Summary of an editorial in Die Zeit of last Saturday, October 29. Pictured above from right to left: Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the Euro Group.
Having political power is like having millions of euros in the bank. One does not talk about them: one simply has them. For decades, every German government was big at playing small. No longer. One could practically hear the German influence during the crisis summit in Brussels this week. “Will the Germans tighten their rein over the Greeks even more?” a representative of a small EU country wanted to know. “The German chancellor is a very powerful lady,” was the short answer. An Italian diplomat added: “The other leaders are afraid of her. She is the most serious of them all.” Romano Prodi, the former president of the EU Commission, is quoted as saying: “The lady makes the decisions. The French president calls a press conference to explain them.”
Since the middle of 2009, while the other countries in the euro zone sank deeper and deeper, Germany’s economic power grew even stronger. The GDP [Bruttoinlandsprodukt] rose by seven percent, exports by more than twenty-five percent.
Whenever there is talk about German hegemony, elderly people begin to tremble. They remember the Third Reich and WW2 and do not wish to dominate anybody. It was this experience that induced Germany to build the European structure without taking first place. The participation of many made each one small. After unification, Germany concealed its strength within the European currency union. The precondition was close French–German cooperation. Germany was content to allow the French to occupy many key posts. Of course, there was a good deal of camouflage because Germany did not always behave with the reticence it pretended.
But now France itself has become a problem. The agency Moody is examining whether the AAA rating can be continued in view of French indebtedness and excessive government spending. The economy is weakening and the chance that it will be saved by growth is vanishing. What now? The Financial Times believes the old German–French cooperation has become “a polite fiction.”
Is Germany equipped to play the role of a good hegemon, to act effectively in accordance with its extraordinary power? Hardly. The stronger it seems from the outside, the weaker it is in reality inside. While in Brussels they are wrestling day and night to save the euro, Germany is paralyzed by disputes within the coalition, by arguments with the opposition and by conflicts between Bundestag and Bundesrat. The Bavarian CSU, for example, often feels it is not duly consulted. And then there is the constitutional court in Karlsruhe, which has the last word on many sensitive issues. In short: Germany’s hands are bound.
Greece is only the symptom of the larger questions – what overall purpose is the European union to serve, how is it to function and can the fundamental flaw in its construction be repaired?
Whenever the crisis is behind us, Europe will be very different from what it is now.
And so will Germany.
Eric Koch’s book, The Weimar Triangle, is available at Indigo-Chapters and in your local bookstore. 
This piece from Die Zeit leaves me profoundly uneasy. I don’t like to think of myself as elderly, but I do tremble a bit when German hegemony, “good” or otherwise, is contemplated.
The reassurance that “Germany’s hands are bound” leaves me cold. Political paralysis and the existence of the constitutional court do not strike me as guarantees of future good behaviour. I believe that a considerable list of such ostensible safeguards went down one by one in the late 1920′s and 30′s.
My line of thinking takes me back to a summer night in the late 1980′s, when, at a Wehrmacht garrison in southern Germany, I attended a “Grosser Zapfenstreich” put on to honour a departing Canadian General. The drums of the Wehrmacht’s Wachbattallion grew out of the distance to a compelling, shocking impact as they led in companies of torch-carrying, jack-booted, goose-stepping soldiers wearing field grey uniforms and coal-scuttle helmets. My hair stood on end.
The view that Germany built the European structure and has been concealing its strength and employing a good deal of camouflage does not fill me with confidence.
Maybe we should find out why Germany is so powerful and copy how they do it. Apparently they export about the same as China. Their military spending is 1.4 % of their GDP. This is really nothing to worry about.
Why do political analysts always assume their grass is burnt and the neighbour’s must be better? Do not confuse what is described in the piece as “internal weakness” with what is checks and balances of a healthy democracy. As post unification Presidents of Czech and Poland have stated, they have nothing to fear from a (strong) democratic Germany. What I enjoy watching are other EU powers yielding to the political prowess of a German Chancellor who is female, short, from East Germany and a former scientist.
Mike Sky
Oh, but this is a good set of blog + comments!
Years of observant experience, from which are wielded instinctive honed razors of selection, to release comments that can contribute.
Eric, Tony: How can we save the seeds and nuggets in Sketches for later building, grooming, cultivation as our and our friends’ worlds unfold? How can we set them for later availability, not just to evaporate or become sediment, locked under time? Aboriginal wisdom already honours what we call “elders”; really they are “deepers” and “kinders” thanks to having lived and lost and learned and laughed and loved.
In modesty you may not want to hear this, for good and attractive reasons, but from others’ point of view it’s all contribution to social capital. You can’t help yourselves.
And more so, and more flowing, when contributors aren’t constrained by thinking of it as such. Ulp! So forget I said that. I know no one here should or will think of themselves that way. There’s no one here but us chickens. I know that. And besides, it’s true.
All the same, pretend there were a bunch of people who it might be interesting for some other people to hear more than once. Suppose they had a campfire they told stories and jokes around every evening, and there was a perfect memory. How might their jokes and stories be made accessible to their kids and grandkids?
This is so touching, so generous, and so public-spirited that I don’t know what to say. A friend recently suggested that somebody should go though the archive and pick memorable posts and compose an e-book. Maybe our third anniversary – next August – would be a good time for that. That would give us a little time to figure out how to market it.
Thank you, Tim.