> Michael Winterhoff’s Deutschland Verdummt claims that German children today “have no tolerance for frustration, and they avoid all exertion.” By the time they graduate, half of them still “have the psyche of a small child.” The author of eight previous books on childhood development, Winterhoff’s primary concern is that children today have become “tyrants.” They don’t know proper boundaries; they have not been taught how to submit to parental and social authority. And this, Winterhoff says, is entirely the fault of parents themselves. Beginning in the 1990s, they have treated their children like friends and partners instead of acting like authority figures and moral guides, preferring to allow children the freedom to develop and move at their own pace instead of submitting to the adult order of things.
>> “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
Plus there is "professional speech" vs off the cuff. "Please pass the salt. - Barrack Obama" would probably technically be an accurate quote even if it wasn't documented.
There were accounts of cringeworthy even for the day dressing up in a dirty short cloak in immitation of Spartans.
"not been taught how to submit" And a bet he wrote that unironically.
I remember a documentary on Berlin and Berlinners have a slang term there that basically means "you have been controlled" when one of the many petty bureaucrats, pulls you up over some trivial infraction
This phrase probably uses the verb kontrollieren, which means check/control/examine
It's not about petty bureaucrats and trivial infractions, it usually is referring to someone getting checked on the subway for tickets - and sometimes not having the proper ticket (or maaaaaybe being asked for id due to anti-social behaviour)
On the u-bahn everybody is checked. As for anti-social behaviour, it's usually the ones with certain clothing, possibly depicting some symbols or personal appearance that are often targeted.
You may be mistaking "kontrolliert werden" for "being controlled" when it actually means "being checked".
Reminds me of when American friends were SHOCKED by a political poster that quipped "Vertrauen ist gut, Kontrolle ist besser" - they thought it meant "Trust is good, control is better", but it actually means "Trust is good, but checking things is better"
I assume you're referring to "Deutschland über alles" (Germany over everything).
It's no longer the first verse due to the Nazi history, but it doesn't come from that time.
It actually comes from the mid 1800s (IIRC) when Germany didn't exist as a unified state. People lived in many different kingdoms and principalities and many yearned for a German state.
The anthem comes from this time and this line is supposed to mean that Germany is preferable to the various smaller states of that time.
You can probably release this book every 30 years or so and have a bot replace contemporary parts and jargon.
He says that the development of children is negatively affected by adults, who lack authority by elevating children to their level. Information technology had further enabled children to fortify this power imbalance.
Maybe he has a point, but as a psychologist for children you probably get a warped image after a while. Job hazard probably.
He recommends adults to take walks in the park for example to get distance and perspective from the horrible stuff younger people post online. That can align with my wishes to ban all politicians from Twitter at least.
But I think it should be pretty controversial to say that younger people form some kind of tyranny while keeping demographics in Germany in mind. Well, easier to take advantage of people that believe you a fool.
Still, younger people are the end of civilization as we know it, as is tradition. I believe there never was a metric or any empirical evidence but it might just be one of these timeless classics people seem to love. Maybe there is a hint of truth in a way that people drawn to these stories do indeed feel overtaxed.
It is perfectly possible for younger generation to be less capable in something, to be more violent then previous generation and so on. And these developments can be objectively measured too.
Kids who are being raised in communism are bound to behave differently then the ones who are being raised for capitalism/democracy. For that matter, generation that grew pre-WWII and during it was raised completely differently and towards different values too - especially in Germany. They were in fact taught to obey much more. You was not in fact supposed to think for yourself, while in todays world it is more of an advantage.
The real question is how much of this complain is "real" and how much is just politics to push for changes author would like. And how much of what is real change is bad and how much is actually adaptation to more competitive more free world.
There has been at least one book about how "Germany/Germans are getting dumber", "The Big Crash is Coming" or something similar on the Spiegel Bestseller list at all times. So far, the big crash didn't come yet. These books don't talk about a market correction or a financial crisis like in 2008, but a total economic crash, because "a finite world can't have unlimited growth", because "capitalism", because "climate change".
People don't feel rich. In many families, both partners have a job. Median incomes didn't increase much in the last 10-15 years. With an after-tax monthly income of 5,160€ as a family (or 3,440€ as a single), you belong to the top 10% [1] (translates to roughly 100,000€ / 70,000€ pre-tax anually). The median monthly net income is 1,869€ (roughly around 35,000€ pre-tax anually).
At the same time, people are highly suspicious of the stock market. People have less time for their kids, which spend more time in the educational system. So people wonder if the educational system is really that great for their kids.
I think this is interesting. It's like a vicious cycle: According to [2], 23% of Germans own stocks (although I remember that this number used to be around 15% a few years ago). So, people read books about how everything is going to crash down soon, because they're suspicious of the stock market (and to be able to say "told you so" afterwards). At the same time, these books reinforce the idea that owning stocks is risky.
Most people would rather buy a home, but houses got very expensive in cities in the last 10 years. In major cities, a house for a family of 4 would cost around 800,000€ and more, which is quite expensive for the low salaries of 90% of the people.
Then, major newspapers now have articles about the climate crisis every day. There's the uncertainty of the Brexit. There is uncertainty about immigrants, but also uncertainty and fear of the rise of right-wing parties in Europe (and the AfD in Germany).
So, we have books about how "the system" is shit, how "the crash is coming", how "Germany gets dumber all the time", how "something needs to change". Add some fears about the before-mentioned topics and there's your new book every few months, same content, different cover.
You summed it up pretty well. All of which is reinforcing itself. Could turn, under the wrong circumstances, into a self fulfilling prophecy. But than isn't that valid for almost every other industrial nation as well?
These books also have in common that they cover topics that everyone has an opinion on, and that you can get really upset and angry over while not being in a position to really do anything about the "issues" they describe. As you say it's about how "something needs to change" but it's never the reader who has to change.
> Add some fears about the before-mentioned topics and there's your new book every few months, same content, different cover.
Talkshows and other media make these books even more profitable and popular. Publishing such a book almost guarantees that you'll be able to tour talkshows for a few weeks, give interviews to newspapers etc. as free marketing for your books.
I was refering to the kind of books that the parent comment also refered to:
> There has been at least one book about how "Germany/Germans are getting dumber", "The Big Crash is Coming" or something similar on the Spiegel Bestseller list at all times.
Not all books on the list are like that but there is indeed at least one of them at any given time. And those particular books never require the reader to change.
> Publishing such a book almost guarantees that you'll be able to tour talkshows for a few weeks, give interviews to newspapers etc. as free marketing for your books.
I don't really see a clear divide between book publishers and media publisher on this issue. Most news media companies are going for the same content: everything is terrible, the world is constantly very close to ending, and you need to buy this paper to find out how to save yourself today. Bad news is good news after all.
Many people experienced a personal economic crash. Otherwise there wouldn't be so much talk about gentrification.
It's easy to say "the crash never comes or never came". Everything seems to be fine.
79 years ago, there was a huge war in Europe killing Millions people. Yet here today everything is fine, without history lesson you wouldn't even necessarily know it ever happened.
So was there a "big crash" 79 years ago? After all, things are fine now.
I read somewhere that the German billionaire class controls 1T dollars. Why do people earn only 5k after tax ? There seem to be very little opportunities for investment in stock market. Real estate prices too seem insane.
Because Germany is a high-tax-country. People also generally don't have a lot of private pension funds, that's tied up in a publicly organized system that's based on income, and "shared" between employer and employee (that is, the employer will pay half of it directly, which generally means that your pay is lower by that much). You get pension claims instead of building personal wealth.
While there's still a lot of personal wealth to be inherited over the next decades, families appear to have more difficulties building wealth. It's why, whenever somebody says "Germany is a rich country", my instinct is to ask them "what is this Germany you speak of", because there are large differences when you look at the average/median citizen, a very well-off knowledge worker or rich person, or a person living at/below the poverty line.
I'm not an expert on that since I'm self-employed, but imho that's not completely accurate. Most contributions aren't completely tax deductible (pensions: 86/88%), and many of them share a max deduction limit of 1900 Euros, so you'll quickly get above that if you're earning an average salary.
Public pensions and all the other stuff is usually directly deducted from your monthly pay, private insurance is where the deductibles come in. Not an issue for you standard stuff as an employee.
Yeah, not an "I need to pay this" issue, but I was talking about tax implications. Whether the money makes a stop in your account is one thing, whether it gets taxed as if it did is another, which I understand it is.
Real estate prices are insane probably partly due to ECB negative interest rates which make buying on credit very attractive. I read an article on HN last week about zero interest 20y loans in Denmark. The DKK is pegged to the Euro.
Add to that all time lows (zero and below) for German bond yields which has bleak consequences for long time savers (future pensioners). Germany is a nation of savers.
Dunno, but normally it's not a great idea to buy real estate when prices are insane and property taxes are high. Also if you buy on credit the asset is the creditor's until you pay it off, so you can't sell.
Not in the case of real estate. There you might have to repay the outstanding debt immediately including any losses of the bank. Unless you manage to sell the financing along the real estate. For private persons, investors and developers are different I think in terms of credit conditions.
It's not clear what your point of reference is. If you're wondering why it's much lower than in the US (where the 90-percentile household is probably around 170k USD pre-tax or 9k-10k post-tax), there are many many factors that contribute to the difference. The most important ones (unordered) are IMO:
- USD is probably overvalued by 15%-20% [1].
In the past 10 years, the EUR/USD rate fluctuated between 1.05 and 1.55, currently it's 1.12. It's unlikely that the relative living standards between the US and Germany fluctuated as much as 50% in this period, so a lot of the nominal incomes differences are not real.
- Americans work 30% more hours than Germans [2]
These two factors can explain most of the pre-tax income differences.
The net difference is a bit higher still, due to higher taxes/mandatory payments. I don't have references at hand, but at the €100k level, take-home pay is around 60%-62% of gross, while for an American at $112k it's closer to 70% (federal, state and payroll). No comment about justness, proper accounting for transfers, subsidies, other taxes, mandatory insurances, etc. This is a huge sprawling debate topic, but it's indisputable that disposable income at the same gross is higher in the US than in Europe. IMO, the first 2 factors accounting for differences in gross incomes are more important anyway.
A fairly mainstream economic theory is that the higher European (marginal) taxes are actually a major cause of the lower working hours (and hence lower personal income) [3]. The highest marginal rates actually don't differ that much (typically around 50% in Europe, 45% federal+state in the US), but in Europe the higher rates typically kick in at much lower levels: US marginal rate at $100k is probably around 30%, whereas in many European countries it's already in the 40%+ bracket.
Also don't forget that, at least in Germany, after tax in casual conversation usually means net salaries after stuff like social security, health care, etc... Which might also explain some of the difference.
It's fairly similar for americans too, but most people talk about pre-tax incomes vs. post tax, health insurance & 401k deductions, money in my bank account amounts.
No, states and county-equivalents get a share from the federal income tax, and add other taxes (mostly on county-level), "Gewerbesteuer", which is an additional tax on businesses, and property tax being the largest ones.
Owning stocks is actually risky - in case of market crash (and it has happened often enough so that it's definitely possible as a once-in-a-lifetime event) you can lose big especially if you counted on it for pension/retirement purposes. Investment should always be done in context. Sometimes it's right to buy stocks, sometimes it isn't. Right now the market reaching sky-highs is not natural: there is no massive gain of productivity going on across industries so there should not be a massive uplift of all future earnings/values across the board.
Tangent - ordinarily I would consider it obnoxious to point this out, but I learned something and wanted to share it. As a native speaker, "the crash didn't come" sounds wrong to me - it should be "the crash hasn't come", but it took me a while to figure out why. I think the idea is that since you are saying "yet", you need to use the present perfect ("has not come"), which can imply an indefinite time (it might happen at some point, but we're not sure when). The simple past tense, "did not come", would be if we were referring to a past set time when something was expected to happen but didn't. (This seems like a very subtle distinction that I would consider exasperating if I was learning a new language, but I take it for granted in English!)
The flip-side is that a closed set of movement related words uses a different auxhiliary than the rest of the verbs, in German as well as e.g. French. However is gone, did go, has gone, was gone do not fit the pattern.
Deriving the reason for the different helper verbs from first principles is endearing, in principle, but you've merely given names to it that you somehow take for granted. It makes sense to have cut wood, and it makes no sense to do come or have come, except for a potatoe plant which if it cometh will have a Keim or Keimblatt to be precise; I'm guessing here.
German rather differentiates is and have in the perfective, "sie ist ge-kommen", "sie hat ge-sehen"; We don't say has come because we are intuited to think it is wrong. That is, you might as sell say the crisis is not ye(t)come.
Bank interest rates are 0 and negative, so people can't leave their money in the bank. They either have to spend it, driving up house prices or invest in the market to get better return. With bank rates being so low, folks are paranoid and with all their nest eggs in the market, they pay more attention to it.
As far as I know the Spiegel list, which has a lot of media and book shop presence does not count Amazon. The GfK in German has an exklusive deal with Amazon for data, and they do not deliver the Spiegel list data. The Spiegel list also uses an additional voting scheme among their journalists.
I have found the Spiegel list a bit weird for years, it contains a lot of highly light reading or polemic stuff like that guy yelling at today’s youth. That it does not include Amazon data explains quite something.
It's all German, obviously. And note that Spiegel has at least two different lists, for hardcover and paperback (plus a few more, less relevant).
FWIW I'm surprised by the claim that Spiegel has too much "light-reading" in its bestsellers. The usual charge is that they exclude certain lowbrow titles/categories.
The Amazon list (20 top items binned across hardcovers, paperbacks and audiobooks, which is correct if your goal is to identify a "zeitgeist trend") and the Spiegel lists (for an unknown reason, separate lists for paperback, hardcover and "Taschenbuch", 60 items in 3 lists [1]) have 11 books in common right now.
However if I only look at a single Spiegel list of 20 items, e.g. hardcovers there are only two items left in common.
I think you will agree that a book sales data analysis that has not made a successful effort to include one of the biggest book sellers in Germany for years can still safely be called garbage. It is baffling for me how much reputation the Spiegel lists still have.
Also, the hardcover Spiegel list has entries like the new book by Spiegel journalist Todenhöfer on rank 10 (rank 2129 on Amazon Germany right now).
[1] I ignored the Spiegel audiobooks list because this data is irrelevant without Audible.
Todenhöfer is not a Spiegel journalist. Not at all.
DER SPIEGEL gets its book data from der Buchreport which uses sales info from a few hundred actual bookstores.
Thus the list is not 'garbage', but a represents what bookstores sell and what is currently trending. The list is also filtered by some criteria, which are listed on the SPIEGEL site.
I disagree that it's misleading, because the reason is not stated.
"Books" may not be correct in this context because it's been a single one thus far, but if another antisemitic book appears, they'd probably delete it too, so I'd argue it sounds more like a norm than a one-off event. By removing a book they didn't like, they opened a can of worms, so to say.
> I disagree that it's misleading, because the reason is not stated.
No, the reason is clearly stated. "Did not like" is a reason. I am sure there have been many books on that list that the people at spiegel didn't like. It's just that "I don not like that" is not the same as "this thing is considered by me and many others to spread antisemitic propaganda and I don want to support that".
The original statement implies that "we don't like it" is sufficient reason for the spiegel to remove a book from the list. That is just incorrect.
> ... they opened a can of worms, so to say.
Now you seem to be arguing that it is fine to spread a lie as long as you are sufficiently convinced that that lie will become truth in the future?
If they removed a book because they didn't like it because it was antisemitic, then it's clear to me that they will most likely do so again in the future for antisemitism and, maybe, for other reasons.
That's what happens with having editorial control: either you play sides (by removing stuff you don't want and maybe pumping up stuff you like[]) or you don't play sides (by publishing the rank without modifying it). And Spiegel is playing sides here.
[]I'm not saying Spiegel has done or will do this, this is just an example.
None of that makes the statement "the Spiegel list removes books it doesn't like" correct in a meaningful sense of the word.
But I think I argued my point as well as I can. If I couldn't convince you yet that the original statement should not be considered "correct" and should not be defended when somebody mentions the actual facts, I don't think any more of my words will.
You are looking at that sentence too literally/technically. As a reader, I never considered it to mean "they remove novels when they don't like the story". Instead, from the tone, context (an internet discussion) and knowledge of how the list is likely to work, it seemed likely to me that the link would refer to one or more books being removed for political reasons.
The words OP used are not precise, but they aren't wrong either - they communicate how he feels about the incident in question.
You and the others should consider that the reason the Spiegel gave was a lie. There is quite a heavy motive for doing so: the book is on the other side of the political spectrum, considering where the Spiegel lies.
> The words OP used are not precise, but they aren't wrong either - they communicate how he feels about the incident in question.
I think that is actually a great summary, thx.
I guess my long conversation here is just an expression of my underlying impression that political discourse should in general focus more on facts than on feelings.
People seem to be more focused on how they feel about an issue than its actual contents. But this is getting of topic.
Funny enough the owner of Der Spiegel was himself considered an anti-semite by the Wiesenthal Center[1] a few years ago which stirred quite some debate back then.
The point is removing something you don't like is different from removing something that is anti-semitic. My example is a joke that makes you laugh but is inappropriate. It is possible to enjoy something and at the same time realize that it is offensive.
No, there is no difference. The reason there is no difference is that there doesn't exist a rulebook accessible to anyone containing a part about removing "things considered anti-semitic" for this particular case.
Not only did they remove it, because they considered it to be anti-semitic. One of their own authors sat on the committee and (unfairly or at least it was very unusual) used all of his votes for this one book for several months. So he distorted the outcome. And they decided to drop the book. Since it was an employee who caused the distortion in the first place, what‘s wrong with other employees fixing this?
There is not a single authorative list of bestsellers.
Also note that most of those list are supposed to be marketing tools, that can't afford to be too boring or predictable, not a reflections of "raw" sales data.
I think the Spiegel list also does not count total sales but relative sales over a time span, so you can become a "best seller author" with rather low sales numbers, when everybody has sold only few books. Strange system.
Nah, but "best seller author" to me refers to somewhat like "sold 100k copies" and not like "sold better than the others in a bad month". It's just a detail in the end.
There are books and there are objects to back up your established beliefs in exchange for some cash without exposing you to any self-critical thoughts.
Of course that is a long etablished genre, but lately it gets a bit too obvious regarding any socio-political sentiment, relationship, diet or parenting style[1].
Germany's book and magazine market is also drifting into that category a lot, as basic information gathering shits more and more towards "free" online sources.
[1] as stated in the OP, Winterhoff is contrarian to most current research and just peddles his own theories for some decades now, as well as being a well booked pundit in talk shows.
is an improper translation. That's "Tolerance: Simply Difficult" and that translates fine in English too since you can keep the same style while being accurate.
'Tolerance Isn’t Easy' is okay, freely translated. The trouble with translating it literally is that you lose the wordplay. 'Einfach' means both 'easy' and 'simple'. 'Tolerance: Easy and Difficult' is even more exact, but sounds kind of stupid in English, so I would prefer the original.
It more closely mirrors the German cadence and I've generally translated schwer as hard.
I always understood diffizil to be the correct translation of the word difficult.
Granted, I learned most of my German from my mother (plus a little self study and I lived there for nearly four years in my twenties), not in school. There are no doubt substantial gaps in my knowledge
Yes, I'm aware. But, just like diffizil is a more formal word, so is difficult. Colloquially, people routinely say hard in English, as in hard problem to solve.
That might explain why Google Translate doesn't seem to know it.
I know the word and I'm only semifluent in German, so it would never occur to me that it was anything seriously obscure.
(Though this is also tangential and has no real bearing on whether or not to translate the book title as difficult or hard. I would have translated it as hard if someone asked me for some reason.)
> I always understood diffizil to be the correct translation of the word difficult.
I think that’s misleading or even wrong. Source: native speaker.
First, it’s a very rare word that would definitely stand out, even in an already formal conversation. More importantly, “diffizil” is mostly reserved for problems that require a lot of fine motor skills or finesse. It would be wrong to say that lifting some large boulder is “diffizil”, for example, except as a joke. You might use it for repairing a watch or a complicated negotiation (“eine diffizile Angelegenheit”), however.
Ha, I had thought that diffizil resembled filigran in meaning, but wasn't sure that weren't just me. I reasoned that diffizil would be a diffizil word, by the sound of it, used by (to take your example) watch makers dealing with delicate problems.
I would use schwierig for difficult - but I am not a native speaker, so take it with a grain of salt. I tend to use schwer to mean hard (or heavy in other contexts)
the direct literal translation would be: tolerance: just difficult. einfach in german is used frequently when in english you would use just: just do it -> mach einfach
i do believe that in english simply can always be used in place of just, it's just less common so tolerance: simply difficult has the same meaning and sounds better as a book title.
However, the meaning of just is varied and the extent of the influence of Lat ius, "right" or Ger just, jeh + -st (please don't make me elaborate on je), is well hard to estimate. Cp "right now", jetzt "now".
I thought you might be takin a round trip from simple to einfach to just, inadvertantly mixing differently sensed variants of einfach. I shouldn't be assuminc, but the influence of ein- "one" or ein "in" (cp Fr en, Gr ana etc, etc) is again hard to gauge even for native speakers and encoded in contextual usage patterns (cp e.g. einfältig vs Einfall "quick idea; in-spiration"; respectively).
Since ein and sim- reflect old roots deemed to mean "one" in different idioms (the latter especially in Hittite, but also e.g. Ger sämtlich) it is tempting to equate io- with those and the Indo-European reconstruction *oynos "one".
Besides the obvious sampling issue (The Spiegel as a reference), not sure there anything interesting in that list, because it's a reflection of:
- What is published in the German language (much smaller than in the English corpus)
- What is published at all (choices from local publishers)
- What matches the political/media agenda of the day/year: people are well known to read about the topics that is being talked about thru the numerous media channels they consume.
What is published and what sells is not always a reflection of the actual interests of the population at large - an easy proof is to show that it changes drastically from one year to another, akin to fashion more than anything else.
I am not sure what your comment is suggesting? Literally the third sentence is:
> Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series looking at the books, authors, and ideas capturing the zeitgeist in various countries this summer.
Isn't capturing the zeitgeist exactly trying to understand what's occupying the thoughts of a country? Also I think you're greatly exaggerating the speed of "fashion". These are all issues we have been talking about for a long, long time. From tolerance [1] to education [2]. I don't see at all how this arcticle talks about a irrelevant topics, I can assure you these are all isssues we have been discussing for a longer time now.
[1] since the refugee crisis it's one of the main themes of political discourse. We also experience a rise of the right and far-right and many are not sure how to react to this change of the policial landscape and where tolerance ends. I was quite active in politics 4 years ago and I remember it being important back then (which was even before the refugee crisis) because I had contact with a group organizing a counter demonstration to a far-right gathering.
[2] During my time in school i was in one of the first in a new system and when I finished (5 years ago) many switched back to the old system. Our pisa-scores are still a major point for public dicsussion.
> since the refugee crisis it's one of the main themes of political discourse.
That's very recent, so it may be fashion, who knows whether tolerance & diversity will still be a major topic in 2025.
From my personal experience, education is a big topic, but mostly top-down. It's in politics, it's in the media, it's in literature, but it's not like average parents discuss the education system a lot. They're involved with details, but I've never witnessed a discussion at dinner or a party about the education system (while it'll quickly go to politics, economics etc, and most of my friends have children of school age).
I am 24 years old. Maybe we have a vastly different notion of recent, but merkels decision was 2015, which is nearly 4 years ago.
Maybe it's really a matter of definition or "recent" and "fashion", but I am not sure whether tolerance & diversity will still be a major topic in 2025. I hope not, 2025 is in 6 years and would like to see that we have moved on and got to a mutual agreement in our society.
2025 would be 10 years after the migrant crisis! I don't think we absolutly need to drag every topic out for whole generations to be not counted as "fashion" or "temporary".
> From my personal experience, education is a big topic, but mostly top-down. It's in politics, it's in the media, it's in literature, but it's not like average parents discuss the education system a lot. They're involved with details, but I've never witnessed a discussion at dinner or a party about the education system (while it'll quickly go to politics, economics etc, and most of my friends have children of school age).
I don't know if you're german? This is not what I experienced, like i said, i experienced two changes of the school system during my education, which lead to a lot of discussion. Also, while i am now out of school and in university for some time, the school system is still a topic of discussion in my extended family due to parents having to choose in which school their kids they should go. We have some private schools in germany that follows a different philosophy (and I really mean philosophy, there's a whole educational theory behind them), the "Montessori education". A part of my family is very convinced that the montessori philosophy is superior to the more rigid and less free philosophy in the public school system. This is not my point of view (I went to a public school), which I am willing to defend. This leads to real discussions over dinner or in the evening.
Totally!
I am reading at least 2 books a month, and I am pretty sure not Spiegel nor the "Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels" is able to see that, because I am buying nearly all books international. ebook readers makes it easy to source books from authors directly, getting them from independent publishers and so on.
At least in my filter bubble it is pretty standard nowadays.
Whenever i'm walking into a german bookstore nowadays, and see the Spiegel Bestseller display, anything in it is discarded as trash until further notice. Wasn't always that way for me, but since at least 20 years now.
> Since then, the entire eastern half of the country has been brought into the fold of Western liberal capitalism—but not entirely successfully. Unemployment is still higher in the east, and brain drain to the west remains common.
Not sure how to understand this. I have traveled to the DDR and to East Germany after the reunification many times, and by far and large life is much better than it ever was. People can actually buy cars instead of Trabants. Of course an economic gap has long lasting consequences (the long tail of economic policies) but what you should point out is how much better it is now than it was during the DDR era.
Successful industries and top universities are in majority in the Western side of the country, thus people looking for higher salaries or more job opportunities leave the Eastern side. Over time that results in important disparities.
I don’t believe that the article is saying that the situation was better during DDR time.
My point is simply that this kind of adjustment is likely to take a century or even more. Look at the long lasting impact of economic disparities in the US between the South and the North as another example.
Also, we would need to check in the economic History of Germany if the Eastern Lander of Germany were not always poorer compared to the Western Lander. The large economic output of the Rhur should already have tipped the economic scale way before the DDR.
There's also the fact that the Berlin split forced a whole lot of rather successful German companies to relocate from East to somewhere else in the West.
Siemens was originally started and HQ'ed in Berlin, until the wall split happened, making them relocate to the south.
Afaik this is the case for a couple of other rather successfull Western German companies.
> I don’t believe that the article is saying that the situation was better during DDR time.
It was actually way better during DDR time, a whole lot of stuff was manufactured there was then sold in the West trough catalog order.
Didn't happen out of anywhere that even companies like IKEA had stuff manufactured there [0], back then the DDR was a bit what China is nowadays to the Western world.
Sadly a lot of those industries were simply sold off and liquidated, sending millions of people into unemployment, by the Treuhandanstalt [1]. With nobody really investing much to replace these lost jobs, only plenty of money for infrastructure trough the Soli.
> It is in these eastern Länder where the AfD has gained the most ground. Fear-mongering arguments against immigration and an Islamic takeover continue to attract scores of German citizens whose future economic prospects are less than rosy.
Not everyone is happy. You can have some people unhappy while others are being better off.
The populist right AfD is doing also very well among gainers after the reunification.
This is about perceived current inequality, not about a much needed compensation of double de-industrialization and de-capitalization of the east (post WWII and Post 1990-Treuhand). In saxony the local candidates are well off business men with a tendency to war lord like attiude to local power grabs and corruption.
AfD is not thematizing any of this but is currently on a well funded campaign run to retcon and ursurp the civil movement of 89/90 as a nationalist movement and branding itself of it's heir. All this while having no problems of having high ranking Stasi-Officers in the party itself.
East Germany's larger cities with significant university clusters (Leipzig, Dresden, Halle, Rostock, Potsdam, Jena-Weimar-Erfurt) are doing well, the rest is aging away on well paved streets. That populist reigns there is no suprise if educated post reunifcation youth works in those cities or elsewhere and might return some day. But wouldn't write off the east yet, since a populist right with maximum 1/3 support of electorate is not too uncommon and it's all about how conservative CDU positions itself in relation to that.
Depends how you measure. Some people like to think things were better when they had money, but there was nothing to buy, instead of the current state of affairs, where they have things to buy, but no money. Add to that that lots of things not measured in money were better, like education, social cohesion etc. and you get lots of people looking back with fond memories conveniently forgetting all the bad things.
Ostalgie [0] is a very real thing, particularly for older generations who actually lived and worked in the GDR, without ever conflicting with the government. Because not everything East was bad, and not everything in the West was perfect either. There was actually quite a bit of economic symbiosis [1] going on between both sides back then.
That's why for many, the GDR also meant stability and progress. I can still remember my grandmother living in a house with wood ovens for heating, no running warm water, and a literal drop toilet on the second floor where you had to manually rinse with a big water pitcher.
She then got moved to an apartment inside a newly built Plattenbau [2], offering quite some comforts that were previously reserved to only very few households.
After the wall fell, she moved out to another flat, but by now is back to living in one of those Plattenbau apartments. Guess how negative her opinions on the GDR time are?
I can't stand reading modern Germans. They generally read and think just like English, for one thing, so that you can barely tell you've entered another language.
It is pleasant, however to retreat to the 19th-century Germans, and bathe in their erudition and learning, from the period before the world went sour.
There is still a fairly regular stream of German-language "serious" monographs coming out, written by philosophers, media theorists, etc. Not usually found on the Spiegel bestseller list, though.
Indeed, the Germans remain good at "serious". It's just much more English-language derivative than it was pre-WWII. Today, I'd call their academic thought 5 years behind English-language academic thought instead of 5 years ahead of like it used to be.
Germany's infrastructure has been stressed in recent years by immigration and other factors. The two books that the article places a spotlight on are: 1) "The Dumbing Down of Germany" and 2) "Tolerance Isn’t Easy" (as roughly translated within the article). These books represent the german people's response to that.
The first book, "The Dumbing Down of Germany", suggests a frustration with the decline of their education system -- something that Germany has traditionally valued highly. This is particularly concerning because sentiments like this lead to the rise of Hitler and eventually WWII.
The second book, "Tolerance Isn’t Easy", offers comfort with the influx of immigrants. This may be viewed as an attempt to stymie the tension. Alternatively, this may be viewed as an anesthetic that is wearing off. As of checking today this title is actually 13th on the list.
To answer your question. Why Germans as opposed to someone else? I suppose it is partially because Germany is a big player in the EU. It is particularly concerning because of Germany's role in WWII. To some it seems like things are trending in the same direction. As stated in the last paragraph: "Germany has been undergoing dramatic social change since the fall of the Berlin Wall, which occurred 30 years ago this November... Fear-mongering arguments against immigration and an Islamic takeover continue to attract scores of German citizens whose future economic prospects are less than rosy. Regardless, one cannot help but detect the political vestiges of an old GDR intolerance in its novel political manifestations."
Well I speak German and nationality wise am too. But I grew up in a decidedly English speaking context.
Hence my interest in hn's focus on Germans. It's not so much what's happening in germany more than why would western english media analyse german reading trends.
That is not a question of what's happening in germany...but rather one of english speaking media somehow deemed this interesting. Why?
"Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series looking at the books, authors, and ideas capturing the zeitgeist in various countries this summer. Coming soon: dispatches from Brazil, France, and the United Kingdom."
130 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 195 ms ] threadOld man yells at cloud.
>> “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
― Socrates
What we know from Socrates, this doesn't sound like something he would have said.
Although, having done no writings of his own, we have two main sources for his life.
But then again, Plato often put his own words into Socrates' mouth and this is something Plato could have said. :-)
I only knew of some leads back to the 50s or 60s.
There were accounts of cringeworthy even for the day dressing up in a dirty short cloak in immitation of Spartans.
Socrates is a bizarre joke invented by Plato and a few of his friends while drinking in Athens one night. Plato just went all L. Ron Hubbard on it.
I remember a documentary on Berlin and Berlinners have a slang term there that basically means "you have been controlled" when one of the many petty bureaucrats, pulls you up over some trivial infraction
It's not about petty bureaucrats and trivial infractions, it usually is referring to someone getting checked on the subway for tickets - and sometimes not having the proper ticket (or maaaaaybe being asked for id due to anti-social behaviour)
On the u-bahn everybody is checked. As for anti-social behaviour, it's usually the ones with certain clothing, possibly depicting some symbols or personal appearance that are often targeted.
Reminds me of when American friends were SHOCKED by a political poster that quipped "Vertrauen ist gut, Kontrolle ist besser" - they thought it meant "Trust is good, control is better", but it actually means "Trust is good, but checking things is better"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify
It's no longer the first verse due to the Nazi history, but it doesn't come from that time.
It actually comes from the mid 1800s (IIRC) when Germany didn't exist as a unified state. People lived in many different kingdoms and principalities and many yearned for a German state.
The anthem comes from this time and this line is supposed to mean that Germany is preferable to the various smaller states of that time.
Source: "Germany, memories of a nation" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23113270-germany
But the first time a foreigner hears it, it sounds a lot like "Germany over everyone in the world", which can carry the implication :P
Oh please. I feel like reading old books these days is some invitation for criticism about how "the youths" are the problem.
He says that the development of children is negatively affected by adults, who lack authority by elevating children to their level. Information technology had further enabled children to fortify this power imbalance.
Maybe he has a point, but as a psychologist for children you probably get a warped image after a while. Job hazard probably.
He recommends adults to take walks in the park for example to get distance and perspective from the horrible stuff younger people post online. That can align with my wishes to ban all politicians from Twitter at least.
But I think it should be pretty controversial to say that younger people form some kind of tyranny while keeping demographics in Germany in mind. Well, easier to take advantage of people that believe you a fool.
Still, younger people are the end of civilization as we know it, as is tradition. I believe there never was a metric or any empirical evidence but it might just be one of these timeless classics people seem to love. Maybe there is a hint of truth in a way that people drawn to these stories do indeed feel overtaxed.
Kids who are being raised in communism are bound to behave differently then the ones who are being raised for capitalism/democracy. For that matter, generation that grew pre-WWII and during it was raised completely differently and towards different values too - especially in Germany. They were in fact taught to obey much more. You was not in fact supposed to think for yourself, while in todays world it is more of an advantage.
The real question is how much of this complain is "real" and how much is just politics to push for changes author would like. And how much of what is real change is bad and how much is actually adaptation to more competitive more free world.
This specific author has alread done that every 2 years or so for the last 10 years...
People don't feel rich. In many families, both partners have a job. Median incomes didn't increase much in the last 10-15 years. With an after-tax monthly income of 5,160€ as a family (or 3,440€ as a single), you belong to the top 10% [1] (translates to roughly 100,000€ / 70,000€ pre-tax anually). The median monthly net income is 1,869€ (roughly around 35,000€ pre-tax anually).
At the same time, people are highly suspicious of the stock market. People have less time for their kids, which spend more time in the educational system. So people wonder if the educational system is really that great for their kids.
I think this is interesting. It's like a vicious cycle: According to [2], 23% of Germans own stocks (although I remember that this number used to be around 15% a few years ago). So, people read books about how everything is going to crash down soon, because they're suspicious of the stock market (and to be able to say "told you so" afterwards). At the same time, these books reinforce the idea that owning stocks is risky.
Most people would rather buy a home, but houses got very expensive in cities in the last 10 years. In major cities, a house for a family of 4 would cost around 800,000€ and more, which is quite expensive for the low salaries of 90% of the people.
Then, major newspapers now have articles about the climate crisis every day. There's the uncertainty of the Brexit. There is uncertainty about immigrants, but also uncertainty and fear of the rise of right-wing parties in Europe (and the AfD in Germany).
So, we have books about how "the system" is shit, how "the crash is coming", how "Germany gets dumber all the time", how "something needs to change". Add some fears about the before-mentioned topics and there's your new book every few months, same content, different cover.
[1]: https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2019-08/institut-der-deutsche...
[2]: https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2019-08/geldanlage-sparen-ver...
> Add some fears about the before-mentioned topics and there's your new book every few months, same content, different cover.
Talkshows and other media make these books even more profitable and popular. Publishing such a book almost guarantees that you'll be able to tour talkshows for a few weeks, give interviews to newspapers etc. as free marketing for your books.
Well to be fair the top book was about how to eat correctly. Isn't that about how the reader has to change?
> There has been at least one book about how "Germany/Germans are getting dumber", "The Big Crash is Coming" or something similar on the Spiegel Bestseller list at all times.
Not all books on the list are like that but there is indeed at least one of them at any given time. And those particular books never require the reader to change.
I don't really see a clear divide between book publishers and media publisher on this issue. Most news media companies are going for the same content: everything is terrible, the world is constantly very close to ending, and you need to buy this paper to find out how to save yourself today. Bad news is good news after all.
It's easy to say "the crash never comes or never came". Everything seems to be fine.
79 years ago, there was a huge war in Europe killing Millions people. Yet here today everything is fine, without history lesson you wouldn't even necessarily know it ever happened.
So was there a "big crash" 79 years ago? After all, things are fine now.
You answered the question yourself no ?
Because Germany is a high-tax-country. People also generally don't have a lot of private pension funds, that's tied up in a publicly organized system that's based on income, and "shared" between employer and employee (that is, the employer will pay half of it directly, which generally means that your pay is lower by that much). You get pension claims instead of building personal wealth.
While there's still a lot of personal wealth to be inherited over the next decades, families appear to have more difficulties building wealth. It's why, whenever somebody says "Germany is a rich country", my instinct is to ask them "what is this Germany you speak of", because there are large differences when you look at the average/median citizen, a very well-off knowledge worker or rich person, or a person living at/below the poverty line.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20647651
Add to that all time lows (zero and below) for German bond yields which has bleak consequences for long time savers (future pensioners). Germany is a nation of savers.
Swiss 10y bonds are at -1%.
We are living in interesting times.
It's not clear what your point of reference is. If you're wondering why it's much lower than in the US (where the 90-percentile household is probably around 170k USD pre-tax or 9k-10k post-tax), there are many many factors that contribute to the difference. The most important ones (unordered) are IMO:
- USD is probably overvalued by 15%-20% [1]. In the past 10 years, the EUR/USD rate fluctuated between 1.05 and 1.55, currently it's 1.12. It's unlikely that the relative living standards between the US and Germany fluctuated as much as 50% in this period, so a lot of the nominal incomes differences are not real.
- Americans work 30% more hours than Germans [2]
These two factors can explain most of the pre-tax income differences.
The net difference is a bit higher still, due to higher taxes/mandatory payments. I don't have references at hand, but at the €100k level, take-home pay is around 60%-62% of gross, while for an American at $112k it's closer to 70% (federal, state and payroll). No comment about justness, proper accounting for transfers, subsidies, other taxes, mandatory insurances, etc. This is a huge sprawling debate topic, but it's indisputable that disposable income at the same gross is higher in the US than in Europe. IMO, the first 2 factors accounting for differences in gross incomes are more important anyway.
A fairly mainstream economic theory is that the higher European (marginal) taxes are actually a major cause of the lower working hours (and hence lower personal income) [3]. The highest marginal rates actually don't differ that much (typically around 50% in Europe, 45% federal+state in the US), but in Europe the higher rates typically kick in at much lower levels: US marginal rate at $100k is probably around 30%, whereas in many European countries it's already in the 40%+ bracket.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-11/trump-has... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_average_annual_labor_h... [3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB109830788286551061
As a side note, the 5k are not actually "purchasing power" or really-really "after tax" as it is usually intended in the US, in the EU there is VAT:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-added_tax
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_value_added_tax
which is similar to the "sales tax" in the US but that is usually much higher.
In Germany (Mehrwertsteuer) it is (relativaly) low at 19% standard.
Do German states have income taxes?
I too had a lower number in memory (~11%), and the first result I looked up [1] showed 16%, sourced from [2].
[1]: https://orange.handelsblatt.com/artikel/62761 [2]: https://www.dai.de/files/dai_usercontent/dokumente/studien/2...
Deriving the reason for the different helper verbs from first principles is endearing, in principle, but you've merely given names to it that you somehow take for granted. It makes sense to have cut wood, and it makes no sense to do come or have come, except for a potatoe plant which if it cometh will have a Keim or Keimblatt to be precise; I'm guessing here.
German rather differentiates is and have in the perfective, "sie ist ge-kommen", "sie hat ge-sehen"; We don't say has come because we are intuited to think it is wrong. That is, you might as sell say the crisis is not ye(t)come.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-06/how-th...
I have found the Spiegel list a bit weird for years, it contains a lot of highly light reading or polemic stuff like that guy yelling at today’s youth. That it does not include Amazon data explains quite something.
The lists are at https://www.amazon.de/charts/2019-08-11/mostread/nonfiction?... https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/bestseller-buecher-belletristi...
It's all German, obviously. And note that Spiegel has at least two different lists, for hardcover and paperback (plus a few more, less relevant).
FWIW I'm surprised by the claim that Spiegel has too much "light-reading" in its bestsellers. The usual charge is that they exclude certain lowbrow titles/categories.
However if I only look at a single Spiegel list of 20 items, e.g. hardcovers there are only two items left in common.
I think you will agree that a book sales data analysis that has not made a successful effort to include one of the biggest book sellers in Germany for years can still safely be called garbage. It is baffling for me how much reputation the Spiegel lists still have.
Also, the hardcover Spiegel list has entries like the new book by Spiegel journalist Todenhöfer on rank 10 (rank 2129 on Amazon Germany right now).
[1] I ignored the Spiegel audiobooks list because this data is irrelevant without Audible.
DER SPIEGEL gets its book data from der Buchreport which uses sales info from a few hundred actual bookstores.
Thus the list is not 'garbage', but a represents what bookstores sell and what is currently trending. The list is also filtered by some criteria, which are listed on the SPIEGEL site.
https://www.welt.de/kultur/article167043384/Spiegel-verteidi...
But great to include the source.
The additional use of "books" is further misleading and technically not correct. It is one single book.
Is see no reason to defend this spreading of misinformation. Do you?
"Books" may not be correct in this context because it's been a single one thus far, but if another antisemitic book appears, they'd probably delete it too, so I'd argue it sounds more like a norm than a one-off event. By removing a book they didn't like, they opened a can of worms, so to say.
No, the reason is clearly stated. "Did not like" is a reason. I am sure there have been many books on that list that the people at spiegel didn't like. It's just that "I don not like that" is not the same as "this thing is considered by me and many others to spread antisemitic propaganda and I don want to support that".
The original statement implies that "we don't like it" is sufficient reason for the spiegel to remove a book from the list. That is just incorrect.
> ... they opened a can of worms, so to say.
Now you seem to be arguing that it is fine to spread a lie as long as you are sufficiently convinced that that lie will become truth in the future?
That's what happens with having editorial control: either you play sides (by removing stuff you don't want and maybe pumping up stuff you like[]) or you don't play sides (by publishing the rank without modifying it). And Spiegel is playing sides here.
[]I'm not saying Spiegel has done or will do this, this is just an example.
But I think I argued my point as well as I can. If I couldn't convince you yet that the original statement should not be considered "correct" and should not be defended when somebody mentions the actual facts, I don't think any more of my words will.
The words OP used are not precise, but they aren't wrong either - they communicate how he feels about the incident in question.
I think that is actually a great summary, thx.
I guess my long conversation here is just an expression of my underlying impression that political discourse should in general focus more on facts than on feelings.
People seem to be more focused on how they feel about an issue than its actual contents. But this is getting of topic.
[1] https://m.jpost.com/International/Wiesenthal-dean-labels-Aug...
A list of German Language Bestseller lists: https://www.boersenverein.de/de/158283
Of course that is a long etablished genre, but lately it gets a bit too obvious regarding any socio-political sentiment, relationship, diet or parenting style[1].
Germany's book and magazine market is also drifting into that category a lot, as basic information gathering shits more and more towards "free" online sources.
[1] as stated in the OP, Winterhoff is contrarian to most current research and just peddles his own theories for some decades now, as well as being a well booked pundit in talk shows.
> Toleranz: Einfach Schwer (Tolerance Isn’t Easy)
is an improper translation. That's "Tolerance: Simply Difficult" and that translates fine in English too since you can keep the same style while being accurate.
Tolerance: Simply Hard
(Or Easily Hard)
It more closely mirrors the German cadence and I've generally translated schwer as hard. I always understood diffizil to be the correct translation of the word difficult.
Granted, I learned most of my German from my mother (plus a little self study and I lived there for nearly four years in my twenties), not in school. There are no doubt substantial gaps in my knowledge
Translating „difficult“ to „diffizil“ would be a poor translation IMO.
I know the word and I'm only semifluent in German, so it would never occur to me that it was anything seriously obscure.
(Though this is also tangential and has no real bearing on whether or not to translate the book title as difficult or hard. I would have translated it as hard if someone asked me for some reason.)
I think that’s misleading or even wrong. Source: native speaker.
First, it’s a very rare word that would definitely stand out, even in an already formal conversation. More importantly, “diffizil” is mostly reserved for problems that require a lot of fine motor skills or finesse. It would be wrong to say that lifting some large boulder is “diffizil”, for example, except as a joke. You might use it for repairing a watch or a complicated negotiation (“eine diffizile Angelegenheit”), however.
i do believe that in english simply can always be used in place of just, it's just less common so tolerance: simply difficult has the same meaning and sounds better as a book title.
However, the meaning of just is varied and the extent of the influence of Lat ius, "right" or Ger just, jeh + -st (please don't make me elaborate on je), is well hard to estimate. Cp "right now", jetzt "now".
I thought you might be takin a round trip from simple to einfach to just, inadvertantly mixing differently sensed variants of einfach. I shouldn't be assuminc, but the influence of ein- "one" or ein "in" (cp Fr en, Gr ana etc, etc) is again hard to gauge even for native speakers and encoded in contextual usage patterns (cp e.g. einfältig vs Einfall "quick idea; in-spiration"; respectively).
Since ein and sim- reflect old roots deemed to mean "one" in different idioms (the latter especially in Hittite, but also e.g. Ger sämtlich) it is tempting to equate io- with those and the Indo-European reconstruction *oynos "one".
Tolerance: Hardly Easy
- What is published in the German language (much smaller than in the English corpus)
- What is published at all (choices from local publishers)
- What matches the political/media agenda of the day/year: people are well known to read about the topics that is being talked about thru the numerous media channels they consume.
What is published and what sells is not always a reflection of the actual interests of the population at large - an easy proof is to show that it changes drastically from one year to another, akin to fashion more than anything else.
> Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series looking at the books, authors, and ideas capturing the zeitgeist in various countries this summer.
Isn't capturing the zeitgeist exactly trying to understand what's occupying the thoughts of a country? Also I think you're greatly exaggerating the speed of "fashion". These are all issues we have been talking about for a long, long time. From tolerance [1] to education [2]. I don't see at all how this arcticle talks about a irrelevant topics, I can assure you these are all isssues we have been discussing for a longer time now.
[1] since the refugee crisis it's one of the main themes of political discourse. We also experience a rise of the right and far-right and many are not sure how to react to this change of the policial landscape and where tolerance ends. I was quite active in politics 4 years ago and I remember it being important back then (which was even before the refugee crisis) because I had contact with a group organizing a counter demonstration to a far-right gathering.
[2] During my time in school i was in one of the first in a new system and when I finished (5 years ago) many switched back to the old system. Our pisa-scores are still a major point for public dicsussion.
That's very recent, so it may be fashion, who knows whether tolerance & diversity will still be a major topic in 2025.
From my personal experience, education is a big topic, but mostly top-down. It's in politics, it's in the media, it's in literature, but it's not like average parents discuss the education system a lot. They're involved with details, but I've never witnessed a discussion at dinner or a party about the education system (while it'll quickly go to politics, economics etc, and most of my friends have children of school age).
Maybe it's really a matter of definition or "recent" and "fashion", but I am not sure whether tolerance & diversity will still be a major topic in 2025. I hope not, 2025 is in 6 years and would like to see that we have moved on and got to a mutual agreement in our society.
2025 would be 10 years after the migrant crisis! I don't think we absolutly need to drag every topic out for whole generations to be not counted as "fashion" or "temporary".
> From my personal experience, education is a big topic, but mostly top-down. It's in politics, it's in the media, it's in literature, but it's not like average parents discuss the education system a lot. They're involved with details, but I've never witnessed a discussion at dinner or a party about the education system (while it'll quickly go to politics, economics etc, and most of my friends have children of school age).
I don't know if you're german? This is not what I experienced, like i said, i experienced two changes of the school system during my education, which lead to a lot of discussion. Also, while i am now out of school and in university for some time, the school system is still a topic of discussion in my extended family due to parents having to choose in which school their kids they should go. We have some private schools in germany that follows a different philosophy (and I really mean philosophy, there's a whole educational theory behind them), the "Montessori education". A part of my family is very convinced that the montessori philosophy is superior to the more rigid and less free philosophy in the public school system. This is not my point of view (I went to a public school), which I am willing to defend. This leads to real discussions over dinner or in the evening.
At least in my filter bubble it is pretty standard nowadays.
Not sure how to understand this. I have traveled to the DDR and to East Germany after the reunification many times, and by far and large life is much better than it ever was. People can actually buy cars instead of Trabants. Of course an economic gap has long lasting consequences (the long tail of economic policies) but what you should point out is how much better it is now than it was during the DDR era.
I don’t believe that the article is saying that the situation was better during DDR time.
Also, we would need to check in the economic History of Germany if the Eastern Lander of Germany were not always poorer compared to the Western Lander. The large economic output of the Rhur should already have tipped the economic scale way before the DDR.
Siemens was originally started and HQ'ed in Berlin, until the wall split happened, making them relocate to the south.
Afaik this is the case for a couple of other rather successfull Western German companies.
It was actually way better during DDR time, a whole lot of stuff was manufactured there was then sold in the West trough catalog order.
Didn't happen out of anywhere that even companies like IKEA had stuff manufactured there [0], back then the DDR was a bit what China is nowadays to the Western world.
Sadly a lot of those industries were simply sold off and liquidated, sending millions of people into unemployment, by the Treuhandanstalt [1]. With nobody really investing much to replace these lost jobs, only plenty of money for infrastructure trough the Soli.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/nov/16/ikea-regret...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treuhandanstalt
> It is in these eastern Länder where the AfD has gained the most ground. Fear-mongering arguments against immigration and an Islamic takeover continue to attract scores of German citizens whose future economic prospects are less than rosy.
Not everyone is happy. You can have some people unhappy while others are being better off.
AfD is not thematizing any of this but is currently on a well funded campaign run to retcon and ursurp the civil movement of 89/90 as a nationalist movement and branding itself of it's heir. All this while having no problems of having high ranking Stasi-Officers in the party itself.
East Germany's larger cities with significant university clusters (Leipzig, Dresden, Halle, Rostock, Potsdam, Jena-Weimar-Erfurt) are doing well, the rest is aging away on well paved streets. That populist reigns there is no suprise if educated post reunifcation youth works in those cities or elsewhere and might return some day. But wouldn't write off the east yet, since a populist right with maximum 1/3 support of electorate is not too uncommon and it's all about how conservative CDU positions itself in relation to that.
That's why for many, the GDR also meant stability and progress. I can still remember my grandmother living in a house with wood ovens for heating, no running warm water, and a literal drop toilet on the second floor where you had to manually rinse with a big water pitcher.
She then got moved to an apartment inside a newly built Plattenbau [2], offering quite some comforts that were previously reserved to only very few households.
After the wall fell, she moved out to another flat, but by now is back to living in one of those Plattenbau apartments. Guess how negative her opinions on the GDR time are?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostalgie
[1] https://www.dw.com/de/ddr-als-billiglohnland-f%C3%BCr-den-we...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plattenbau
It is pleasant, however to retreat to the 19th-century Germans, and bathe in their erudition and learning, from the period before the world went sour.
Is there some particular reason to be interested in what Germans are reading? As opposed to say Swedes?
The first book, "The Dumbing Down of Germany", suggests a frustration with the decline of their education system -- something that Germany has traditionally valued highly. This is particularly concerning because sentiments like this lead to the rise of Hitler and eventually WWII.
The second book, "Tolerance Isn’t Easy", offers comfort with the influx of immigrants. This may be viewed as an attempt to stymie the tension. Alternatively, this may be viewed as an anesthetic that is wearing off. As of checking today this title is actually 13th on the list.
To answer your question. Why Germans as opposed to someone else? I suppose it is partially because Germany is a big player in the EU. It is particularly concerning because of Germany's role in WWII. To some it seems like things are trending in the same direction. As stated in the last paragraph: "Germany has been undergoing dramatic social change since the fall of the Berlin Wall, which occurred 30 years ago this November... Fear-mongering arguments against immigration and an Islamic takeover continue to attract scores of German citizens whose future economic prospects are less than rosy. Regardless, one cannot help but detect the political vestiges of an old GDR intolerance in its novel political manifestations."
Hence my interest in hn's focus on Germans. It's not so much what's happening in germany more than why would western english media analyse german reading trends.
That is not a question of what's happening in germany...but rather one of english speaking media somehow deemed this interesting. Why?