Editorial
star editor-in-chief
How is Germany doing? Gregor Peter Schmitz about the current star
The current star-Cover: How Germany finds its old strength and new courage and 75 years star – 60 pages for the anniversary
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An anniversary, the comeback of two political companions and paths that are leading the country out of the crisis: star-Editor-in-chief Gregor Peter Schmitz about the current magazine.
The star celebrates his 75th birthday. We’re celebrating that, of course, on 60 pages in this issue and in a large special edition, the cover of which you can see below and which will be available at newsstands from Saturday. The star is therefore a little older than the Federal Republic of Germany, whose ups and downs, weal and woe, tragedy and triumph our magazine has always closely followed. That’s why we in the editorial team asked ourselves on our anniversary: How is Germany doing?
180 full pages with the most powerful images from 75 years: the special issue for our anniversary
We realize that a disgruntled answer to this is very “German”. The “German Angst” is proverbial, and no one wants to read the thousandth cover story about the decline of a superstar. We are just as tired as you are when business associations act as if a cent higher in taxes means the end of the location Germany. And yet there is a feeling right now: that this time it’s not just nagging, when the worry is getting bigger and bigger, that we’re being left behind, that we’re no longer getting anything right, that we’re losing confidence.
Bad mood
A colleague wrote to me at the weekend, freshly traumatized by the terrible kick of the DFB men against Japan: “It seems to me that the general mood in the country has reached its absolute lowest point. Nothing is working anymore. Germany is once again the sick man of Europe, actually of the West. The Bundeswehr can’t defend us, the train isn’t coming, the school toilets stink, the bridges are crumbling, the energy transition is taking too long, the car industry is in the same state as the national football team, we’re running out of workers, the government is arguing. And everyone else have better internet than us.”
The colleague advised one to do so immediately startitle – which fortunately was already in the works. Because he is an optimist at heart, he added that such a title should not be limited to complaining. Because the mood could definitely be worse than the situation. And: The low point is the point from which things go up.
Let’s go, Germany, we say in our anniversary issue and discuss with, among others, Economics Minister Robert Habeck and the writer Juli Zeh how such a shock can succeed without it tearing our society apart. When in doubt for confidence, that also applies in the 76th. star-Year.
Comeback of a male friendship
By the way, the last Chancellor who dared to make a reform move was Gerhard Schröder. That remains a historical truth, even if Schröder still does a lot of things wrong today. His business-friendly course led to a historic rift early on. On March 11, 1999, Oskar Lafontaine had a letter delivered to the Chancellery with the content: “Dear Chancellor, I hereby resign as Federal Minister of Finance. Kind regards, Oskar Lafontaine.” Schröder tried to call Lafontaine, but to no avail; Oskar was no longer available for Gerd for 24 years. Instead, he made life difficult for him from the far left, for example by founding his own party (a tradition that Lafontaine’s wife Sahra Wagenknecht could soon continue).
But now there was a rapprochement between Schröder and Lafontaine, as my colleagues Nico Fried and Veit Medick have researched. At the beginning of May, Schröder and his wife drove up to Lafontaine’s house in Merzig, Saarland. They are said to have sat together for five hours, sometimes as a couple, sometimes in larger groups, in an almost friendly atmosphere. Not much can be learned from the conversation; the two older men are said to have left out Schröder’s agenda politics. In any case, the big news about the meeting is that it even took place. Being able to forgive one another is not a virtue in politics, even among comrades. In any case, Schröder congratulates on this one star-Lafontaine’s 80th birthday edition: “Dear Oskar…”