Driving into the small Bavarian village of Altdorf bei Nürnberg, I was struck by how many flags people seemed to have. It was 2011, and I’d only been living in Germany for approximately 48 hours, but I’d seen a fair few poles adorned with the famous blue and white of the Bavarian state flag. As I sat at a set of traffic lights in the picturesque surroundings of the Nürnbergerland, I noticed many of the houses around me had a different flag flying. It was bright yellow and red, and emblazoned across it in big black letters were the words “Atomkraft? Nein Danke!”. It seemed like every other home had one, and over the following weeks, I would see the same logo and slogan in the form of car bumper stickers, or posters in shop windows, all around the town.

The flag had caught my eye because I’d seen it before, although not in Germany, but as a sticker in the window of my parents’ study back in the UK. It was also notable as a real world example of something I’d read a lot about, namely Germany’s long tradition of opposition to nuclear power. This had taken on a whole new relevancy following Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to phase out nuclear power in Germany, following the Fukushima nuclear accident earlier in the year. Whenever I saw the little yellow and red anti-nuclear sign, I’d think of the slowly fragmenting society I’d left back in the UK, and although it was far from unanimous, I was pleased that what I’d seen in Altdorf suggested Germany was still capable of coalescing around a common cause.

A few years down the line, we moved from the comfortable but quiet surroundings of the Bavarian rural ideal, and rented a flat in the nearby city of Fürth. My connection to our first German home wasn’t totally severed though, as I would periodically drive back there for work. I was doing just that when I found myself at the same set of traffic lights I’d waited at all those years before. As I looked around, I noticed the anti-nuclear flags had been replaced with new signs, though these were decidedly more home made, and with far fewer catchy slogans. Apparently, the rudimentary signs were a reaction to a proposal for a new route of Stromtrassen (power lines) through the area, an issue that had gained attention as it was seen as a vital part of connecting northern power stations and wind farms with the south of the country. Although I understood why locals didn’t want to live so close to electric power lines, it seemed odd. Only years before, people had been fighting for an end to atomic power and now they were also opposing the alternative solution. Germany was still coalescing around causes it seemed, although not a cause with a wholly logical philosophy.

My last visit to Altdorf was only a few months ago, and once again there were protest signs on display. This time, the focus of the community's ire wasn’t atomic power, or the placement of power lines, but instead, the major issue seemed to be the possibility of wind farms being built nearby. Whether there was any realistic chance of turbines being built I can’t actually say, and there was no news suggesting as much online. Even so, anything that motivates people to get out their art supplies, make a sign, and then hang it outside their home should be taken somewhat seriously, if only as an example of how angry people are at an idea. Going by the amount of exclamation marks used on those hand painted placards, people are very, very angry.

And why shouldn’t they be? If the revolving collection of signs and flags in this small town has taught me anything, it’s that Germany has long had an issue with energy, whether cost, supply, or both, and politicians have routinely failed to address those concerns with a comprehensive long-term solution. This isn’t too unsurprising. Few countries have managed to reckon with the issues that swirl around the topic of energy, and that’s before we factor in the unique issues faced in Germany. It’s difficult to create any unified system in a country made up of 16 states, all with moderate amounts of suspicion of each other, and all with an inherent distrust of the government in Berlin. Even the most impressive idea can quickly unravel as it passes through the various committees, debates, votes, and yet more committees. That is the nature of German democracy though, it’s imperfect, it requires compromise, and often, what you get at the end of it all are laws that don’t quite offer as much as they did when initially proposed.

It’s this last point that I think tells us the most about what Germany struggles with: compromise. There are surely lessons I could take from my sporadic trips to Aldorf, but far and away the biggest is the fact that Germans themselves, or at least the ones in one small Bavarian village, seem incapable of compromising. It’s a wild journey to go from opposing nuclear power, to opposing power lines that could provide renewable energy from the north, to finally opposing wind farms that would remove the necessity of both. What this suggests to me is that the one unifying element, the only idea people will actually coalesce around, is the desire to do nothing, to never be inconvenienced, and in turn, to never really move forward.

Again, I have some sympathy for people here. German history over the last hundred years hasn’t exactly had many long periods of stability. There’s been peace of one sort or another, even an economic miracle, but turmoil has never been far from the surface. I’ve no idea what impact living with the Cold War on your doorstep has on a population, but I imagine things never felt wholly secure, and that’s even before you factor in possible nuclear annihilation. There’s a whole generation of British adults that were instilled with a sense of impending doom by government pamphlets on surviving a nuclear attack, or BBC dramas about what would happen after the bomb dropped. I can only imagine something similar happened here in Germany, especially with the Berlin Wall within driving distance. Thinking about this, the strong desire for some kind of stability begins to make sense.

And those much maligned politicians know it, and they know it’s a vote winner. Who can forget that current Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, positioned himself during the election campaign in 2021 as the continuity candidate to Angela Merkel? Not only was it regularly referenced in his campaign, but he even made a point of being photographed on the front of Süddeutsche Zeitung performing the famous Merkel-Raute (Merkel-rhombus) with his hands. The message was clear: we’ll basically be the same as what’s gone before. Moreover, stability, or rather stasis, is so important here in Bavaria that during the recent state elections, the governing CSU campaigned on the slogan “Damit Deutschland stabil bleibt” (So that Germany remains stable). German politics aren’t renowned for subtlety, but even that seemed excessively obvious.

Though I understand why stability is desired, and why politicians might prey on that fact, I can’t fathom why no one sees this as a glaring problem facing Germany. The constant search for stability has essentially put Germany on pause in nearly every area, to the point that people think this is not only normal, but something to be protected by a philosophy of delay. The German car industry has bet the house on nothing ever really changing, which is why we’ve not seen anything truly revolutionary from them for years. Digitalisation has been bogged down, along with hundreds of other infrastructure projects, by a lack of will, and a desire not to upset voters. Energy, well, we know something about this now, but everywhere you look you see the damage the search for stability has wrought.

At some point, things will have to change. Germany as it is today isn’t ready for the 21st century, and it might take decades before it is. That’s vital time wasted, on top of the time we’ve already spent twiddling our thumbs, for no real reason other than a fear of rocking the boat. Everyday, we’re told how AI will rapidly change the world, while Germany is still trying to decide how to replace battalions of fax machines. Going by that timeline, we’ll be ready to work out AI at about the time that the machines gain sentience. Ultimately, Germany is going to have to start moving, which will also mean some form of change. The only question that remains is: will we do it voluntarily, or find ourselves forced into the future?

Proofreader: @ScandiTina

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