The EconomistApril 14th 2018 7GERMANY2
1SPECIAL REPORTLIKE MANY CITIES in former East Germany, Leipzig shrank
after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, hitting a low of
437,000 residents in 1998. But then clubs and artists started mov-
ing into abandoned warehouses and factories. Now the popula-
tion has risen to 590,000 and the city has come to be known as
“the new Berlin” and “Hypezig”. That moniker “started as a criti-
cism, but now it’s a brand”, explains Katja Herlemann, a theatre
producer, sitting in the chic bar “Pilot” in the city centre. Her sar-
donically titled new theatre project, “Ceçi n’est pas un hype!”, ex-
plores the booming city and its diverse people.
In a former car-repair shop down the road in Grünau, a
working-class district of the city, there is no sign of hype. Volun-
teers are unloading crates and arranging oranges, leeks and
cheese donated by supermarkets. About 1.5m Germans rely on
food banks like this one, where the needy can get a full week’s
shop for €2 ($2.50, £1.80) per person (€1 for children). “It’s hard
being poor in a rich country,” says Werner Wehmer, the director.
“You see on TVhow you’re supposed to live, you see the people
in cafés you can’t afford to go into, you go to a Christmas market
and can’t afford things.”Want amid plenty
Similar scenes can be observed all over Germany. Globali-
sation and the liberalising “Hartz” labour-market overhaul of the
early 2000s were big factors in Germany’s economic success, but
they have also made the country more unequal. The share of
households below the official poverty line of 60% of average
earnings (€917 a month after tax for a single person) was 15.7% last
year, compared with 14.7% in 2005, even though unemployment
is at a record low. A large government study published last year
showed that about 40% of German workers had seen almost no
increases in net real wages since the mid-1990s.
Ulrike Pfeiffer, a language teacher, explains that she has to
teach for 34 hours a week to make ends meet. Teachers on perma-
nent contracts do just 26, but more and more adult education col-
leges like those where Ms Pfeiffer works use freelancers instead.
“No health insurance, no holiday, no security,” she says, “and
old-age poverty is programmed in.” The lack of a pension is also
a worry for Peter Sonntag, who works irregular shifts at a ware-
house on the edge of Leipzig owned by Amazon, an online retail
giant. After several years’ service he is now paid €12 an hour,
which does not leave much to save for his retirement. That is true
across Germany, where earnings and pensions are more closely
linked than in many other countries and the poorest 40% have
virtually no assets (because most Germans rent rather than buy
housing). In the decade to 2015 poverty among over-64s rose
from 11% to 15%. The sight of old people rooting through bins for
bottles, which carrya deposit, is a feature of German cities.
Working conditions are changing, too. German workplaces
have traditionally been highly unionised, with consensus-based
management practices. But the fast-growingservice industries
have imported a more Anglo-Saxon style, exemplified by Ama-
zon, which arrived in Leipzig in 2006. “Managers monitor if you
go on your break one minute too early and they check if you go to
the toilet too often; I’ve never known that in a job before,” com-Social divisionsCeçi n’est pas un hype!
Germany’s economic boom has left many behindVolunteers have played a big role. Simmern’s Café Friends
is run by locals. The emphasis is on learning the language, “a
bridge to the future, to a newHeimat”, says Bernadette Boos,
who teaches German there. Encouragingly, many of those help-
ing out are themselves former immigrants, including Russians,
Poles, Spaniards and Lebanese, says Tahir Sucubasi, a second-
generation Turkish immigrant running Simmern’s integration
programme. Ralf Wilhelmi, one of the German volunteers, is up-
beat: “You don’t feel polarisation here like you do in big cities.”
In the big cities, it is true, the picture is different. Unaccom-
panied young men, some traumatised by war, make up a large
share of Germany’s refugees, and they tend to gravitate to me-
tropolises. In cities like Berlin applications for asylum and ap-
peals can take years. For those left in limbo, there is not much to
do. They are banned from working, and spending money provid-
ed by the state is stingy. So tens of thousands of frustrated, poor
and sometimes violent young men are at large.
Sometimes the frustration boils over. The mass sexual as-
sault on women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve in 2015, mostly by
Arab men, has become a cause célèbre, as has the attack in De-
cember 2016 by Anis Amri, a 24-year-old Tunisian who had been
denied asylum six months earlier. The truck he drove into a
Christmas market in Berlin killed 12 people. In Lower Saxony
violent crime in the two years to 2016 rose by over 10%, with
more than 90% of the increase attributable to immigrants. Anti-
Semitism, too, is on the rise; on December 8th last year a crowd
burned a Star of David at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate in protest at
President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. A
recent wave of knife attacks by and among refugees in the east-
ern city of Cottbus brought local protesters onto the streets.
None of this much affects the life of the average German,
but a sense of insecurity has crept in. A country with folk memo-
ries of the Gestapo and personal recollections of the Stasi is hav-
ing to get used to armed police patrolling its markets. In 2015-16
the number of small-arms licences surged by 85%.
The big question is whether a civic form of German-ness—a
pluralisticHeimat—is possible. The Christmas party in the Haus
Helvetia is encouraging. There is a piano, candles, baskets of cle-
mentines, coffee and cake. German and refugee kids run around
and sing a Christmas carol, Lasst uns froh und munter sein (let’s be
happy and cheerful). Young Pakistani men awkwardly stand
round the edge. Shahzad Uddin is looking forward to the sum-
mer, and cricket matches on fields by the Rhine. Mahmood Ab-
bas, from Faisalabad in Punjab, is showing pictures on his phone
from a recent Ahmadiyya festival in a nearby town where about
1,000 fellow refugees with posters formed a giant German flag.
Mr Abbas pauses and explains: “MyHeimatis Germany.” 7Citizens of the worldSource: National statisticsGermany
Migration, m Population with a migration
background, % of total1.51.00.500.51.01.52.02.5+2005 07 09 11 13 15 16ArrivalsDeparturesNet05101520252005 07 09 11 13 15 16