People live in a stupor of resignation (things are significantly different only in areas considered “beacons”) – and a sense of defeatism about and contempt for democracy grows. Thus the mistrust of “politics” thrives.
This results not from defective political genes, but from the real and presumed experiences of many in the East. The West Germans had the good fortune in the 1950s and 1960s of being allowed to become acquainted with democracy in parallel with the “economic miracle”; they experienced democracy as a form of government under which their life situation improved.
Gushing about the GDR
Thirty years later, many East Germans are experiencing the exact opposite; for them, the introduction of democracy was accompanied by growing joblessness and social degradation. Today, there is no shortage of East Germans who believe that what the former GDR rulers told them about the nature of capitalism was not all that wrong. They fly to Mallorca, gush about the coziness of the old GDR, and get pretty unpleasant when the subject of foreigners comes up.
Generation Hartz IV: there is a new underclass, and this is much clearer in the East than in the West. This underclass no longer sees any opportunities for advancement, has lost its relationship to the future, and can no longer be reached by what is referred to as political discourse.
They are “socially handicapped,” as Reinhard Höppner, the one-time minister president of Saxony-Anhalt and current president of the Protestant Church Congress, put it. This new underclass forms the milieu of those who sympathize with right-wing extremism, because the members of this class agree with right-wing extremists’ rejection of the democratic system.
The people of this new underclass need help managing their lives; they need jobs that pull them out of their armchairs and away from the TV and that free them from the dull rhythms of resignation.
The Bad Habit of Backing Off
Democracy needs self-confidence. Recently, however, the bad habit of backing off has established itself: municipal administrations in the East are making deals with the right-wing extremists, mayors babble about a “Demokratur”* that is supposedly needed.
The bad habit of backing off also includes the destruction of the cultural infrastructure, something that is currently under way, above all in Thuringia: cultural budgets are being cut in half, theaters are being closed. But no country can endure such a dismantling, the dismantling of culture and democracy – not even when a few beacons are standing by.
*The word “Demokratur” is a combination of “Demokratie” [democracy] and “Diktatur” [dictatorship] – trans.
Source: Heribert Prantl, “Die neue deutsche Teilung” [“The New German Division”], Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 2, 2006.
Translation: Thomas Dunlap
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