On the eve of Angela Merkel’s political retirement, most Germans are feeling gloomy about their country’s future. A new poll showed that the majority believe Germany’s best days are behind it, with an astonishing 52% believing that the country’s ‘golden age’ has past. A plurality of other Europeans agree that the star of the continent’s largest economy is fading.
It is tempting to link this dent in Germany’s self-image and its prestige in Europe to the departure of Angela Merkel. In her sixteen years in government, she has shaped European policy and loomed large in the public perception as a stabilising force. The ECFR’s report goes as far as to claim that ‘without Merkel, the foundations of Germany’s leadership role in the EU will be significantly weaker’ while the Telegraph also speaks of ‘enduring support for the outgoing Mrs Merkel across the bloc.’
In Germany itself, however, few would see the Merkel era as the country’s golden age. Though the outgoing chancellor is still the most popular current politician, former officeholders, particularly the SPD chancellor Helmut Schmidt who ran the country from 1974-1982, rank far higher.
But another question we might want to ask is when, exactly, was Germany’s golden age?
In West Germany, the post-war years after the foundation of the country in 1949 were marked by an immense surge in economic and personal prosperity. The contrast between the so-called ‘economic miracle’ of the 1950s and the years of war and occupation that preceded it could not have been starker. It created a powerful and long-lasting image of the good old days in the collective German mind.
While the 1960s and 70s saw a slowing down of the progress made and minor blips during the slump of the early 1960s and the first oil-crisis of 1973, West Germany steered through these rough waters with comparative ease. What’s more, it managed to hold on to some of the highest living standards in the western world.
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SubscribeStarving Greek pensioners and importing Afghan rapists. Quite the political legacy!
Could it be that people were unhappy about immigration but were afraid to say?
Isn’t it a little too soon to conclude the Merkel era wasn’t Germany’s golden age? We’ve yet to see what follows Merkel. There’s plenty of room on the downside.
I think Merkel’s legacy will be reminded in a similar way of that of Helmut Kohl’s. Not everything was perfect, but it was a period of general political stability and technocratic rule. Perhaps her largest contribution will be her European engagement.
Always a thought provoking and interesting commentator of German affairs although tensions between “continuity and progress” need further explanation. Entitlement to both seems to be more of a preoccupation among many Germans who remain captured by representation through a vote count they do not understand. Electing people to a chamber now outnumbered by Party apparatchiks who get there, not by a vote but by a most (over 5%) favoured ideology, produces a strange democracy. Governing the Nation through responses to Causes overwhelms the Legislature. The whole 700+ of them! Progress is a diminished and barely understood outcome in this environment.