It kind of snuck up on me, but after months of talk, the German federal elections are here, and they look to herald a certain amount of chaos, rather than a clear successor to current chancellor Angela Merkel. As I checked the results a moment ago, the Social Democrats (SPD) had gathered the largest share of votes, though at just under 26% of the total they're not exactly commanding a mandate. The Christian Democrats (CDU) are at second with 24.1% and the Greens are in third place with 14.6%.
One of the things that's helped Germany weather the chaos of the past few years has been the sense of stability that came from Merkel's long reign and the grand coalitions between CDU and SPD that were formed. It's hard to see that sense of stability continuing, if everybody starts fighting about who's going to be the next chancellor, and I'm feeling a bit pessimistic at the prospect of the far-right AfD making further inroads amid the chaos.
We can debate the effectiveness of Merkel in these past sixteen years that she's been in charge (and in fact, I did debate it with my mom this morning), but it's undeniable that from outside Germany she became the face of the country that other chancellors before her, or other heads of state in other countries, haven't really managed to do. I may be able to name all the post-war German chancellors from Konrad Adenauer on down, but I'd be hard-pressed to name an SPD leader in these past few years, beyond Gerhard Schröder, whom she defeated to become chancellor, and Olaf Scholz, who seems likely to take her place now.
Now, I won't say I spend a lot of time following German politics, or even current events. I've even fallen out of the habit of checking the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung or Süddeutsche Zeitung a couple of times a week (blame the fact that my current job requires a bit more focus than my previous one). I used to watch Deutsche Welle's 15-minute news roundup every Sunday morning, to keep my German up, but they stopped doing it.
I do, however, like the idea of a nice, stable society out there, one that I'm familiar with and that I wouldn't mind living in again. The last few years have been a bit tough for me on that front, since the US has been a basket case, the UK has been worse thanks to Brexit, and Italy has set the template for the chaos of both since it elected Silvio Berlusconi in the 1990s. Germany wasn't always the economic powerhouse of Europe - when I lived there unemployment was over 10% and you could see a palpable difference between East and West - but it was nice to know that it was still well run and pleasant.
I'm sure it will continue to be, but it suffers, as ever, from its placement at the heart of Europe. It still has unruly neighbors to its east, in the form of Russia and the various right-wing populist governments of Hungary, Poland, Turkey and so forth. It also faces a fractious and xenophobic Britain, and an increasingly ungovernable US, while also playing bad fiscal cop to the rest of the EU.
An English relative once asked me whether my heart lay in the US, Britain or Italy, and I answered that it lay in Germany. This may have been overblown, but I don't think it's completely wrong. When I used to read the roundups from the European soccer leagues on the Guardian, I always used to imagine the feeling of being there on a Sunday night after the games had ended, a feeling I never got from reading the Italian roundup (even though I've spent a larger part of my life in Italy).
When I moved to Britain after my year in Germany, I was a little shocked at how little anyone in Britain seemed to know about Germany, though I remembered the WWII references from Euro 96, so it shouldn't have been too surprising. I suppose in that way I became a bit of a hipster (for lack of a better term) in my cheerleading for the place - it's pleasing that, in the two decades since I left, the rest of the world has caught on to what a cool place it is.
It also seems to have gotten better since I left. The government made moves to naturalize many of the foreigners who'd been living and working there for decades, and the high streets appear to have become more cosmopolitan (I remember being so excited when a sushi place finally opened in my town). Germany even started to export prestige dramas, like Deutschland 83, so it seemed that the world was finally taking notice.
So with these elections heralding a big change for the country, I'm hoping that it can continue to be prosperous, stable and tolerant, and that it can continue to set a good example (in at least a few ways) for the rest of Europe and for the US. I'm also hoping that I get to go back soon, since my last visit was in 2012 - I've always regretted not seeing more of the country, and I'd like to rectify that error.
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