'Das endlose Trauerspiel'

One thing you get to learn when living abroad is that your host's national culture is likely to be very different from yours.  And so it is for me with Germany - even though my wife is German.  I suppose that there are a few superficial similarities, but we are all prisoners of our countries' pasts and actually there are very few shared cultural reference points that properly bind us together either as people or communities.  We are, whether we like it or not, rather different.



A 1 Euro coin

When reading German newspapers I am often struck by how different the German establishment's (for want of a better expression) view is on a whole range of issues compared with the prevailing opinion or consensus in the UK.  One issue that certainly does bind us together is the European Union (EU) and the Euro, even though the UK is not a member.  The latter is constantly in the news at the moment thanks to the never ending Greek financial crisis.

Strong stuff - 'Frau Merkel, we also want a referendum!  Take the Greeks out of the Euro!'

German foreign policy since the second world war has been to embed itself within first the EEC and then the EU.  Over time and more by default than by design, Germany has assumed an increasingly important leadership role in the EU mainly because of the Euro crisis and its position as the dominant economic and fiscal power.  Other crises, for example those involving Russia, have also favoured German involvement because of the significant economic and trade links between the two countries.  The German political elite remain wedded to the EU and its future - especially the Euro.  This relationship is a given, a constant, a matter of faith; it is not the pragmatic contractual arrangement envisaged by the British. 



The Bundestag in Berlin.

But are things changing?  Certainly people here are alive to the Euro crisis and many have now assumed a more questioning and sceptical stance.  I don't think most people realize how well Germany has done in the Euro and wrongly assume that their economic success is entirely attributable to the country's manufacturing brilliance.  What I think really upsets people here is the thought of handing over more money to indebted states in southern Europe, especially when they refuse to take Auntie Angela's medicine.  I wonder now whether the Germans will be prepared to hand over the political and sovereign power necessary to make the Euro work.  The acquiescent acceptance, upon which many German (and other) politician's relied to advance the cause of Europe, is I sense draining away.

So where does this leave us - or more pertinently the Germans?  Whilst Germany is certainly wealthy, there is a lot of poverty here.  The legacy of amalgamating unemployment and welfare benefits in 2005 under Hartz IV, is over 7 million people on “mini-jobs”, part-time work that is tax-free up to €450.  This flatters the jobless rate, but in the process Germany has become a split society, more unequal than at any time in its modern history. Remarkably, a fifth of German children are raised in poverty.  So many Germans quite understandably don't think that they can afford to subsidise others - and they probably have a point.  But, you make your bed and you lie in it.  If everything is sacrificed on the exigencies of a indistinct and vapid European dream, without asking the electorate first, then this is where you may end up.  We are all very different - I don't understand how the Germans could have let themselves get here, but then I don't understand them and they don't understand me.