Yes. Welcome, dear guests, here with us in the Body Forum and of course in the livestream. I am very pleased that you found your way to us today. I just saw that it's still being fanned out a little bit. We really had a day with very different influences today. This morning it was still a bit rainy, as is typical in Hamburg, and then it became relatively warm, so I am all the more pleased that you are ending the day with us here in the body forum . My name is Svent Herzsaff and I head the Democracy and Cohesion department at the Body Foundation. And I welcome you today to the fourth event in our small annual series entitled "Authoritarian Times". Tonight, the longing for order. What do we do in it? We are investigating the meaning of the rise and ascent of authoritarian forces observed globally over the past two decades. It must be remembered that almost three-quarters of the world's population now lives in autocratic societies . The paths to get there are different. In the USA we are observing an accelerated autocratization through the expansion of presidential power, attacks on media and science, and weakened institutional controls. Since the 1990s , when we observed this teal democratization, Russia has developed into a person-centered autocracy with imperial power ambitions, waging a war of aggression against Ukraine, and where a free transfer of power through elections is hardly conceivable anymore. In China, too, the rule and the Shishin Ping have been continuously expanded. Economic freedoms have increased while political freedoms have decreased . And right in our neighborhood in Poland, Hungary and Turkey, democratic institutions have been gradually eroded by weakened courts and media, unequal electoral conditions and concentrated executive power . However, with Poland and Hungary we also see examples that such developments can indeed be reversed . The world appears more fragile than ever, as the competition between democratic open societies and authoritarian closed systems intensifies. Scientists have long pointed out that liberal democracy, in a historical longitudinal perspective, is actually just a blink of an eye. The power of the stronger has been the greater constant in history. This power of the stronger is becoming more attractive even in democracies, as we saw most recently on election Sunday in Saxony-Anhalt. Studies generally show that voting preferences in open societies are increasingly associated with authoritarian orientation patterns . A growing number of people react to plural lifestyles, ambiguity, and problem complexity with a desire for clarity, conformity, strict guidance, and limitations on deviation. And we have allowed ourselves a small comment on the election results in Saxony-Anhalt . If we add up the votes of the three parties that advocate a very friendly relationship with Russia – AfD, the Left Party and BSW – we arrive at almost 60% approval. One might view the growing support for the authoritarian position in Germany, in comparison to other European countries, as a belated development that is not surprising. In any case, it is a call away. Some speak of a Zur. What happens when people consciously seek and advocate for authoritarian rule not due to a lack of knowledge or education, but due to their clear preference? How should democracy react when these voices gradually become a majority? I don't know if we will be able to answer this question tonight , but I am quite sure that by the end of the evening we will know more about the longing for order . For this, I am pleased to welcome a particularly distinguished guest on our topic . We are very happy that you are here. Dear Mr. Münkler, welcome to our body forum. And for those who don't know him, so much. Mr. Fried Münkler is a political scientist, historian of ideas, and one could certainly say a public thinker. It examines and explains how political orders emerge, consolidate and collapse, and on which ideas and forms of power they are based. Until his retirement, he taught political theory at Humboldt University in Berlin. His work ranges from Makia Wellelli and the history of political thought to empires, wars and social myths, and the crisis of the rules-based world order. In doing so, he combines long historical lines with the analysis of current upheavals. Many of his books are considered standard works, introducing concepts such as new wars, post-heroic society, or power in the middle. One of his book titles, published in our Body Edition series, became part of the public debate through his work, and his more recent books, World in Turmoil and Power in Transition, were on the Spiegel bestseller list for a long time. For his work he received, among other awards, the Science Prize of the Abiurg Foundation, the Karlfriedrich von Siemens Fellowship, the Leipzig Book Fair Prize and the Bruno Kreiski Prize, to name just a few. He has been a frequent guest here in the Body Forum and has spoken about Germany's role in Europe, the upheavals in the international order, and the future of globalization today, which we are of course looking forward to – authoritarian times. The interview is being conducted by Schilaber Chat, who moderates our entire series . After studying law in Hamburg and Paris, she worked as a correspondent in London and as a freelance journalist in India. Today she works, among other things, as a journalist and culture editor at Arte. Her non-fiction book, Women and Revolution, was published in 2025. A warm welcome to you as well , Schiler Bertschatt and please forgive me for that. I'll give you a preview of the next guest in our series in a moment. On October 21, Schiler Berchatt will speak with Susanne Bär, former judge at the Federal Constitutional Court, about the defense of democracy and the red lines, as she sees them. And one more organizational note, as you have already noticed, today's event will be accompanied by sign language interpreters Dorit Bürenheide and Celine Sorkens . Those watching the livestream can send questions to the displayed address de @cberstiftung . Afterwards, as usual, we invite you to a drink here at Flier. But now we are looking forward to the on-stage discussion. The stage is yours. Yes. Many thanks and a warm welcome from me as well, Mr. Münkler. Thank you all for coming, for coming again and again in such large numbers, and um, yes, one thing is clear: we will not only perhaps not be able to discuss all these questions , nor will we be able to speak definitively about your work , about a very small excerpt, but that, um, I am of course very pleased that we can. And for everyone who is listening and present today, you will of course also have the opportunity to ask your questions later, and for the moment we are happy if you listen attentively. Yes, Mr. Münkler, um, we certainly have a very topical reason to talk about the question of democracy right now. We heard it again in the announcement. Today is actually International Democracy Day. What would you say to the honorary child of democracy today? First of all, it seems that democracy is a term that different people understand very differently . Um, if we look closely, then we must also say that the Federal Republic of Germany is a democratic constitutional state. That is, it combines two elements: the will of the population on the one hand, i.e., the volitional element, and the guidelines that determine what citizens can want , which are laid down in the Basic Law and the legal system. So, in a sense, one cannot simply want what one wants here, but rather this is actually limited by a rational normative structure of the Basic Law, certain conventions, human rights, civil rights, and much more. This is particularly pronounced in Germany. In principle, one can say that the modern type of democracy, as it arose in the USA at the end of the 18th century, is characterized by this duality, because both the founding fathers in the USA and the authors of the Constitution of 1848 and 1849 respectively, then Hugo Preuß as the author of the Weimar Constitution and then the fathers and mothers of the Basic Law who came together in Herren Kiemsee already had an idea that one has to filter the will of the electorate a little and that what remains in terms of irrationality or emotions or let's say resentments, that one cannot necessarily make that the basis of politics. Mm. One of the filtering instruments is representativeness, i.e., as little plebiscite as possible. Not in all constitutions, but in quite a few. Um, another classic instrument was the restriction of access to citizenship to certain social groups. It wasn't always the liberals who were against the idea that, in principle, dependent employees of estates should be given the right to vote, because they had a pretty good idea that these people would then vote for the authoritarian and right-wing nationalist parties, because they were, so to speak, under the dominance of the landowner. So, in a sense, the view is of the social conditions in which an individual was an individual and could express his will, or, um, looked at, like , what does the boss say? Boss, boss, who should I vote for or something like that ? This can be prevented by the secret ballot, which is of course repeatedly questioned by authoritarians. Most recently, Donald Trump, even though he officially said he was in favor of protecting the, uh, secret ballot, wanted to be able to gain insight into the voting process, or perhaps he would even pay for the votes themselves, and then he did exactly that by offering $5,000. So, if you were to congratulate democracy in Germany today, would you say a word of warning? So, congratulating people is a bit of a tricky business at the moment . I mean, Mr. Tetel already pointed out what the situation is. Uh, I wrote something similar 10 years ago, stating that I assumed that, unlike in neighboring European countries, the German electorate tends to be immune to the allure of right-wing populism as a result of intensive engagement with German history, especially the Nazi era. That can no longer be said today. Yes, it is indeed interesting to observe, if we take the local elections in Lower Saxony as a point of comparison, where the AfD was around 15 or 16%, that apparently the engagement with the Nazi era in German was much more effective in West Germany, i.e. the old Federal Republic . and has left its mark on what one is allowed to want and what one should not want. uh, than that was the case in the GDR, and I mean, I then dealt a bit with the GDR and its socialization structure when I came to Humboldt University from Frankfurt in 1992. For them, fascism was a conflict between big capital and the working class, so to speak the triumph of the reactionary, uh, capitalist powers. That means they didn't actually have to deal with racism, the idea of ​​the national community, and things like that, or rather, the GDR partially adopted it. One of the first questions I asked myself, or rather my colleagues in the old West German army, is how could it actually be that the National People's Army was able to adopt the cut of the uniforms and the parade step unbroken from the Nazis , while in the West the Bundeswehr (Federal Armed Forces) rather sloppily and laboriously, and actually never practices the whole thing in parade step . It didn't, and you were supposedly the anti-fascist state. And that was a relatively interesting process. It began with the statement, well , there was still so much uniform fabric from the Wehrmacht era, which is why we have it, up to the point where one of the leading figures of the GDR, the Prime Minister, who was also a Major General, said, "Well, the Wehrmacht was an army that at least fought, wasn't it?" So there we were, standing there with pricked ears, thinking that this whole anti- fascism thing with you is suspicious, because firstly you have to say anti-Naziism, but you should n't really say National Socialism at all, because that would have dragged the term socialism through the mud . So they lumped all the together as fascism, thereby making something truly special in German history disappear. I believe all of this needs to be considered when taking the results in Saxony-Anhalt as a basis. And then you also have to add that Saxony-Anhalt is statistically the oldest state and is located in the new federal states, because most of the younger people, especially women, left there. That's another paradox: in the GDR, women on average had higher levels of education, training, and diplomas than in the West. This means that for women, the attractiveness of the West in terms of finding a good income was much higher than for men. Well, and as is often the case when societies break out of a statistical balance between men and women, the men either sit around causing trouble, like the 90s when baseball bats were used in the former East Germany, or they get drunk and overeat, and as a result, they naturally don't become particularly attractive physically. That means, so to speak, their resentment is growing, right? and they're getting on in years now. Um, and actually in need of care. And in this situation, they do not choose remigration in such a way that those they would care for are also driven out of the country . All one can really say is that's also a considerable amount of uninspiredness. How much of what you're saying is related to what you've just described, that the lessons of history may not have borne fruit there? But how much of this is also a reflection of the spirit of the times we live in ? Because there are these two references at the moment. There are those in history that we can talk about again . However, there is also the reference to the spirit of the times, that we live in authoritarian times, that we also live in times where things have become more open to discussion than they actually were a few years ago . In times of great crises, in times of genuine populist exploitation of these crises. How would you weight that then? Well , changing what can be said is simultaneously changing what can be thought, and ultimately it leads to changing what can be done. And the whole thing is basically a concept developed by Antonio Kramschi, the Italian socialist theorist, which he elaborated under the term hegemony or cultural hegemony and which played a major role in left-wing circles for a time in the 70s and 80s, and which was then intensively received by right-wing nationalist to right-wing populist groups . They studied this and wrote texts stating that it is important to first change something like the cultural structures of the republic , that is, to start with what can be said and thought of, and thereby slowly and surely change the power relations. Gramschi chose this term, which is a confrontation with Leninist terminology. Lenin had, in a sense, understood and described this as a breakthrough war. No, these are all people who wrote their texts under the impression of the First World War . And the breakthrough would have been, in a way, how to win battles. Uh, and Gramschi then chooses the term " positional warfare". So, in other words, no major movements into the depths of space, but rather consuming combat operations in the cultural sphere. And if you look at those who, so to speak, uh, in the vicinity of this institute uh, for political science that they founded, have written texts , uh, then it is an intensive engagement with such considerations, and that has probably changed significantly in the last 10 years . Let me say one more thing. The longing for order. I would always put "order" in quotation marks there . Because what constitutes order is itself as controversial as the concept of democracy. For some, democracy is, in a sense, the will of the people. Never mind, the Basic Law, everything's gone. Um, plebiscitary event. Um, the people show their will and that will then be implemented. Yes, as I saw in Austria last year during the election campaign, the posters for the Austrian Liberals, who are now right-wing nationalists, called FPÖ, said "your will is safe". Yes. And that was in reference to the people. Firstly, it's blasphemous, and secondly, it's pretending that the people exist. This is essentially the description underlying a liberal concept of democracy, namely that it is a pluralistic event with very different ideas, not only regarding lifestyle and way of life, but also regarding the assertion of interests, er, value judgments and the like. It is a pluralistic event that is then promoted to a majority through political compromises. That 's contradictory, isn't it? Who says "people"? Mhm. Um, he actually has a concept of authoritarian leadership, because the people do n't usually lead themselves. I can't really think of an example where it has led itself, but then there are the people's leaders in Greece, where the concept of democracy comes from, the concept of the demagogue, not so much analogous political concept formation to educators, right? The boys' leaders, the demagogues, are the people's leaders, whereas a pluralistic society with a correspondingly structured liberal democracy avoids the concept of the people, not of different groups, of different value systems. And the party structure of the old Federal Republic was also set up in this sense. On the one hand, it is based on interests, so to speak, but on the other hand, it is also based on values ​​with regard to certain issues. That's the difference that matters. And the question is, what exactly is order? Yes, order is, so to speak, what is created from above; everything marches on, and everyone obeys my command. Or, so to speak, the growth of compromises, which are always difficult. Um, but well, when Werns said at the prestigious security conference last year, "That's just not right, uh, that in a country, I think a quarter or however many, a large number of voters are n't allowed to participate and don't play a role." Historius, at least, stood up and contradicted him, but actually, one should have said it much more sharply , namely, "Guy, what electoral system are you coming from?" Not an electoral system that, in the event of Hillary Clinton's defeat against Donald Trump, essentially rendered the majority of votes cast meaningless. Yes. but the majority of electors was decisive for the presidency of Donald Trump. It is therefore all a question of electoral systems and the structuring of how the formation of will is achieved. Absolutely. Now, one could say that what we have seen in Saxony-Anhalt is also how our system with multiple parties, where one tries to form majorities from different parties, has reached its limits, because of course the criticism of the existing parties is currently... They did not keep their promises. They can't, because they often have to enter into coalitions and make compromises. Okay, now the AfD comes along and promises all sorts of things too. But that is of course the problem. Political parties run for office, making promises that sometimes address very personal needs of people. People vote for these parties in the belief that their needs will then be met, but that doesn't happen because these parties have to find majorities, make compromises, and therefore cannot implement certain things. That's where it absolutely reaches its limits. Well, what does "promise" even mean? These are election promises, and in principle, they are conditional statements: if we get an absolute majority, then we will do that. But if we look at the history of the Federal Republic , there has only been one government that had an absolute majority . Um, I can't remember that either , even though I'm significantly older than her. That was from 1953 to 1957, the second Adenauer cabinet, wasn't it? And as early as 1957, he no longer had an absolute majority, but had to govern with the FDP. At the national level, things were different for a long time. In Hesse, for example, where I come from, and Hamburg is similar, the Social Democrats had absolute majorities for a relatively long time, and those were the times when you could still put up election posters or brochures, which were then called promises kept. Yes, and then it was performed, and of course it was within the bounds of what was financially feasible. When you have a prospect of an absolute majority, you are also more cautious and don't promise the moon. Um, and that has become entrenched, but that time is over. There is practically no federal state left, uh, not even Bavaria anymore, uh, as the last stronghold uh of those that existed, uh, in which one party has an absolute majority . In principle, election promises are like lures, but one shouldn't believe that they can be implemented. exactly under the conditions under which we vote. Yes, unless there is an absolute majority. The AfD has now narrowly missed out in Saxony-Anhalt. But if you calculate what they envisioned and promised, even if they had received 60%, essentially mixing all parties like BSW, Linkwe, and AfD into one pot, they would n't have been able to implement it because they lack the necessary budget. This means they promised far more than they could have delivered in the best-case scenario of the election result. And that's what I meant earlier . In principle, democracy ultimately depends on the ability of its citizens to make sound judgments. And I mean, if voters fall for it and don't do the math themselves beforehand, can it really be financed? So, firstly, it is of course a nonsensical promise at the state level of a pension share of 70% of the last gross salary. Yes, how can this be enforced at the state level? This is a question within the framework of nation-states . But secondly, would that even be financially feasible? How many billions would that cost? These are just simple calculations that need to be done . And that's why this wording, well, they promised it and didn't keep it. Um, actually, that's nonsense. I would say it's an expression of ignorance about how political systems work and can work. But I readily admit, actually, one has to say that Friedrich Merz ran on his platform saying, " The day I am elected, I will do this, that, and the other thing." Exactly, that's what I was just about to say. Ah yes, März basically acted as if he were Chancellor, that was before his election. has the powers and even more of a US president or at least a French president. Um, that shows that he hasn't been involved in politics for 20 years , yes, that he brought with him ideas about ruling by decree and many other things that were completely unrealistic. You could say he was unwise, Mhm. Uh, to make such statements . He should have expressed himself much more carefully. Firstly, on the first day of his government, as Chancellor he can't do anything at all; rather, the cabinet has to be in place first so that he can implement anything. Then you have to look at the rules of procedure of the Federal Government. It contains information about resource distribution and the independence of the resource. That means they are something completely different from the secretaries in the USA, who are not ministers in that sense , who do not have their own resources in the classical sense, but are state secretaries, just as was the case in the old imperial constitution, where there was no foreign minister, but a state secretary who headed the foreign ministry . In retrospect, it is often written that the foreign minister was, but that was never the case. So, well, these are, let's say, beginner mistakes that happen out of the exuberance of a man coming from the business world and returning to politics , who perhaps for a moment thought that the Chancellor was something like the CO of a large company. Yes . Now perhaps we should talk a little more about what this election result, but also certain developments, might give us in terms of our understanding of democracy . What was also quite interesting was that a major success of the AfD was mobilizing a large number of non-voters with specific election promises, some of which are intended to abolish institutions of democracy, such as the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, uh, certain institutions – basically, to abolish democracy using the means of democracy . Um, you have often quoted Alexis Tokville in recent days, who, in the 19th century, when he looked at American democracy, actually spoke of the tyranny of the majority, that this is what actually comes out when you conduct will formation in this form. Is that it? Would you consider this a democracy, or is it democracy for you that we currently have a majority, not an absolute majority, that we actually have a large number of people who have suddenly become enthusiastic about the idea of going to a free election, which they had not done before? Well, these are all signs of democracy. Well , Tokwill, as a French aristocrat, naturally comes to the USA with the trauma of the 1989 revolution and investigates how things work there that did n't work in France. Namely, after 5 years it becomes increasingly, uh, yes, Bonapartist in its coloring and reshaping, and then the first console of the Republic is Napoleon Bonaparte. Uh, and then he's the emperor. And actually, the French haven't managed to establish anything like a lasting republic. They only managed to do that, uh, yes, after the fall of Napoleon II, his nephew. But that was a fall that was achieved, so to speak, through German weapons and at Metz and Sedan; it was not there that the third Napoleon fell. For a long time, a stable republic. So, with this experience, Tockwill travels to the USA and arrives at his conclusion. The founding fathers considered how to prevent the tyranny of the majority. This is the dreaded fear of the bourgeoisie and certainly also of the aristocracy: that the lower classes, who numerically constitute the majority, will then, in principle, turn the property systems, everything that goes with them, upside down and say, what is yours is now mine, or is common property, and so on, as one could partly observe in the Jacobin era under Rob Pier and such. And then he notes, well, the USA has taken precautions against this, and these are the so-called balances, yes, so to speak, the system of balancing different opinions, protecting minorities, and much more . That's what I meant earlier when I said democratic constitutional state. So, on the one hand, one element of democracy speaks of the will of the citizens, but what is desirable is limited by certain institutional and normative requirements. Institutionally, through the system of representation, um, yes, the judiciary, and much more . A jurisdiction that is not appointed from above , but rather chosen from below. Things are a little different in the USA than here. And at the same time, there is a legal restriction that prevents one from saying this ethnic group no longer has civil rights. Mm. And after we have taken away their civil rights , we will also take away their human rights or something like that. Yes. Now, if Tokwille had looked a little more closely, he could of course have seen that the treatment of the indigenous people, let's say the Indians, in the USA lasted relatively long and well into the 20th century, and not only them, but also the Black people. One was, he was in the USA before the Civil War, where there was a precursor to women's suffrage, and of course, yes, yes, um, and you can say that women's suffrage was always a tricky issue, because, uh, I mean, there's this joke in Frankfurt where they talk in the family about who decides what, and the wife says she 's only responsible for the little things, like which wallpaper gets put on the wall, what gets cooked, and that her husband is responsible for the big things. And then he says, for example, whether we invade Cuba or the glue... yes, so under these circumstances, you can say that women's influence was already there before, at least under family conditions, but it was certainly also the exclusion of a certain group, namely wise men with a certain income. Initially, this was limited to... well, that. This is something that has accompanied democracy from its very beginnings. Um, with the introduction of democracy in ancient Greece in the fifth century BC, the generosity in accepting foreigners as Athenian citizens basically came to an end, because the demos now had an interest in preventing so many people from joining, since democracy distributes money, for example, money comes in when you go to the theater as compensation for lost wages or something else . This means that the Demos has an interest in remaining closed off and not being open. Um, and the democratic rule of law has actually tried to put limits on this, so that the demos doesn't privilege itself. One could say that the more direct a democracy is, the longer the self-privileging of small groups has lasted. See Switzerland. Yes, so to speak, Abenzell is I believe the last canton to grant women the right to vote . But that was already well into the second half of the 20th century. So, it's actually also a form of rule. Now, uh, one thing, this protective mechanism, and this is also becoming interesting, is now being discussed: the federal coercion. But what I'm getting at is that they derived this from the idea of ​​democracy, which also led to the question of how to protect it. They also protect against people themselves, and also against the majority. Yes, before the majority. Is that so? So, conversely, can one say that democracy might not actually be desired, and that it simply has to be enforced in some respects? Man, we've actually had this idea for a long time, at least since '89. Democracy is a kind of place of longing for practically the whole world, for all people in the world. Um, one indication of this is that the aforementioned excerpt from the federal law on coercion has never been applied in Germany . This has never happened before . So, I think we can abandon that idea, and the question now is whether democracy is something that one might have to enforce in part , even if it is not necessarily wanted by everyone . Democracy originated as the will of the people, but also somewhat as a system with a safety net, with protective mechanisms, in order to preserve it as a system, so to speak . Mhm. Well, that was practiced in the Weimar Republic , so to speak, imperial coercion against Thuringia, not when Thuringia was something like a red republic 22 23 when, uh, the idea still prevailed. Germany could become a member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, as Lenin named the place from 22 onwards; Lenin was also convinced that it wouldn't work without Germany because we are much behind economically and technologically. The situation in Thuringia, um, did n't turn red based on majority results, but on the basis of enforcement from within companies and fighting in the streets. The Reichswehr marches in and does n't stop it? And that applies in a similar way to the Ruhr prayer as well. That is, uh, what Article 37 of the Basic Law states, there are also other articles in which this appears, but 37 is the key, uh, is something that was already considered in the Weimar Constitution . And that was, so to speak, a question against which the Republic wanted to distinguish itself from the Reich, the Reich that had fallen apart in 1918/19, which was a union of four kingdoms, which is why the Germans also marched in the first world war with four armies : the Breuian, the Bavarian, the Saxon and the Württemberg army. Yes, like that. So, something that results from a balance of power among the monarchies, which in principle originated in the Napoleonic era . And now, for the first time, one has the idea that, firstly, the newly founded Reichswehr is an association at the national level and not Prussian, Bavarian, and so on. And secondly, the administration is being nationally standardized, and under these circumstances it was of course clear that we must limit the fact that individual countries go it alone or that they conduct their own foreign policy, which is Sarah Wagenknecht's dream, not in the question of the relationship with Russia, which she addressed together with the AfD. Um, and that's why, in a sense, this idea from Hugo Preuß and his circle also found its way into the assembly of Mr. Kiemsee. Um, we need to record this so that, in principle, no one goes into business for themselves. There are also completely different ideas involved, such as the notion that the Rhineland and Adolf were always under suspicion, that he was actually a Rhineland separatist and wanted to join forces with the French – or perhaps that's not even true , but it was a rumor circulating in the background , a way to prevent all of this, was n't it? or the idea that the Bavarians would become independent again and, uh, um, join forces with whomever, or say, "We will become Napoleonic Bavaria," meaning Tyrol and South Tyrol belong to us, and more, so the maintenance of the national external borders, and there was also the idea of ​​treason against the Bavarians. In principle, one could say that according to this idea, people like Bakenknecht and others would have to be charged with high treason and put on trial. Well, it can't be that a group is trying to hold a country hostage in order to impose a different foreign policy orientation than the one that is nationally... Now, we are not a unitary state in that sense , but a federal republic in which the states have relatively high powers, and therefore this is accepted, isn't it? But, uh, in truly centrally organized nation-states, that's a serious issue if someone were to try to do that. The French don't do that; Ms. Le Pen has no idea that she would use any departments where she has a majority to pursue a different foreign policy. That would be clear, then he would be properly condemned and not just have to wear an ankle monitor , but would actually go to prison. Mhm. Perhaps we want to learn more about this zeitgeist and this understanding, or try to understand whether the zeitgeist has simply changed. In 2025, the Saxony- Anhalt Monitor surveyed many things related to democracy, representative democracy, and people's attitudes towards it. One of the results was that while over 90% see themselves as democrats and 87% generally support democracy, only 43.5% support democracy as it is. And there was, for example, a great deal of support for a party system or this idea; then there was also a separate question posed: do you want a strong, I don't want to say leader, do you want a strong personality, so to speak, where power is concentrated in one person, and many voted yes. Um, there's also a study on this, globally speaking, compiled in a book called Age of the Strong Man, which suggests that we actually live in a time where many people long for the strong, or rather, the man who decides everything and can basically rule in an authoritarian manner. How do you explain something like that? Yes, I think it's relatively easy to explain. Um, to understand this, one has to get to the root of two concepts, namely fear and anxiety. Normally, we have a sloppy use of both words and we use them as if we could replace them. But since the Danish philosopher Kirkegard and Sigmund Freud addressed this, it 's actually clear that anxiety resides elsewhere, it's something different from fear. Fear is object-related. Fear of, anxiety about is, in a sense, a semantic error. Fear is a disposition that subsequently seeks out the objects that say, yes, this scares me and that scares me. This can be interchangeable. This can include so-called foreign infiltration, loss of cultural identity, loss of national identity, or whatever else . And so to speak, if you examine Saxony-Anhalt or parts of the population of the Federal Republic in a long-term study, you can observe how what they say scares them is constantly being replaced or changed. Mm. They shoot up this, they shoot up that, and so on. Fear, therefore a disposition that is fundamentally a threat to democracy . Because when we are afraid , something that almost everyone has probably experienced in some way during childhood, we flee to the security of mom, dad, family, uncle, whatever . Yes, so to speak, a mixture of strength and empathy. Mhm. represents. This means that politics, in my opinion, is pretty helpless in the face of fear, especially in the center of the political spectrum . You could say fear, okay, what are you afraid of? Putin. Okay, then we have to do this, that, and the other thing. And while there are still reasons to keep an eye on him, we have the ability to deter him. Not or whatever, you're afraid of losing your job, and then people talk about social safety nets and mechanisms to possibly convert car factories into arms factories, or to do this and that and the other thing. This means that this is an area where politics can prove itself. And this fear, as has been observed, appeared epidemically in waves during the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, and essentially led to uprisings, apocalyptic fears, and many other things. And then we disappeared again. This has actually not been the case since the 19th century, and this has to do with something that has replaced faith in God with a belief in progress. I deliberately say belief in progress, and this belief in progress was something like a fear blockage or a fear blocker, and the key word here is zeitgeist, this belief in progress has dissolved itself in the last 30 years, perhaps even longer, according to the Club of Rome, so to speak, through the first fundamental questioning of it . So, in a sense, what blocked this epidemic spread of waves of fear—namely, the idea, because you all know this, that our children will have it better than us—was blocked. Yes, that it's no longer there, that we, my wife and I, can perhaps say that for our children, but not for our grandchildren. Um, and this fundamental change in the landscape has given rise to the term " horizon of expectations," which makes power more difficult for democracy. In effect, the mental safeguard against trust in the performance or ability of democracy to generate order has disappeared. Mhm. And the panicky behavior, so consciously using the term panicky, is like this, uh, Pan, who accompanies the wine god, uh, who leads to the fact that in the Greek cities, when they come from the east, not only the women, but above all the women, go crazy and in exact uh, yes, processions run towards it . Pull back and do all necessary manual work. Well, sort of, we've contained it. Hamburg isn't so important here, but in the Rhineland during Carnival it is, so to speak. There is a limited period of about 5 days when you can say the world is turned upside down. Perhaps it needed to be introduced nationwide. Yes, I would say that's difficult for me, but you and your wife, because you yourself have now pointed to you, who is also here this evening , welcome you warmly. Back in 2017, you already wrote a wonderful book that was actually against this, so to speak, decline and against it. Now, of course, we are in a post-Corona era, after the war of aggression against Ukraine, after the war against Iran with the rising prices and growing inflation, do you still see it as a narrative constructed to frighten people so that these populist ideas can truly take root? It is certainly true that it is a narrative of decline, used to manage certain fears . However, it is also true that the experience from the time after the Second World War, i.e. I was born in 1951, still has a little bit of that . At the end of the 1950s, my colleague Kelpler, an economic historian at Ho , said that America was coming back into focus. When I look at my family, yes, the car came into the house, the refrigerator and the linen came, something fundamentally changed and there was something like the collective ascent, so to speak the elevator, the elevator, regardless of which social group one belonged to, the entire country went up and sometimes you didn't have to do much individually at all. That was the way it was, and it remained that way for quite some time. Mhm. And then came a time when a differentiation occurred, in the sense that there were also individual downfalls, and real ones at that. And this wasn't just because someone was a factory owner who went bankrupt or something like that, but extended into individual social groups. So the indicator for this is actually the number of homeless people, which can be observed again and again in the image of large cities . There you have it. But there are still promotions, they're more individual in nature, aren't they? You have to contribute something yourself . It no longer works like an elevator, where you simply walk in and then go up. The problem is that this apparently doesn't work very well. Yes, otherwise the Pisaudie, which was released these days, would show different results. Um, so to speak, the demand to do something for one's social standing, or to put it more simply, to be the architect of one's own happiness, and the willingness to take that on and create the necessary conditions – those two things diverge like scissors, don't they? And that's an experience that also has something to do with politics, but not only with politics, but also with societal expectations, carelessness and the like. März certainly kept this in mind time and again with his appeals. You're not working enough, we have to do this, we have to do that. Uh, the 35- hour week is over, we have to go back to the 40-hour week, and Mehr just communicated it terribly. Well, in that sense, it literally went wrong. So, he has described reality quite well there. On election day, I spoke with my father, who fled Iran as an opposition member, and he naturally said, okay, maybe I will have to leave my country, where I live, a second time. And the second thing he really said was that he didn't understand why people, um, didn't fight for democracy anymore. And then we talked about whether it might have to be like that, as is currently the case in Iran or Russia. In China, it is hardly possible anymore, so it is only the absence of democracy that leads to people truly fighting for freedom and democracy at the risk of everything they have, as can actually be said in Iran, where people risk their own lives, as was shown at the beginning of this year. And my father has now come to the conclusion, why do n't the Germans do that? It's not even dangerous for them to demonstrate or express their opinion. Yes . Yes, it seems that's the case. So, the absence of democracy is necessary for people to stand up and say, "This is what I want, I'm putting everything on it, I want it." It can be taken even further. The experience of the dysfunctionality of authoritarian regimes is a prerequisite for a high willingness to stand up for democracy . Um, what happened in East Germany in 1989 certainly had less to do with a longing for freedom than with the feeling that we were falling behind economically. Mm. That was a run-down place anyway. Um, the standard of living in East Germany was significantly higher than in all Eastern Bloc countries, including the Soviet Union. However, this had something to do with the grand scheme of the old Federal Republic and specifically with Frenchman F Strauss and the billion-dollar loan and many other things, so that the share of foreign debt continued to rise. Mhm. And uh, is everything okay? That was Franz Josef Strau, and at some point the cue came up, and at some point my microphone was off. No, it's fine. Thanks for everything. um, and at some point the GDR's foreign debt became so high that it was basically no longer sustainable, and that was noticeable. In short, Honiger's concept of enjoying socialism or the socialist welfare state had failed; it was no longer financially viable given the low productivity, the constant embezzlement, and everything else that went with it. But the narrative was that we brought down this regime for the sake of freedom . But that was at most a tenth of the population who were on the streets, and they were able to prevail because the National People's Army, the People's Police, and all the other authorities in the GDR, after Gberchow's announcement that every country goes its own way and that, in other words, you can't rely on us somehow keeping socialist parties in power in Hungary in '53 or '56, they had code words that they might give shoot-to-kill orders and then they would be left standing alone. Or, the proletariat of the army, so to speak the ordinary soldiers, turn the Kalashnikov around and shoot at them, or they are arrested and charged, and whatever . It was not because of this that the entire upper level, the political level and the military leadership, suddenly disappeared, becoming virtually unreachable, nor because they did not answer the telephones on the crucial night, so that someone with the rank of lieutenant colonel had to decide at the border crossings to open them and, in a sense, pull the shackles out of the GDR. So, the S didn't reflect the narrative . Yes, the narrative has, so to speak, the pride of Leipzig's Monday demonstrators and everywhere else. Bauzen is also standing. Yes. And, uh, um, even the people of Dresden had something, who were always more harmless than the people of Leipzig, and at some point even the Berliners noticed and held their demonstration. Uh, and the idea that they overthrew the state. Mm. Yes, this has led to the narrative, "we are the people," now being reversible or compatible with right-wing populist ideology. So, basically, this peculiar game that Mr. Sigmund and others play, driving around on this peculiar moped that nobody wanted anymore, so nobody could get proper vehicles , or some still maintaining their Trappi with the GDR sticker or something like that. um, uh, that the economic crisis, which this welfare state, yes, which took care of everything, uniting the economy with social policy, as Holler's formula was called, has been forgotten, and they have the idea. Firstly, everything was cheaper and better back then. The state was a great mother, uh, that provided for us. Firstly and secondly, we did make the revolution. We are the people and we're going to do it again. Mm. Uh, and sweep the regime away. It's something like a syndrome. Um, I wouldn't even call it zeitgeist, or at most zeitgeist in quotation marks. Such a syndrome, um, is so armored that one cannot actually understand it about oneself . Yes, the futility of trying to pit factuality against fictionality with hard-core AfD members is something one constantly experiences. Yes, so we have this observation from you that people may not actually want to live as self-determined a life as we always, uh, so to speak, assume them to be . In this Saxony-Anhalt monitor, I find the question about this one party system interesting again, especially given that we see overall that membership numbers in parties are declining, engagement in parties is decreasing, but it's not as if people are less political in that sense. Yes, well, uh, there are a lot of demonstrations, a lot of protest, a lot of debate and discussion. One gets the feeling that people are actually more politicized than ever. Well, even if it's not the kind of debate culture we'd like, people are very, let's say, engaged in many ways. You may like or dislike what the Monday walkers wanted back then, but it's not that people do n't get involved at all, they just do n't do it in something like a political party anymore . Have you ever entertained the thought experiment of wondering whether a democracy exists, but perhaps organized differently than the one we have now? And they have already studied other forms of coexistence that go back further than what we have always seen as the model after the Second World War. This is what democracy looks like. Yes . Uh, absolutely. So, in a way, since I had to teach political theory, as you heard, um, that was always part of the area I had to teach, the area in which I held seminars and so on. And was there anything promising? Was there anything promising that would make them say, "I want to stop doing this right now"? Party democracy is in crisis. It's not the case that membership numbers are declining for all parties; those of the Left Party and the Greens are relatively stable, while the DFD has grown. the classic people's parties, or let's say the Federal Republic coalition of CDU, SPD and FDP. The FDP is essentially gone, it no longer exists. That is a problem of their own policies and their own personnel, but with the others, one can say that the number of members has halved since 1990 . Mhm. This means that the willingness to get involved in political parties has steadily declined within these parties. These are the classic parties of compromise, yes, so to speak a community of values ​​like the Left, which, so to speak, charts a clear course; uh, or well, the Greens are a bit more difficult, but they have, so to speak, a relatively consistent ecological basis. Um, they are much better able to keep people with them . What is emerging now is what is called voter volatility. There are no longer any fixed party affiliations, which is why predicting election results has become more difficult . And then, uh, the medical system changed. My wife once used the term platform democracy or city party democracy for this . So, basically, the idea is that we create democracy on the computer. Mhm. It's often called e-democracy. So, you're constantly online, and then some questions come up, and then a harmless plebiscite is held, something that has been seen with somewhat peculiar girls until now . Yes, so from Bild newspaper to, uh, various platforms, people voted on whether they were in favor of something, and that was then sold as representative . Um, that was a dream of some , which reached its peak during the exuberance of the internet and the expectations, but we now know that it's all controlled by algorithms and there are powerful people in the background who ensure that these news items are constantly at the top and pop up, while others, um, don't become visible at all. Um, the power has shifted. You can see this relatively well in the Brexit or the elections in the USA, where personalized messages were sent to you and so on. The parties cannot overcome this. And that has a major disadvantage, because the parties were, at least for the active party members, something like places for training judgment, where discussions took place in a manageable circle. If you do that, it has these advantages, but it also has those disadvantages, and should you do it then, and so on and so forth. That is to say, the sense for compromise, uh, for tactical decisions, for strategic decisions was cultivated there, and one was correspondingly sensitive. Of course, this doesn't happen online at all , but rather one moves within one's own bubble, and well, this is certainly a media-driven change in the environment that is fundamental in nature and at least alters the foundations of democracy , if I question it . Regarding the question of the other form of democracy, some time ago, because Hannes Androsch asked me to – he was, so to speak, the only billionaire I was on familiar terms with – I couldn't refuse his request. A small book written about democracy, or the train on democracy . I was very skeptical of the plebiscitary model because, uh, the plebiscitary model does n't mediate a plural, but rather, so to speak, "The winner takes it all." Mhm. Um, and uh, yes, when I was still training to be a teacher in Frankfurt, I often asked this as an exam question: when in German history were there actually the most plebiscites? We were definitely wrong with the answer, namely during the Nazi era. Um, it's also an instrument in principle, uh, a charismatic figure at the top, so the leader, or already implemented decisions and much more, to which a democratic foundation, a sham participation of the... Yes, those were all results with at least 95% Jahim and so on. So the question is, what if we actually took the idea of ​​equality seriously for once ? And that means that certain counties are not filled by election, but by random number generator. Mhm. So, with the cube. It can happen to anyone . And I learned that in Switzerland there is such a thing as compulsory service. That means if you've been drawn into the lottery, then you have to take on that task. The charm of this is that quite a few loudmouths suddenly become very small , because it could happen that they suddenly have to participate in decisions at the local level and are then asked how they decided and why. not. And, uh, if this compulsion exists, then one will already be thinking about what kind of thing it might be . So, basically, the question is quite simply: kindergarten or retirement home? Yes, where is the money only for one? Then you have to make a decision, and then you have to stand by that decision, and so on. Um, that means taking the form of the people governing themselves seriously. I would never call that a general form, yes, but at the local level, where democracy can be experienced, where we actually practice democracy, where we can also observe how it goes from the first idea to possibly the implementation of the project. Um, one could consider something like that. Well, this has been addressed in the so-called citizens' councils, but unfortunately, it's completely pointless and doesn't amount to anything . Yes, so holding a citizens' assembly on nutrition issues or something like that makes little sense, because these are questions that are ultimately evaluated by experts anyway; rather, one really has to say that it's not about pushing the issue to the point of a nail-biting decision. And that is sensibly possible in such local political issues. And if enough people have lived, so to speak, in the hope and fear that they might be affected by the AfD, then that promotes judgment, or at least a willingness to judge, debate, and thus the dissolution of these corners that have formed there, and which you said earlier, yes, but the AfD has mobilized a great many non-voters . Sure, those were the eternal corner-hangers, complainers, squabblers, uh, and everything's crap anyway. Um, who then said in this situation, " Today we're going to vote and now we'll show those people up there what's what," and whatever else . Uh, you have to keep an eye on those too. In my field, it has long been said, especially by American political scientists, that a low voter turnout, particularly in the USA, is an expression of satisfaction. Because if they were dissatisfied, they would surely go and vote. Yes, that's what one might call a "protest vote" at the moment, or rather exactly. But that was obviously a misjudgment. Uh, democracy in Germany was most vibrant when voter turnout was relatively high . In my political socialization, that was of course the Billywalen of the late 60s, early 70s . um, by also addressing points in the question of Edward's Ostpolitik and many more, or also Willy Brandt's statement, "We want to dare more democracy." Well, former emigrant Brand knows that democracy is a risk. Yes, it's often quoted that way, so to speak: we want to dare more democracy. Yes, it's basically hung down there. Yes, he understands that the end of the Weimar Republic was an end on a democratic basis . Yes, well, it is a risk to engage in democracy, and democracy must, in a sense, be constantly reinforced and worked for. Therefore, it is perhaps the most strenuous and demanding form of government there is. And the desire for order in a certain sense, or for one-party rule, is in a way the desire for carefree living. Yes, but in a democracy there is no right to carelessness in that sense. Um, and if authoritarians say, yes, there is a right to silence, you do n't need to worry. The leader is doing all of this . Yes, like that. Um, well, then we'll see what the result is. Um, the Russians will see that sometime soon. The Germans saw what followed, and then came something that they should never have been allowed to get away with: this statement. Yes, that's not what we wanted. Mhm. Yes, that's basically an admission that we're overwhelmed by democracy, because we did n't want it in the first place. We wanted something completely different. In short, we didn't give it any thought, but rather gave in to certain preferences, moods, and the like , as we increasingly switched from the centrist parties to the NVP and the NSDP. That's something we need to think about again. Um, but how do you know good methods to, so to speak, make people understand that, yes, it is work? Um, don't believe anyone who tells you they'll take all your worries away , get involved. So, you really do feel like despairing. So, on the way here, I wondered a bit what the point was of continuing to talk about it, because we already know everything, we know everything. Yes, that's why that joke I told earlier about that Frankfurt family, where the wife makes the small decisions about what to wallpaper and what to cook, and the husband makes the big decisions, like whether we invade Cuba or something like that, is actually quite helpful. The woman decides now in the future. No, I would say that democracy becomes tangible at the local level, in a manageable space. uh, at the national level. These are, uh, processes that require a lot of thought. You need to know a lot to make smart decisions . I could give you X examples now of how difficult it is to act in that situation. But the municipal level has the great advantage of being manageable. Mm. Yes, from the initial idea so far to the building inauguration or something like that. Um, that's why democracy needs to be practiced excessively here. And if something goes wrong, then it's a learning process, and you can usually afford that, because what happens has a limited scope, so to speak . And through this, something like a sense of political responsibility develops. Mm. That's anything but a given . I mean, these non-voters who then actually go to the polls , what kind of political disregard is that, a lack of political responsibility, so to speak, to go to the polls just to vent, to put it bluntly . No, not at all . Yes. And then they come along and tell us that this is democracy. No, that's all I can say. Far too brief a statement. Last place. Yes, that's great, because then I probably have to change the narrative of where democracy actually takes place, because in this great survey, the people in Saxony-Anhalt, for example, perceived their own state parliament very positively. Even institutions like the police are generally viewed positively. So, the experience of democracy is obviously very positive. Unfortunately, we only have 10 minutes left, so I would now open the floor for questions, although of course it could go on forever. And now the question is, are there any questions back there? Here you go, the lady in the middle. Yes, but at the beginning they already put forward the thesis that the culture of remembrance in West Germany was better than in East Germany, and I was born in East Germany and I experienced that in elementary school, which was still during East German times, fascism was a topic every week, and anti-fascism, whereas in West Germany, during my entire time at grammar school, it wasn't even mentioned once. Therefore, I don't see this as a problem with East Germany and its culture of remembrance, but rather as a failure of the West German systems. Especially in education and culture. Where did you go to school? At the high school in Thuringia on the border with Saxony- Anhalt. Well , so to speak, it was the Federal Republic of Germany that was practicing there with East German teachers. Well, the East German teachers were left out in the cold , as seen by the federal government, because they received old textbooks from the 80s in history and political science that no longer reflected reality. There was no financial provision from the federal government for current or even cross-border books. Yes. Yes. And I simply see the GDR 36 37 yes the people who were socialized in the GDR through the education policy vote much less, um, for the right wing. So, only 31% of hunters over 70 vote for the AfD, while 52% of hunters aged 35 to 59 vote for the AfD. These are not the people who were socialized within the educational policies of the GDR. Thanks. We understand the question. Please . Yes, I would say you've identified the problem yourself. They said fascism and anti-fascism. Um, the problem is National Socialism. Fascism is an inclusive term for very different movements. And when we talk about fascism, we usually do n't talk about racism. We're not talking about exclusion, we're talking about capital and labor. This was, in a sense, a continuation of Dimitrov's fascism as the highest stage of capitalism. the basic view of the DDA. That is to say, they did not concern themselves with the specific nature of National Socialism at all. We have, so to speak, learned something that they have placed in the history of class struggle with the corresponding self-confidence. But we, as the DDA, are now the winners of history. This is a term that was emblematic of the self-understanding, and therefore there is no discussion of what exclusion means. Mhm. Um, what does "dissolution of the state's monopoly on the use of force" mean? The emergence of gangs of thugs, which was already the case 33 years ago, and much more besides . And you can't circumvent that by saying, well, the very old ones who may have experienced the Nazi era directly or in its direct effects are more immune than those who only learned about it at school . One could say that the school simply taught it very poorly and didn't make any effort . Um, and the thesis between the Federal Republic's engagement with the Nazi regime, which certainly was n't particularly outstanding, but was different, you can see that, it was my example, in the 15 to 16% AfD in the local elections, we can only compare that now in Lower Saxony and the 48.3% or so. 48.8 Hm. Yes. 48.3 in Saxony-Anhalt. However, it must also be said that probably the most dynamic elements of society have left Saxony-Anhalt . They're not there anymore. They are in Baden-Württemberg, or in Bavaria, or in Hesse, or in Lower Saxony, or wherever . These are the well-educated women. We might just need to take a quick look to see if we can get two more questions answered, because there are so many questions . The gentleman up front, please. Mr. Münkler, how optimistic or pessimistic are you regarding the question of whether at least your most important insights will reach a sufficient number of people in time? Yes, well, if I were pessimistic, I wouldn't have come here. I would have said that, it doesn't matter anyway. Um, I'm not optimistic either, uh, but I tell myself what I've said before: confidence has to be earned anew every day. Um, optimism is also a form of somewhat relaxed thinking, because they see, so to speak, that everything will turn out alright or something like that. Um, I'm not convinced that everything will turn out well; rather, it will depend on us, each and every one of us, whether things work out and turn out well, or whether we get caught up in a series of new disasters. Mhm. We have one more question back here. The lady with the long braid in the last row here. Thank you very much. Um, my name is Eriike Docker and I am from more democracy in Hamburg and you have expressed several times this evening how critical you are of the speakers or the referendum. It sounded a bit like the citizen was too stupid to make decisions about things. Um, my question would be whether you only see it that way for speakers, so to speak, from above, or whether you also find direct democracy, uh, as popular initiatives, critical, as is possible in Hamburg and has been practiced for 30 years . And, uh, the other thing is whether you think that the decisions of representative bodies are so much smarter and more effective than the results of popular initiatives. Mhm. So, I don't want to be fundamentally against Fox initiatives , even though I like to say I do n't like the word "people" in that context. Um, if it's called a citizens' initiative, I find that more appealing, because with the people, uh, yes, so to speak a totalitarian claim is already being made. As a political scientist, I have to say that most plebiscites, with the exception of those in Switzerland (which have a completely different character), have gone wrong . The last plebiscites we had were the Fox vote on a European Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands, in which they didn't grasp the problem of a European constitution at all, but used it as a protest vote against their respective governments . This is often the case. And if you list and examine the history of plebiscites, then that is not a strong argument in favor of plebiscites. It's a different story in Switzerland, where people are constantly being asked to vote , but there, the Fox vote is also a compensation for the fact that the Swiss have a consensus constitution . This means that all parties elected to the Federal Council are also represented in the government. Yes, so to speak, the grand coalition. And in that respect, it is a completely different system, in which, however, very low voter turnout can sometimes be observed, so that it is a problem and then it fails. We have a son who lives in Switzerland and he once showed me the books you get with arguments for and against such referendums. Um, and I would say, yes, that is indeed an activity aimed at developing political judgment. This is the deliberative process that is expected of the individual before the decision is finalized. However, this takes a relatively large amount of time and relies on a habit, a routine, that I hear this. And if you can't engage with it , then you won't go to the vote, because you basically don't have a well-founded opinion on it . Switzerland can afford something like that, uh, because of its small size. the fact that it is virtually unrepresented in international politics, and so on and so forth. Um, in Germany such plebiscites are not really conceivable, or in principle one would need about 30 years to get people used to the fact that plebiscites are not places for sending out reminders , but really delicate decisions. Whether we can afford it for 30 years and whether we have the time for it, that's another question. I would say that in Berlin there was a vote on the question of expropriating the large housing construction companies. Um, something that now relates back to what is now, which may come into play again after Sunday. But if one tries to implement this plebiscite, one will not get a single additional apartment; instead, one will entrench and manage the shortage. And the result will be that allocation offices, which will then have to be created , will essentially decide whether someone gets an apartment or not. So basically, conditions similar to those in East Germany. The question is whether that's desirable, or whether it makes more sense to say, yes, those were stupid politicians who sold the existing municipal or state housing to, uh, Deutsche Wohnen and, uh, whatever else was running around there to balance the budget because they were too weak. to enforce the corresponding cuts. Yes. So. Um, but to say in hindsight that we'll probably buy it from these companies now for twice the price. Um, anyway, everyone who knows anything about it says they'll pay double the price. Well, over 20 years there's also a certain inflation rate factored in, and so on and so forth. But in principle, this exceeds the capacity of the state of Berlin to act. Mhm. Therefore, I would say that this is no guarantee of intelligence among plebiscites. So, I see this now, so to speak, dispassionately, as someone who evaluates the history of the plebiscite and what can be observed, and comes to a conclusion. But perhaps, uh, to conclude, we now have, um, as you yourself have mentioned, the upcoming re-elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern this coming Sunday. Yes, where other topics are probably more in the foreground. Um, what would you say? Let's say the elections turn out as the current forecasts indicate. The AfD will be strong there, but will not have the landslide victory like in Saxony-Anhalt. Do you see this as a danger, for example, that it might be used as an opportunity to stop talking about the state of democracy, about the difficulties that exist? Oh, the election in Berlin will probably turn out in such a way that we will have to talk about democracy again, because it is an election result that leaves many interpretations open and forming a government will be difficult enough. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, it's a different story. If Ms. Schwesig actually manages to get her beleaguered Social Democrats through ahead of the AfD, which the polls currently suggest might be the case, then that's a setback in the AfD's upward trend, so to speak, and such setbacks are not uninteresting. The NFDHP also had that in the last Reichstag elections . Many already believed that they were going down now. Then, uh, the last cabinet maneuver fell through, and Hintenburg was quite relieved that he essentially had a majority in the Reichstag again with this government, whose Reich Chancellor was Hitler . Yes, so to speak not a minority government ruling by emergency decrees, but the old man, who certainly was no democrat , um, feels he is acting within the framework of the constitutional structure. Um, if one had persevered, one might have seen how the NSDP, after this setback, would have gradually lost the fascination associated with it. We cannot understand that. Yes, scientists can conduct their experiments in XM. Thankfully, I'd like to say, social scientists can't do that – they can't turn back time and then review the year 32 or 33 with changed conditions and observe how it turns out . Um, that's why we'll stick to comparisons and thought experiments. And the thought experiment suggests that if such a turnaround occurs and Ms. Weidel then has to appear much quieter and more vocal, well, she'll try to rationalize it, but has to appear much quieter and more vocal, then that 's also something that could cause parties to lose their appeal. Those in Hamburg know that Schill and the Schill party didn't exactly take off, and then at some point he fell apart and was gone, and then he only appeared as a nude model in Brazil. Yes. Um, I don't know if Ms. Weidel is suitable for that. In this sense, I thank you very much for this wonderful evening. Yes, thank you very much for the great conversation. Thank you all very much. As always, we would be delighted if you would stay with us a little longer in the foyer to discuss what we heard . And we look forward to the next event together. Thank you very much . Thank you very much. Thank you. Yes . Yeah.