem of German identity in 1989: People who speak German as their mother tongue, have a German physical appearance and whose families have lived in Germany for generations are considered "mostly German", followed by categories of "lesser German" such as the "Assiedlers" (people of German descent whose families have lived in Eastern Europe but who have returned to Germany), the "Restdeutsche" (people who lived or live in lands that historically belonged to Germany but are currently incorporated in other countries), "Auswanderer" (people whose families have emigrated from Germany and who still speak German), people who live in other German-speaking countries such as the Austrians and the Swiss Germans and finally ethnic German immigrants who no longer speak German in their daily lives. These subdivisions may be bizarre to us but, must be understood if we think of the historical events of Germany, a country (or rather, a territory) absolutely devoid of clear geographical borders that over the course of 2000 years has expanded and contracted like an accordion to depending on the period and which had to confront and clash with other countries with a national, ethnic or imperial identity equally, if not more, strong.
A practical implication of this complicated identity system has been, and still is, the integration of 14 million "Heimatvertriebene" (ethnic Germans or German citizens who were expelled from the territories of Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the Second War World) and their descendants, whose membership in the German civilian body was sanctioned in 1949 by a common law of the "Two post-war Germanies", as well as the acceptance of 4,5 million ethnic Germans (but with very little cultural commonality with modern Germany) from the territories of the former Soviet Union after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, although sanctioned by the so-called "Return Law" of 1992.
In light of the above, taking into account the centrifugal forces present in Bavaria, Schleswig-Holstein and in the historical regions of East Frisia, Franconia and Lusatia and the various regional and dialectal differences present throughout the territory, it is well understood how even the category of "ethnic Germans" is actually an absolutely artificial construct and that the "German nation" as a whole rests its feet on a much more fragile pedestal, for example and full of irony, of the "Greek nation" (which is also not a mono-ethnic state as many would be tempted to believe).
The straw that broke the camel was the European Migrant Crisis which brought no less than 1,2 million asylum seekers to Germany in a very short time span and exposed the profound critical issues of the "Germany system", in addition to further exacerbating relations between Berlin and European partners. However strong as Germany is apparently, it does not have the power to put order on its own in Europe. Even if the Germans really wanted to play the role of leader, they cannot do so without the active collaboration of hundreds of millions of Europeans. This, at least, was the calculation that the fathers of unified Europe made on the occasion of the Treaties of Rome when, through economic cooperation, they proposed to create a "European Germany". Unfortunately, what we have achieved over 60 years later is the exact opposite: a "German Europe".
As we fly over the economic and social geography of our continent, we realize that, since the introduction of the euro, and even more after the start of the global economic crisis of 2007/2008, Europe has been shaping up to concentric circles orbiting around Germany and arranged hierarchically according to the real and perceived degree of economic reliability with respect to the "Germanic nucleus". This provision reflects in a stunning way the traditional family order of German culture characterized by patriarchal verticality (man-woman and father-mother-children) and inequality (older son-younger son and male-female children).
Given the tendency of human societies to replicate the dynamics existing in the family field at a social level, it is not surprising that, historically, the Germans have proved particularly receptive to accepting and exporting deeply totalitarian and unequal government systems such as the Empire of the Kaiser, the Nazi Third Reich and the Communist German Democratic Republic, three of the most totalitarian regimes ever appeared on this earth. In the same way today, consciously or unconsciously, by refusing to solve its internal demographic and citizenship problems and imposing its austerity and political-social inequality on other European countries, Germany is placing itself on the same path already taken twice during the twentieth century, with consequences that everyone remembers.
Finally, we recall that Hitler's rise to power was favored not only by hyper-inflation and the economic crisis following the collapse of '29 but also by the dramatic drop in the fertility rate following the First World War and the deterioration of the traditional German family system that made society more politically unstable (in 1933 the total fertility rate of German women was 1,60 children per woman, surprisingly similar to the current one!).
The effects that a continuous uncontrolled influx of immigrants, combined with the continuous "endogenous" demographic decrease and a possible deterioration of the German economic system following further European or world shocks, can have in the context of modern Germany are not at all obvious or easy to forecast. The German people know this and are rightly uneasy.
Should we resign ourselves to the disturbing scenarios of a "Germany without Germans" or a "Germany prey to the resurgence of its ghosts of the past"?
Photo: Bundeswehr
