The Germany that says Nein

It’s Wednesday afternoon in Stuttgart, the sun is shining, the lawn needs mowing again, but Sylvia Heimsch knows she’s needed elsewhere. She glances at the webcam, which is beaming images of construction work on Stuttgart’s main train station straight into her living room. Then she grabs her police whistle and trekking shoes and drives downtown with her son.

For months now Sylvia Heimsch (47) has been fighting the mega-project “Stuttgart 21”. She is among the organisers of the “Park Protectors” bent on keeping nearly 300 old trees from being felled in the Stuttgart palace gardens. Last Wednesday Heimsch gathered with about a hundred other protesters for a sit-in on Highway 14 in Stuttgart. Heimsch bears little resemblance to past activists in West Germany. She’s not against the establishment, she’s part of it. She lives with her husband and three children in a revamped Jugendstil house. “Doctors, teachers, engineers and lawyers come out for our Monday rallies,” she says: “these people are pillars of society, but they won’t stand for this political insanity any more.”

A nation of naysayers

Germans are turning into a nation of naysayers. There are protests virtually everywhere and against virtually everything. Whether it’s a new train station in Stuttgart, school reforms in Hamburg, a smoking ban in Bavaria – it’s bound to bring demonstrations, litigation and referendums in its wake. The power of the people is swelling. This is the dawn of the age of antagonism.

Never before in recent memory have the people been this restive, while many politicians seem overwhelmed by apathy. Roland Koch, governor of the state of Hesse, Olevon Beust, mayor of Hamburg, Horst Köhler, federal president – all of them have thrown in the towel. This political burnout is quite alien to Sylvia Heimsch in Stuttgart. People like her are the new politicians. They don’t call themselves that, they have other professions, but they are doing what is actually the professionals’ job: trying to improve living conditions. They defy governors, mayors and parliamentarians, challenging their decisions and opposing their projects and laws. The main battle line in the country these days is being drawn: people vs. politicians.

At first glance that seems a salutary development. Democracy is alive and kicking, people are intervening, taking part. But that won’t necessarily make for a better society. Many of the protests are against transport and energy projects – in other words, against the modernisation of the country.

An incompetent political class

So who are these antagonists anyway? The protests and referendums are almost always aimed at local and regional policies. Concomitantly, however, the conflict also concerns federal policy, and the political caste as a whole. The black-and-yellow coalition [Christian Dems & Liberals] have been in power for nearly a year now, but have yet to make any major policy decisions. In fact, the policymakers don’t seem competent to solve the country’s problems.

And when a decision is reached, that may not mean all that much. The electorate have learned that laws apply only to a limited extent. Whether it’s retirement at age 67 or how long to keep nuclear power plants up and running, the parties are currently busy nixing policies that are only a few years old. And when laws get revised that often, politics begins to take on a whiff of transience. People feel entitled and even invited to gnaw away at the validity of political decisions. And that’s precisely what they are doing, in minor as in major matters.

The latest big bone of contention concerns plans to rebuild Stuttgart’s main train station. The CDU [Christian Democrats], SPD [Social Democrats] and FDP [Liberals] are in favour of the project, but this broad political consensus doesn’t keep many people from protesting. Those opposed to the new station fear for the quality of the mineral springs underneath and for the health of as many as 300 trees in the adjacent park. They’d rather preserve the historic landmarked station. Many politicians, on the other hand, are ogling the economic opportunities at stake: a new station should mean faster train connections.

The protest has taken on an almost religious dimension. A video posted on YouTube shows demonstrators taking a “pledge” in front of the old station. A speaker intones, “We pledge…”; protesters repeat, “We pledge…”. Speaker: “…to protect the park.” Protesters: “…to protect the park.” They recite the whole pledge in this hallowed tone, with quivering emotion in their chanting voices, as though this were a political church service.

In his analysis of 1970s and ’80s protest movements, sociologist Niklas Luhmann speaks of the “communication of fear”. Fear of atomic radiation, fear of the next world war. That made protests at the time particularly radical. Nowadays the fear is not as visceral, the protest not as radical anymore. But an emotional element still adheres to the protests, a deep “consternation” as expressed in that strange prayer to ward off a new train station.

A battle of citizen versus citizen

That doesn’t necessarily put the protesters in the right, however. What does it really mean if 30,000 people take to the streets in a city of 600,000? Elected officials represent a great many people, whereas each protester stands for him or herself alone. This is why expressions like “popular protest” are somewhat misleading, implying that everyone is opposed. As a matter of fact, it is often a matter of citizen vs. citizen.

The smoking ban in Bavaria is a case in point. The referendum results looked plain enough on paper: 61% backed the ban. But only a little over a third of the state electorate actually went to the polls. In other words only 23% of the voters came out against smoking.

Referendums and citizens’ initiatives in particular often divide up the electorate into winners and losers. Political issues are reduced to oversimplified “yes”/“no” decisions.

In the mass protest movements prior to 1989, in contrast, there was always an overriding issue at stake in the broader picture, such as freedom or peace. Most of the activists were young and anti-establishment. All that has changed today. Most present-day protests are on a local scale, the “activists” are in many cases well-off individuals who are not out to save the world, but the little smidgen of it that they inhabit. And they often have their own little self-seeking axes to grind.

Germany could become a land of atomised residents

So the growth of protest may also be a sign of narrowing viewpoints. Churches, sports clubs, labour unions and mainstream political parties have been shrinking for years, the populace is increasingly atomised. And their willingness to make sacrifices for society may be shrinking as a result.

But a country cannot develop without demanding certain reasonable sacrifices on the part of the populace. Only professional politicians can impose such sacrifices – provided the opposition does not grow too strong. If it does, Germany could become a land of atomised residents: the upshot would be standstill.

The best society is one that interlocks politicians and citizens. The emotions of the individual need to be offset by political detachment, middle class influence by representation of the poor, the will to confrontation by the search for consensus – and of course vice versa. Politicians need protest to keep them on the right track – and to get them to do a better job. As is so often the case, it is a matter of finding the golden mean.

Matthias Bartsch, Sven Becker, Kim Bode, Jan Friedmann, Wiebke Hollersen, Simone Kaiser, Dirk Kurbjuweit, Peter Müller, Maximilian Popp, Barbara Schmid

Translated by Eric Rosencrantz