Pockets of Rhineland carnival exuberance and Bavarian beer tent jollity aside, Germans by and large are not generally known for being in a good mood. Berlin may be famed as Germany’s party capital but it’s also well-known at home and abroad for the grumpiness of the locals. The atmosphere was different during the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the city seemed full of opportunity as the capital of a newly reunited Germany. Over the past few years, though, the mood has certainly darkened again, and bad temperedness is the dominating vibe.
It speaks of a national trend. The contentment of the years of Chancellor Angela Merkel, when a general sense of optimism mixed with a high degree of self-satisfaction (remember the euro crisis?), has given way to pessimism and Zukunftsangst, or “fear of the future.” According to a new international poll, the Edelman Trust Barometer, 69 percent of Germans nurse “a medium to big” grudge against the government, companies, and the well-to-do “who profit from the system while the public at large suffers.” And only 14 percent believe that the next generation will be better off—the second worse result among the 28 states sampled, only undercut by an even more pessimistic mood in France (9 percent).
The political consequence in Germany is a refiguration of the political center and the rise of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which, according to recent polling, continues to be head-to-head with Chancellor Friedrich Merz’ Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) at around 25 percent. Competing in five regional elections this year, and with new-found friends in US President Donald Trump’s Washington, the AfD could well continue making headway this year.
Late Adaptors
On the international level, Germany’s grumpiness is easily explainable. As German diplomat Thomas Bagger famously put it, the thesis of the “end of history,” proposed by political scientist Francis Fukuyama at the end of the Cold War, was “an American idea and a German reality.” The country at Europe’s center has achieved reunification by peaceful means and was, for the first time in history, “surrounded by friends” (Chancellor Helmut Kohl), and succeeded with an export-oriented economic model that greatly profited from globalization and the “rules-based international order,” which Germany always strongly defended in theory, but less so in practice. In the German view, military might was a thing of the past. The rest of the world should follow suit, or so the thinking went, and learn the lesson of the German example.
This has made the recent awakening all the ruder. It took Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago for Germany to realize how badly it had neglected its military, at its own, and Europe’s, expense. It is now performing an unprecedented catching-up operation, with the parliament greenlighting the spending of €50 billion on new military equipment on a single day in December. (That amount used to be the defense budget for an entire year.) However, the often-cited Zeitenwende, or turning point, the world is witnessing is so much broader and all-encompassing that it’s boggling the German mind. Responding to it by enhancing Germany’s military is possibly the easiest part. Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro early in the new year demonstrated, almost all deeply held foreign policy assumptions are crumbling in front of German eyes.
The Optimism Chancellor
This has put Merz in a unique position, perhaps only comparable to the task that Konrad Adenauer faced in the late 1940s and 1950s when he anchored Western Germany firmly in what was then “the West”–NATO and the early iterations of the EU. Now, with Trump’s United States going rogue, Germany’s options appear less clear, beyond deeper EU integration and looking for “new partners” across the globe.
Merz availed of the traditional German chancellor’s New Year address to calibrate his message. Broadcast after the 8 p.m. Tagesschau news on New Year’s Eve (still the nation’s top news source with 10 million viewers on average and a share of 40 percent share of the “linear” television audience), the address used to be a boring affair. Behind a heavy desk with the German flag prominently draped in the background or, more recently, standing up in front of the new Berlin chancellery window in festive attire, the German and the EU flag to the right, German leaders would speak softly and often appear a little self-satisfied. They reassured the nation that all was well. The ritual used to be so routine that when in 1986 the broadcaster made a mistakeand transmitted the taped speech of Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s previous year’s address instead of the latest version, it was hardly noticed at first.
Fast forward 40 years, and Merz opted for a visually almost austere approach, low on production values and a jumpy camera. Only the Christmas tree sparkling behind Merz’ left shoulder in the distance provided some festive cheer. Germany’s challenge was “not a small one,” Merz told his viewers; the world was changing at a rapid pace. His government’s core task was “the renewal of the foundations of our freedom, security, and prosperity.” Merz very clearly described Russia’s war against Ukraine as part of a greater plan to attack the whole of Europe and—a first for a postwar German chancellor—spoke openly of the “changing relationship” with the United States that “used to guarantee our security.”
Merz’ main message, however, was one of optimism: It was his “deeply held” conviction that the Germans were able to deal with it all. “We are no victims of external circumstances; we are no plaything of great powers. Our hands are not tied.” As to what all this will mean in terms of foreign policy, the chancellor remained vague beyond reiterating the ambition of strengthening Germany’s, and Europe’s, security and deterrence.
But Merz has no other choice than to become a chancellor of unflinching optimism. It will be an uplifted mood that will determine his success or failure. He is certainly right that 2026 could become a crucial year. An angry, passive, and depressed Germany will be in no shape to play a leading role. A more upbeat and self-confident country will be. “Germany is a great country that was always able to reinvent itself,” Merz claimed at one point. For Germany’s and Europe’s sake, let’s hope that he’s got that one right and will find a way to convince his fellow countrymen and -women.
Henning Hoff is executive editor of INTERNATIONALE POLITIK QUARTERLY.
