Jacob Heilbrunn: Germany is Becoming Introverted
Freiburg, A university town nestled in a valley at the foot of the Black Forest in southwest Germany, is where the philosopher Martin Heidegger, who wore a Nazi Party badge for the special occasion, delivered his notorious rector’s address in 1933, exhorting German students to fulfill the Fuhrer’s vision by supporting the “national revolution.” The medieval city was heavily bombed during World War II and occupied by the French. After the Berlin wall fell and the remaining occupation force departed in the early 1990s, a motley crew of house squatters and hippies moved into the former French barracks. But within a few years, the local city council converted the space into a gleaming town for the middle class called Vauban. When you visit this eco-town, it quickly becomes apparent that Vauban resembles nothing so much as a tarted-up socialist paradise. It leaves you with the feeling of having seen a small replica of East Germany—except that it actually works.
The communal apartment buildings are constructed from recycled materials and painted in a variety of bright colors. The houses almost invariably feature an array of solar panels for heating and hot water. Outside, numerous trash cans stand proudly like soldiers at attention, waiting for carefully selected refuse. Consistent with Vauban’s progressive ethos, all the streets are named after famous women like Rahel Varnhagen, a German Jew who ran one of the most prominent intellectual salons in Berlin during the early eighteenth century and was the subject of a biography by Hannah Arendt. Placards announcing feminist meetings, anticapitalist demos and protests against nuclear power are plastered on the walls. For those interested in burnishing their revolutionary credentials, every third week of the month features a sudsy meeting at the radical pub SUSI of the “Antifa Linke Freiburg”—the antifascist Left of the neighborhood, known to its adherents as the ALFR. Its motto is “class war” instead of the older German credo “fatherland.” Meanwhile, a tiny encampment of anarchists is living in abandoned vehicles side-by-side this utopian dream.
In other words, Vauban, for the most part, epitomizes how Germany would like to be seen abroad—enlightened, progressive, reflective, pleasant and virtuous. And, in many ways, it reflects the tamed and docile West Germany that England, France and America hoped would emerge after World War II. But if Vauban is an environmental paradise, it may also exemplify the rather-complacent political orthodoxies that are sapping the vitality of a country that is urgently in need of renewal. It has something of a nanny-state feel to it since cars are basically verboten—and where they aren’t, as in Berlin, anarchists have been torching them nightly. Even as some of Vauban’s residents fume about capitalism and state oppression, they lead highly regulated lives that depend on draconian government laws mandating everything from energy efficiency down to almost the final turn of the water faucet. Its residents seek liberation from the free-market ethos by circumscribing their freedoms. It’s all very German. It’s also become somewhat problematic....
WHAT IS really happening from the borders of the Saarland to the hinterland of Saxony is the takeover of Germany by the Left. If America became enraptured with the global-capitalism gospel of the past two decades, Germany has experienced the opposite. The country has long been held captive by the communist program: first, through its division during the Cold War; then, as it tried to join its ailing East with its far healthier West. The Germans’ failure to make themselves whole and equal again leaves their country increasingly insular and provincial....
The intellectual inheritance of Marx, the hatred of das Manchestertum—Manchester neoliberalism—sits deep among German elites, particularly on the left, which has even devised a special and dreaded term to describe a politician who dares to propose trimming any social programs—soziale Kälte, social coldness. Implicit in the term, which cuts off debate before it can even begin, is the moral superiority of anyone who opposes capitalist policies. Currently, more than half of the federal budget is devoted to social-programs spending. In Germany, it remains possible to live rather comfortably on long-term unemployment benefits, something that immigrants, who form a high percentage of welfare recipients, have noticed as well....
This is no small issue to be brushed aside in the name of equality for all. German economic growth was near zero in the final quarter of 2009 and it is expected to be, at best, 2 percent in the coming year. Heavily dependent on exports for machinery and autos, Germany has lagged in stimulating demand at home. It’s not clear that the luxury-car market abroad, which makes up a hefty component of auto-manufacturing-center Stuttgart’s—and by extension, Germany’s—economic base, will recover anytime soon.
Instead of resembling the martial country of yore, then, Germany has begun to reach even further back into its history, mirroring the provincial and musty duchies of the eighteenth century that vexed the German romantics who preached unification and national greatness. It has achieved the first, but it’s no longer interested in the latter for itself or, indeed, for Europe....