Yes. A warm welcome to all our guests here at the KörberForum and, of course , in the livestream. I am very pleased that you found your way to us today. I just saw that some people are still fanning themselves a bit. We really had a day with very different influences today. This morning it was still a bit rainy, as is fitting for Hamburg, and then it got relatively warm, and I am all the happier that you are concluding the day with us here at the KörberForum. I am Sven Hergovich, and I lead the Democracy and Cohesion department at the Körber-Stiftung. And I welcome you today to the fourth event in our small annual series, which is titled "Authoritarian Times." Tonight: "The Longing for Order." What are we doing in this series? We are exploring the question of what the globally observed rise and ascent of authoritarian forces over the past two decades means. One must realize that by now, almost three-quarters of the world's population lives in autocratically influenced societies. The paths to this 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 checks. Since the 1990s, when we could observe this partial democratization, Russia has developed into a person-centered autocracy with imperial power ambitions that is waging a war of aggression against Ukraine, and where a free change of power through elections is hardly imaginable anymore. In China, too, the rule of Xi Jinping has been continuously expanded. Economic freedoms have grown while political freedoms have become smaller and smaller. And right in our neighborhood, in Poland, Hungary, and Turkey, democratic institutions have been gradually hollowed out by weakened courts and media, unequal election conditions, and concentrated executive power. At the same time, with Poland and Hungary, we also see examples that such developments can indeed be reversible. The world appears more fragile than ever. The competition between democratic open societies and authoritarian closed systems is intensifying, and scientists have long pointed out that liberal democracy is actually just a blink of an eye in a historical longitudinal view. The power of the stronger has been the greater constant in history. This power of the stronger is also becoming more attractive in democracies, as we could recently see on election Sunday in Saxony-Anhalt. Studies generally show that voting preferences in open societies are increasingly linked to authoritarian orientation patterns. A growing portion of people reacts to pluralistic life models, to ambiguity, and to problem complexity with a desire for clarity, conformity, strict leadership, and the limitation of deviation. And if you will allow me a small remark on the election results in Saxony-Anhalt. If you add up the votes of the three parties that advocate for a very friendly relationship with Russia—AfD, The Left, and BSW—then we reach nearly 60%approval. One might see the growing support for authoritarian positions in Germany, by European standards, as a catching-up development that comes as no surprise. In any case, it is a wake-up call. Some speak of a turning point. What if people are not striving for and advocating authoritarian rule due to a lack of knowledge or low education, but rather because of a clear preference? How should democracy react if these voices gradually become a majority? I don’t know if we will be able to answer that question this evening, but I am quite sure that by the end of the night, we will know more about the longing for order. For this, I am pleased to welcome a particularly distinguished guest for our topic. We are very happy that you are here. Dear Mr. Münkler, a warm welcome to you here at the Körber-Forum. And for those who don’t know him, a few words . Mr. Herfried Münkler is a political scientist, historian of ideas, and, one might say, a public intellectual. He examines and explains how political orders emerge, solidify, and collapse, and upon what ideas and forms of power they are based. Until his retirement, he taught political theory at the Humboldt University of Berlin. His work ranges from Machiavelli and the history of political thought to empires, wars, social myths, and the crisis of the rules-based world order. In doing so, he connects long historical timelines with the analysis of current upheavals. Many of his books are considered standard works; terms like "new wars," the "post-heroic society," or "power in the center"—also a book title that appeared in our Körber edition— 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 has received, among others , the Science Prize of the Aby Warburg Foundation, the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Fellowship, the Leipzig Book Fair Prize, and the Bruno Kreisky Prize , to name but a few awards. He has been a guest here at the Körber-Forum multiple times, speaking about Germany's role in Europe, the upheavals of the international order, and the future of globalization—and today, which we are naturally looking forward to, "Authoritarian Times." The conversation will be led by Sheila Mysorekar, who is moderating our entire series. After her law studies in Hamburg and Paris, she was a correspondent in London and a freelance journalist in India. Today, she works, among other things, as a journalist and cultural editor at Arte. In 2015, her non-fiction book "Women and Revolution" was published. A warm welcome to you as well, Sheila Mysorekar. And please forgive me for this. I will give a quick outlook on the next guest in our series. On October 21st. Sheila Mysorekar will speak with Susanne Baer, former justice at the Federal Constitutional Court, about the defense of democracy and the red lines as she sees them. And a quick organizational note, as you’ve already noticed, today’s event is being accompanied by sign language interpreters Dorit Bürenheide and Celine Sorkens. Those following the livestream can send questions to the address shown on screen at cberstiftung. Afterwards, we invite you, as you are accustomed to, for a drink in the foyer. But for now, we look forward to the stage discussion . The stage is yours. Yes. Thank you very much, and a warm welcome from me as well, Mr. Münkler. Thank you all for coming, for coming in such large numbers, time and again. And um, yes, one thing is clear: we won't just be unable to discuss all these questions, we also won't be able to talk about your work in its entirety, only a very small excerpt, but I am very pleased that we can do that. And for all those listening and attending today, you will of course have the opportunity to ask your questions later on, and for the moment, we look forward to your attentive listening. Yes, Mr. Münkler, um, we obviously have a very current occasion to talk about the issue of democracy. We heard it in the announcement again. Today is actually International Day of Democracy. What would you say to the birthday child today—democracy? Well, first of all, democracy is evidently a term under which different people imagine very different things. Um, if we look closely, we must also say that the Federal Republic is a democratic constitutional state. This means it combines two elements: the will of the population on the one hand, the voluntative element, with the guardrails that determine what citizens can want, which are established in the Basic Law and the legal system. So, in a sense, one cannot just want whatever one wants, but rather this is actually limited by a rational-normative structure of the Basic Law, certain conventions, human rights, civil rights , and much more. That is particularly pronounced in Germany. In principle, one could say: is the modern type of democracy, as it emerged in the USA at the end of the 18th century, characterized by this duality? Because both the Founding Fathers in the USA and the authors of the 1848/49 constitution, then Hugo Preuß as the author of the Weimar Constitution, and then the mothers and fathers of the Basic Law who gathered at Herrenchiemsee, all had an idea that the will of the electorate must be filtered a bit, and that what might be expressed in terms of unreason, emotion , or, let’s say, resentment, should not necessarily be made the basis of politics. Mm. One of the filtering instruments is representativeness, so to speak, as few plebiscites as possible. Not in all constitutions, um, but in relatively many. Um, another classic instrument was restricting access to civil rights to certain social groups. It wasn't that liberals were always against the dependently employed on estates getting the right to vote; it's because they had a clear idea that they would then vote for authoritarian and right-wing nationalist parties, because they were, so to speak, under the dominance of the estate owner. So, in a sense, the look at the social conditions in which an individual was an individual and could express their will, or alternatively, looked at, you know, what does the boss say? Boss, boss, who should I vote for, or something like that? Um, this can be prevented by the secret ballot, which is, of course, repeatedly called into question by authoritarians. Most recently a bit by Donald Trump, even if he officially said he was, so to speak, for protecting the, uh, secret ballot, he still wanted to be able to have a look, or pay for it if he could. Exactly. For the votes, then he... He did exactly that on top of it all by offering $ 5,000. So, would you, on the whole, congratulate democracy in Germany today, or would you speak a word of warning? Well, with the congratulating, it’s a bit of a tricky thing at the moment. I mean, Mr. Tetel has pointed out what the situation is. Uh, I wrote it that way myself 10 years ago, that I assumed that, unlike in neighboring European countries, the German electorate was tending to be immunized against the seduction of right-wing populism as a result of an intensive engagement with German history, especially National Socialism. You can’t say that anymore today. Yes, it is interesting to observe that—let’s take the local elections in Lower Saxony as a comparison point, where the AfD was at around 15 or 16%—that apparently the engagement with the NS in Germany, in West Germany, the old Federal Republic, was much more effective. And left traces in what one is allowed to want and what one should not want. Than was the case in the GDR, and I mean, I looked into the GDR and its socialization structure a bit when I came from Frankfurt to Humboldt University in '92. For them, it was a conflict between big capital and the working class, fascism was, so to speak , the triumph of the reactionary, uh, capitalist powers. That means they didn't really have to deal with racism, the, uh, idea of the "Volksgemeinschaft ," and things like that at all, or rather, the GDR partly took it over. One of the first questions I asked myself, or rather asked my old-school Volvanian colleagues, is: How could it be that the National People's Army adopted the cut of the uniforms and the goose step directly from the Nazis, while in the West, the Bundeswehr practiced it rather sloppily, uh, laboriously, and never really in the goose step at all? It didn't, and, uh, you were supposedly the anti-fascist state, after all. And that was a relatively interesting process. It began with them saying, "Well, there was just so much uniform fabric left over from the Wehrmacht era," uh, which is why we used it, all the way to the point, uh, that, uh, one of the leading figures in the GDR, the Prime Minister, who was also a Major General—it was a Prussian tradition, so to speak, that the Prime Minister had to hold a general's rank—said, "Well, the Wehrmacht was an army that at least fought, right?" So you stood there with pricked ears and thought, this anti-fascism of yours is a suspicious thing, because first of all, you have to say anti-Nazism, but you shouldn't really say National Socialism at all, because the term socialism would have been dragged through the mud. So they ironed the whole thing out to fascism and thereby made the unique aspect of German history disappear. I believe all of that must be kept in mind when looking at the results in Saxony-Anhalt, uh, as a basis. And then you also have to add that Saxony-Anhalt is statistically the oldest state in the new federal states, because most of the younger people, especially women, have left. That is also quite a paradox. Once again, in the GDR, women had a higher level of education, training, and diplomas than in the West. That means, for them, the attractiveness of the West to find a good income is much higher than it is for men. Well, and as it goes: when societies fall out of a statistical balance of men and women, the men sit there and either cause trouble—like the 90s, the era of baseball bats in the new federal states—or they drink themselves into a stupor and overeat, and consequently, they don't become particularly physically attractive. Meaning, their resentment grows, doesn't it? And they have aged since then. Um, and are actually in need of care. And in this situation, they vote for remigration, in a way that those who would be caring for them are also driven out of the country. You can really only say that is quite a healthy dose of irrationality. How much of what you are saying has to do with what you just described, that the lessons from history perhaps haven't taken root there? But how much of it is also the zeitgeist we find ourselves in? Because there are these two frames of reference at the moment. There is the historical one, which we can come back to. But there is also the reference of the zeitgeist, that we live in authoritarian times, that we certainly live in times where things have become more sayable than they actually were a few years ago. In times of great crises , in times of actual populist exploitation of these crises. How would you weight that then? Well, the change in what is sayable is at the same time a change in what is thinkable, and in the end, it results in a change in what is doable. And the whole thing is, in principle, a concept developed by Antonio Gramsci, the Italian socialist theorist, who elaborated on it under the term hegemony or cultural hegemony, which played a major role in leftist circles for a while in the 70s and 80s, and which was then intensively adopted by, yes, right-wing nationalist to right-wing populist groups. They studied it and also wrote texts about the fact that it is crucial to first change something like the cultural structures of the republic, in other words, to start with what is sayable and thinkable and, through that, slowly and surely change the power dynamics, so to speak. Gramsci chose the term for this as a debate with Leninist terminology. Lenin had, in a sense, understood and described this as a war of breakthrough. You see, these are all people who wrote their texts under the impression of the First World War. And the breakthrough would, in a sense, have been how one decides battles in one's favor. And Gramsci then chooses the term war of position. So, not major movements into the depths of the space, so to speak, but rather exhausting warfare in the cultural sphere. And if you look at those who have written texts in the environment of this Institute for State Policy that they founded, then it is an intensive preoccupation 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 order is, 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, throw it all away. A plebiscitary event. The people show their will and it is then implemented. Yes, just like I saw posters in Austria um last year during the election campaign uh that were for the um Austrian liberals, but who have since become right-wing nationalists, the FPÖ, saying "Your will be done." Yes. And that was in reference to the people . Well, first of all, it's blasphemous, and second, it's pretending that "the people" actually exist. That is, in principle, the description that underlies a liberal concept of democracy, namely that it is a pluralistic endeavor and that there are very different ideas, not just regarding life plans and lifestyles, but also about the assertion of interests, um value judgments, and the like. a pluralistic endeavor that is then promoted to majority viability through political compromises. These are opposites, aren't they? Whoever says "the people"? Mhm. Um, they actually have an idea of authoritarian leadership, because the people do not, as a rule, lead themselves. I honestly don't know of any example where it led itself; rather , there are simply "people's leaders" in Greece, where the term democracy comes from—the term demagogue, not, so to speak, a political term formation analogous to pedagogue, right? " Pedagogues" are leaders of boys, " demagogues" are leaders of the people, whereas a pluralistic society with a correspondingly structured liberal democracy avoids the term "the people," right, and instead speaks more of different groups, of different value positions. And the party structure of the old Federal Republic was indeed built in this sense. On one hand, interest-based, so to speak, but on the other, also value-based with regard to certain issues. That is the difference that matters. And the question is, what actually is order? Yes, is order, so to speak, what is established from above —jump, march, everyone obeys my command? Or is it the growing of compromises, which are always difficult ? Um, but well, when Werns said at the Munich Security Conference last year, " This is impossible," uh that in a country, I believe a quarter or how many—in any case a large number of voters—aren't actually allowed to participate and play no role. Historius at least stood up and contradicted him, but actually, one should have said it much more sharply, namely: "Guy, what kind of electoral system do you come from?" Not an electoral system that, in the case of Hillary Clinton's defeat by Donald Trump, effectively rendered the majority of the votes cast meaningless. Absolutely, yes. but rather, the majority of the electors was decisive for the presidency of Donald Trump. So it is all a question of the electoral systems and the structuring of how one brings about the formation of will. Absolutely. Now one could say that what we saw in Saxony-Anhalt is also how our multi-party system, where one tries to form majorities from different uh parties, has reached its limits a bit, because the accusation against the existing parties at the moment is, of course: You didn't keep what you promised. And they can't, because they often have to uh enter into coalitions and make compromises. Uh, well, now the AfD comes along and promises all sorts of things too. But that is, of course, the problem. Parties run for office, making promises that partly concern very personal needs uh of people. People vote for these parties in the belief that these needs will then be met, and that doesn't happen because these parties have to find majorities, make compromises, and then they can't implement certain things. So, that is where it absolutely reaches its limits. Well, what does "promise" mean? Those are campaign statements and, in principle, they are conditional statements: if we get an absolute majority, then we will do that. But if we look into the history of the Federal Republic, there was only one government that had an absolute majority. Uh, I can't remember that either, even though I am significantly older than you. That was '53 to '57, the second Adenauer cabinet, wasn't it? And right after that, in '57, he no longer had an absolute majority and had to govern with the FDP. At the state level, it was different for a long time. In Hesse , for example, where I'm from, or Hamburg where it's similar, the Social Democrats had absolute majorities for a relatively long time, and those were the days when you could still put up campaign posters or brochures that said "promised and kept." Yes. And then, so to speak, it was carried out, and that was, of course, within the realm of the financially feasible. When you have a prospect of an absolute majority, you are more cautious and don't promise the moon. Um , and that has solidified, but those days are over. There is basically no state left, uh not even Bavaria anymore , as the last bastion that existed there, where one party has an absolute majority. That means, in principle, campaign promises are like bait, but one shouldn't believe that they can be implemented. One-to-one under the conditions in which we vote. Yes, unless there is an absolute majority. Now, the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt narrowly missed that. But if you actually calculate what they imagined and what they promised, even if they had received 60%—meaning all the parties like BSW, Die Linke, and AfD mixed into one pot—they could not have implemented it because they lack the necessary budget funds. That means they promised much more than they could have kept, even in the best-case scenario for an election result. And that is what I meant earlier. In principle, democracy ultimately depends on the judgment of the citizenry. And I mean, if the voters fall for it to some extent and don't calculate for themselves beforehand whether it can even be financed? I mean, firstly, it is, of course, a nonsensical promise at the state level to offer a pension share of 70%of the last gross salary. Yes, how is that supposed to be enforced at the state level? That is a question within the framework of the nation-state. But secondly, would it even be financeable at all? How many billions would that cost? These are simple calculations, so to speak, that one has to make. And that is why this phrasing, "well, they promised this and didn't keep it," is......actually nonsense; I would say it is an expression of ignorance regarding how political systems function and can function. I am happy to admit, however. Actually, one has to say that Friedrich Merz started out that way and said, "On the day I am elected, I will do this, that, and the other thing." Exactly, that is what I was just about to say. Ah, yes. Merz acted, so to speak, as if he were already Chancellor, as if—even before his election—he had the powers, or even more, of a US president or at least a French president. Um, that shows he hasn't been in politics for 20 years, yes, that he brought ideas of " governing through" and many others that were completely unrealistic. One could say he was unwise, mhm....to make such statements. He should have expressed himself much more carefully. Firstly, on the first day of his government, he can do nothing as Chancellor; rather, the cabinet must be in place before he can implement anything at all. Then you have to look into the rules of procedure of the Federal Government. It contains information about the distribution of portfolios and the independence of those portfolios. This 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 portfolios in the classical sense, but are Secretaries of State, just as was the case in the old Imperial Constitution, where we also didn't have a foreign minister, but a State Secretary who ran the Foreign Office. In retrospect, people often write he was Foreign Minister, but that was never the case. So, well, these are, let's say, beginner's mistakes that happen out of the exuberance of a man coming from business back into politics , who perhaps thought for a moment that the Chancellor is something like the CEO of a large company. Yes. Now perhaps we want to talk a little bit more about what this election result, but also what certain developments, give us in terms of an understanding of democracy. What was also quite interesting was that a great success of the AfD was mobilizing many non-voters with stated campaign promises that, in part, are actually supposed to abolish institutions of democracy, such as the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, um, uh, certain facilities—so, basically, abolishing democracy by means of democracy. Um, you have already cited Alexis de Tocqueville several times in the last few days in this regard, who, in the 19th century, when he looked at American democracy, actually spoke of the tyranny of the majority, that this is what actually results when one engages in this form of, so to speak, will-formation. Is that it? Would you already consider this democracy, or is this democracy to you, that we now have , well, not an absolute, but a majority there, that we actually have a great many people who were suddenly enthusiastic about the idea of going to a free election, which they didn't do before? Well, those are all signs of democracy. Well, Tocqueville comes to the USA as a French aristocrat, naturally with the trauma of the Revolution of '89 and following, and examines there how what didn't work in France actually functions. Namely, after 5 or 6 years, it becomes increasingly, uh, yes, Bonapartist in tone, reshaped, and then the First Consul of the Republic is Napoleon Bonaparte. Uh, and then he is the Emperor. And actually, the French did not manage to establish anything like a lasting republic. They only managed that, uh, well, after the fall of Napoleon III, so the nephew. But that was a fall that was achieved, so to speak, by German weapons at Metz and Sedan, not the fall of the third Napoleon. For a long time, a stable republic. So and with this experience, Tocqueville travels to the USA and comes to the conclusion. The Founding Fathers gave thought to how they could prevent the tyranny of the majority. This is the specter haunting the bourgeoisie and certainly the aristocracy as well, namely that the lower classes, who numerically make up the majority, will in principle turn the property order and everything associated with it upside down, um, and say: "What is yours is now mine or is common property," and such, as one could observe in part during the Jacobin rule under Robespierre and the like. And then he notes: Well, the USA has taken precautions against this, and those are the so-called checks and balances, yes, so to speak, the system of balancing different opinions, protecting minorities, and much more. That is what I meant earlier when I said democratic constitutional state. So, on one hand, the element of democracy, that is, the will of the citizens, but what is attainable is limited by certain institutional and normative requirements. Institutionally through a representation system, um, yes, the judiciary, and much more. A judiciary that is not appointed from above, but rather elected from below, so to speak. That is a bit different in the USA than it is here. And, uh, at the same time, a legal restriction, in that one cannot simply say this ethnic group no longer has civil rights. Mhm. And after we have taken away their civil rights, we also take away their human rights or something like that. Yes. Now, had Tocqueville looked a bit more closely, he could naturally have seen that the treatment of the indigenous people, let's say the Indians in the USA, was, for a relatively long time and well into the 20th century, and not only theirs, but also that of Black people. One was, in the USA before the Civil War, there was an introduction of voting rights for women and and of course, yes, um, one could say the matter of women's suffrage was always a bit of a thing, because, uh, I mean, there is that joke in Frankfurt, right? That they are talking in the family about who decides what, and the wife says she is actually only responsible for the small things, like which wallpaper goes on the wall, what is cooked, and such, while her husband is responsible for the big things. And then he says as an example: "Whether we invade Cuba," or the like, yes. So, under these circumstances, one could say the influence of women was there beforehand, at least under domestic conditions, but it was certainly also the exclusion of a certain group. namely, white men with a certain income . It was initially restricted to them. That 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 regarding the acceptance of foreigners as Athenian citizens essentially ends, because the Demos now has an interest—since democracy distributes money, for instance, you get money for attending the theater as compensation for lost wages or something similar—in ensuring that not too many people join. That means the Demos has an interest in isolating itself rather than being open. Um, and the democratic constitutional state has actually tried to set limits to prevent the Demos from privileging itself. You could say that the more direct a democracy is, the longer the self-privileging of small groups has lasted. See Switzerland. Yes, I believe Appenzell was the last canton to grant women the right to vote. That was well into the second half of the 20th. Century. So, it is actually also a form of rule. Now, one thing: this protection mechanism—and this is where it gets interesting—is now being discussed, namely federal coercion. But what I am getting at is that you derived the idea that with the concept of democracy, the question of how to actually protect it also emerged. Protecting it even from the people themselves, even protecting it from the majority. Yes, from the majority. Is that the case? So , can one conclude that democracy is perhaps not actually desired by all, that it sometimes simply has to be enforced? We long held the idea, at least since '89, that democracy is a kind of Promised Land for the whole world, for all people on Earth. Um, a sign of this is that the aforementioned federal coercion law in Germany has never actually been applied. So, this case has never occurred. But I think we can let go of that idea, and now it is more about the question: is democracy something that perhaps must be partially enforced, something that is not necessarily desired by everyone? So democracy emerged as the will of the people, but also with a double bottom, so to speak, with protective mechanisms to ensure it can be maintained as a system. Mm-hmm. Well, that was practiced in the Weimar Republic, for instance, the Reich coercion against Thuringia, when a kind of red republic existed in Thuringia in '22/'23, as the idea still prevailed. Germany could have been a member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, as Lenin called the outfit from '22 on, and Lenin was also convinced that it wouldn't work without Germany because we were much further behind economically and technologically . Saxony and Thuringia didn't turn red based on majority results, but rather based on enforcement from within the factories and fighting in the streets. The Reichswehr marched in and ended that, and something similar also applied later in the Ruhr area. That means, what Article 37 of the Basic Law states—there are other articles where this appears, but 37 is the key—is something that was already considered in the Weimar Constitution. And that was, so to speak, a question regarding how the Republic wanted to distinguish itself from the Empire—the Empire that collapsed in 1918-19, which had been a federation of four kingdoms, which is why the Germans marched into the First World War with four armies: the Prussian, the Bavarian, the Saxon, and the Württemberg army. Yes, exactly . So, something that resulted from a balance of the monarchies that had emerged in principle from the Napoleonic era. And now, for the first time, you have the idea that, first, the newly founded Reichswehr is a national-level organization and not Prussian, Bavarian, and so on. And second: Administration is also being unified nationally. And under these circumstances, it was clear: We must limit individual states from going their own way or, so to speak, conducting their own foreign policy, which is Sahra Wagenknecht's dream— not in the question of relations with Russia, which you mentioned together with the AfD. Um and that is why, in a sense, this consideration from Hugo Preuß and his circle also found its way into the Herrenchiemsee assembly. Um, we have to include that, so that, in principle, no one goes rogue. There are also quite different ideas involved, such as the idea that the Rhineland—and Adenauer was always under the suspicion of being a Rhenish separatist who wanted to join forces with the French, which probably wasn't even true, but it was a rumor in the background—that one could prevent all of that, right? Or the idea that Bavaria might become independent again and, um, join with whoever, or say: we'll become the Napoleonic Bavaria, meaning Tyrol and South Tyrol belong to us and the like—the maintenance of national external borders; and so, there was also the concept of high treason. In principle, you could say that according to this notion, people like Bakenknecht and others should be charged with high treason and put on trial. Because it cannot be that, in a way, one group tries to take a country hostage to force a different foreign policy orientation than that of the nation as a whole. uh is. Now, we are not a unitary state in that sense, but a federal republic in which the states have relatively high powers, and that's why we accept it, right? But in genuinely centrally organized nation-states, it is a serious issue if someone were to try that. The French don't do that. I mean, Ms. Le Pen has no notion of using any departments where she has the majority to pursue a different foreign policy. That would be clear, they would be properly condemned, not just wearing an ankle monitor, but ending up in jail. Mhm. We might want to talk more about this zeitgeist and understanding, or try to understand if the zeitgeist has simply changed. In 2025, there was the Saxony-Anhalt Monitor, where many things were surveyed regarding democracy, representative democracy, how people feel about it, and one of the results was that while over 90%see themselves as democrats and 87% fundamentally support democracy, only 43.5%support democracy as it currently is. And there was, for example, a high level of support for a party system, or this idea—then it was specifically asked, do you want a strong, I don't want to say leader, do you want a strong personality, so to speak, where power converges on a single person, and many voted yes to that. Globally speaking, there is a study compiled in a book called "Age of the Strongman" that shows we are indeed living in a time where many people actually wish for a strong—and yes, actually just a man—who decides everything and can basically govern authoritatively. How do you explain something like that? Well, I think it is relatively easy to explain. You have to go to the root of two terms, namely fear and anxiety. Normally, we are sloppy with both words and use them as if they were interchangeable. But since the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard—and Sigmund Freud picked up on this—it has been clear that anxiety is something different from fear. Fear is object-related. Fear of, anxiety of— it's essentially a semantic error. Anxiety is a disposition. it looks for the objects in hindsight, saying, yes, this scares me and that scares me. That can be interchangeable. That can be, so to speak, so-called foreign infiltration, loss of cultural identity , national identity, whatever. And there, so to speak, if one examines the people of Saxony-Anhalt or parts of the German population in a long-term study, one can observe how what they say scares them is repeatedly exchanged or changes. Mm. People play this up, they play that up, and so on. Fear, therefore a disposition that in principle has a democracy-endangering character. Because when we are afraid, it is something that every one of us has probably experienced in our childhood, we flee into the security of mom, dad, family, uncle, whoever. Yes, so to speak, what represents a mixture of strength and empathy. Mhm. That means politics, parties in the center, for instance, are quite helpless in the face of fear. With fright, one can say, okay, what are you afraid of? Putin. Okay, then we have to do this and that and the other. And then there are still reasons to keep an eye on him, but we have the ability to deter him. Or, I don't know, you fear that you will lose your job, and then you talk about social cushioning and the mechanisms to possibly convert automobile plants into armaments factories or to do this and that and the other. That means that is a field in which politics can prove itself. And this this fear, as has been observed, occurred epidemically in waves in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period and in principle led to uprisings, to apocalyptic fears, and much more. And then they disappeared again. That has actually not been the case since the 19th. Century and that has to do with something that has replaced faith in God: belief in progress. I deliberately say belief in progress, and this belief in progress was something like an anxiety blockade or an anxiety blocker. And the tricky thing is the keyword zeitgeist, this belief in progress has, in the last 30 years, perhaps even longer, the Club of Rome was, so to speak, the first fundamental questioning of it. dissolved. So that, in a way, what blocked this epidemic spread of waves of fear, namely the idea—because you will all know this—that our children will be better off than we are. Yes, that it is no longer there like that, that we might be able to say it—my wife and I—for our children, but no longer for our grandchildren. Um, and this fundamental change in the "Geleck" (collective), Koselleck coined the term "horizon of expectation" for this. power is harder for democracy. So to speak, the mental guarantee of confidence in the efficiency or in the ability of democracy to generate order has disappeared with it. Mhm. And behavior of a panicky nature—using the term "panic" deliberately, which refers to Pan, the god who accompanied the wine god—leads to women, and not just women but especially women, going crazy in Greek cities when they come from the East and heading out in ecstatic processions to meet him, getting up to all sorts of mischief. Uh, we have, so to speak, contained that. It's not as significant here in Hamburg, but in the Rhineland, during Carnival, for example. There is a limited time of about 5 days or so where you can say the world is turned upside down. Maybe we should introduce that nationwide. Yes, that, uh, I would say is difficult for me, but you and your wife—since you just pointed to her yourself, and she is here tonight, welcome—already wrote a wonderful book back in 2017 writing against this, so to speak, talk of decline. Now, of course, we are in a time after Corona, after the war of aggression in Ukraine, after the war in Iran, with rising, um, prices, growing inflation, um, do you still see it as purely a narrative constructed so that people are afraid, so that these populist ideas can really take root? It is certainly true that it is a narrative, decline, to manage certain fears. But it is also true that the experience from the time after the Second World War—well, I was born in '51, but I still caught a bit of that. At the end of the 50s, my colleague Kelpler, an economic historian at the university, said that America was coming back into view. When I look at my own family, yes , the car came into the house, the refrigerator came, and things like that . Something fundamentally changed and there was something like a collective ascent, like an elevator, an escalator, so to speak. No matter which social group you belonged to, the entire republic moved upward, and sometimes you didn't even have to do much individually. That's how it was and it was that way for a relatively long time . Mhm. And then came a time when there was a differentiation, in the sense that there were also individual descents, and real ones at that. And not just because you were a factory owner who went bankrupt or something of the sort, but reaching into individual social groups. Well, the indicator for that is really the number of homeless people, who are constantly visible in the cityscapes of large cities. You can see it there. But there is still social mobility, though it's of an individual nature, right? You have to contribute something yourself for that. It doesn't work like an elevator anymore, where you just step in and it takes you to the top. The annoying thing is that it apparently doesn't work that well. Yes, otherwise the PISA study that came out these days would show different results . The expectation, so to speak, of having to do something for one's own social position—or let's put it more simply, being the architect of one's own fortune—and the willingness to take that on and create the necessary conditions, those are drifting apart, aren't they? And that is an experience that also has to do with politics, but not only with politics, also with societal expectations, carelessness, and such. März certainly had that in mind time and again with his appeals. You're working too little, we have to do this, we have to do that. Uh, the 35 -hour work week is over, we have to return to the 40-hour week, and he just communicated that miserably. Uh, in that sense, it literally backfired. So, he described the reality well there . I spoke with my father on election day, who fled Iran as an opposition member, and his first reaction was, of course, "Okay, maybe I have to leave the country I live in for a second time ." And the second thing he really said was that he didn't understand why people aren't fighting more for democracy. And then we talked about whether it perhaps has to be like it is, for example, currently in Iran or Russia. In China, it's hardly possible anymore anyway. So , whether the absence of democracy is what leads people to really risk everything they have—which you can actually say about Iran—that people risk their own lives, as shown this year, at the beginning of the year, to stand up for freedom and democracy. And my father now comes to the conclusion: why don't the Germans do that? It's not even dangerous for them to demonstrate or to speak their minds. Yes. Yes. It must apparently be so. So does it take the absence of democracy for people to actually stand up and say, "This is what I want, I'm betting everything on it, I want it"? One can put it even more pointedly. The experience of the dysfunctionality of authoritarian regimes is the prerequisite for a high yes, a willingness to stand up for democracy. Um, what happened in the GDR in '89 had surely less to do with a longing for freedom than with the feeling that we were falling behind economically. Mm. It was a subsidized shop anyway. Um, the standard of living in the GDR was significantly higher than in all other Eastern Bloc countries, including the Soviet Union. That, however, had something to do with the generosity of the old Federal Republic, namely Franz Josef Strauss and the billion-mark loan and many others as well, so that the share of foreign debt kept rising higher and higher. Mhm. And uh everything okay? That was Franz Josef Strauss and eventually that keyword and even and eventually my mic goes out . No, it's working. Thanks just in case. Um, and eventually the GDR's foreign debt became so high that it was essentially no longer sustainable, and that was something you could feel. In short, Honecker's concept of the joys of socialism or the socialist welfare state had failed; it was no longer financeable given the low productivity, the constant embezzlement , and everything that went with it. But the narrative was that we brought this regime down for the sake of freedom. But that was at most a tenth of the population that was out on the streets, and it was able to prevail because the National People's Army and the People's Police and everything else running around in the GDR, after Gorbachev's announcement—every country goes its own way and, so to speak, you can't rely on us to keep socialist parties in power like in '53 or '56 in Hungary— the bosses were afraid. that they might give orders to shoot and then they would be left standing there alone. Uh, or that the proletariat of the army, so to speak, the simple soldiers, would turn their Kalashnikovs around and shoot at them, or that they would be arrested and prosecuted, or whatever. That's why there was a sudden disappearance of the entire upper level, the political level and the military leadership, who were basically no longer reachable, who didn't answer their phones on the crucial night, so that someone with the rank of lieutenant colonel at the border crossings had to decide to open them and, in a sense, pull the plug on the GDR. So, that, that was not reflected in the narrative. Yes, the narrative captured the pride of the Leipzig Monday demonstrations and everywhere else. Bautzen is there too. Yes. And uh, even the Dresdeners, who were always more harmless than the Leipzigers, and eventually even the Berliners noticed and held their demonstration. Uh, and the idea that they toppled the state. Mm. Yes, that has led to this narrative, " we are the people," now being reversible or susceptible to right-wing populism. So, in a manner of speaking, this peculiar game that Mr. Sigmund and others are playing, by driving around on these odd mopeds that no one wanted anymore—even though they could have had real vehicles—or some still maintaining their Trabant with a GDR sticker or something similar. um uh, that the economic crisis, that this welfare state, yes, that took care of everything, the unity of economic and social policy, as Honecker’s formula went, is forgotten and they have this notion. First, everything was cheaper and better back then. The state was a great mother uh that took care of us, that provided for us. First, and second, we were the ones who made the revolution. We are the people, and we are doing it again now. Mm. Uh, and sweeping the regime away. That is something like a syndrome. Um, I wouldn't even call it zeitgeist, or at best zeitgeist in quotation marks. Such a syndrome, um, but one that is so armored that you actually cannot enlighten it about itself. Yes, so like the futility of trying to bring factuality into play against fictionality with die-hard AfD supporters, that is something one experiences constantly. Yes, so we have this observation of yours that people perhaps don't want to live as self-determinedly as we always, uh, so to speak, um, assume they do, I'd say. I find this question about a one-party system in the Saxony-Anhalt monitor interesting again, specifically against the backdrop that we see overall that party membership numbers are going down, that engagement in parties is going down, but it's not the case that people are less political in that sense. Yes, so, uh, there are a lot of demonstrations, there is a lot of protest, there is a lot of debate, discussion. One has the feeling that people are actually more politicized than ever. Um, even if it isn't the debate culture we might wish for, people are certainly very, I'll say now , engaged, um, in many respects. You may like it or not, what the Monday, uh , walkers back then wanted, but it's not that people aren't involved at all, but they don't do it in things like a party anymore, for example. Have you ever indulged in the thought experiment of whether there is a democracy, but perhaps organized differently than the one we have now? And you have also already, uh, studied this, other forms of coexistence, uh, that actually go back further than what we always, so to speak, see as the model after the Second World War. This is what democracy looks like. Yes. Uh, quite possibly. M So, in a sense, since I had to teach political theory, as you’ve heard, this was always part of the field I had to teach, where I held seminars, and so on. And was there anything promising? Pardon? Was there anything promising that you would say—I want to I want to stop right there. The party democracy is in crisis. It’s not as if membership numbers are falling for all parties; those of The Left and the Greens are relatively stable, and the AfD has grown. The classic people's parties, or let’s say the Federal Republic's " Black-Red-Gold" coalition—that is, the CDU, SPD, and FDP. The FDP is practically gone; it doesn’t really exist anymore. That is a problem of their own politics and their own personnel, but for the others, you can say that membership has halved since 1990. Mhm. That means the willingness to get involved in these parties has declined continuously. These are the classic parties of compromise, yes, as opposed to a community of values like The Left, which follows a clear line, or...Well, the Greens are a bit more complicated, but they have a relatively consistent ecological bias, and they are much better at keeping people on board. What is emerging now is what we call voter volatility. There are no longer any fixed party loyalties, which is why predicting election results has become more difficult. And uh...Then the media system has changed. My wife once used the term "platform democracy" instead of party democracy. Meaning, the idea that we conduct democracy on the computer. Mhm. E-democracy is what it’s often called. So, you’re online all the time, then some questions pop up, and a harmless plebiscite is held, something we’ve seen before from rather peculiar outlets. Yes, from the Bild newspaper to various platforms, people would vote on whether they were for or against something, and that was then sold as representative. Um, that was a dream for some, which reached its peak during the time of internet exuberance and high expectations. But we now know it’s all controlled by algorithms, and there are powerful people in the background ensuring that these messages stay on top and pop up while others don't even become visible. Um, power has shifted. Mhm. You can see it quite clearly with Brexit or the elections in the USA, where personalized messages were sent to people, and so on. And so on. The parties cannot compete with that. And that has a major disadvantage, for the parties were, at least for the active party members, something like places for training judgment, um, where discussions were held within a manageable circle. If you do this, it has these advantages, but it has those disadvantages, and should you do it then, and so on and so forth. That means the sense for compromises, for tactical decisions, for strategic decisions was trained there, and one was correspondingly sensitive. That, of course, doesn't take place at all on the net; rather, you move within your own bubble, and that's that. That is certainly a media-driven change in the environment that is of a fundamental nature and that at least changes, if not calls into question, the foundations of democracy. As far as the question of the other form of democracy is concerned, a while ago, because Hannes Androsch asked me to, he was, so to speak, the only billionaire I was on first-name terms with, I couldn't refuse that request. I wrote a small book about democracy or the pull of democracy. In it, I was very skeptical about the plebiscitary model, because the plebiscitary model is not plural-mediated, but rather, so to speak, "the winner takes it all." Mhm. Um, and yes, when I was still doing teacher training in Frankfurt, I liked to ask this as an exam question: when in German history were there actually the most plebiscites? They were guaranteed to be wrong with their answer, namely in the Nazi era. Um, it is also an instrument, in principle, for a charismatic figure at the top, i.e., the Führer, or for decisions already taken and much more, to give them a democratic foundation, a sham participation of the... Yes, those were all results with at least 95% "yes" votes and so on. So the consideration is, what would it actually be like if we took the idea of equality seriously for once? And that means that certain committees are not filled by election, but by a random generator. Mhm. So, with the roll of a die. It can hit anyone. And I learned that in Switzerland, there is something like compulsory office. That means if the lot has fallen to you, then you must take on this task. That has the charm that quite a few loudmouths suddenly become much quieter, because it could happen that they suddenly have to participate in decisions at the local level and are then asked, "How did you decide there, and why did you decide that way?" Right. And if this compulsion exists, then you will think about it beforehand, what kind of...So, essentially the question is quite simple: a kindergarten or a nursing home, where there's only enough money for one. Then you have to decide, and then you have to stand by that decision and so on. Um, that means taking the idea of the people governing themselves seriously. I would never apply that as a general form, but at the local level, where democracy can be experienced, where we actually "do" democracy, where we can observe how things go from the initial thought to the possible implementation of the project. Um, there one could consider such a thing. Well, that has been taken up in so-called citizens 'assemblies, but unfortunately just like that you don't really hear anything about it anymore completely pointless. Yes, well, holding a citizens' assembly on nutritional issues or something like that makes little sense, because those are questions that are ultimately evaluated by experts anyway; instead, you really have to focus on making it a "make or break" decision. And that is sensibly possible in such local political issues. And if enough people have lived in hope and fear that they could actually meet, then that is a promotion of sound judgment, or at least a willingness to judge and engage , so the dissolution of these silos that have formed, and you said earlier, yes, but the AfD mobilized a lot of non-voters. Sure, those were the eternal loafers, complainers, grumblers , "everything sucks anyway." Um, who in that situation said, "today we'll go vote and show those people at the top" and whatever else. Um, you have to keep them in mind too. In my field, it was said for a relatively long time that low voter turnout—referring primarily to US political scientists—is an expression of satisfaction. Because if they were dissatisfied, they would probably go vote. Yes, that's what's currently being called a "protest vote" in a way, exactly, exactly, referred to as such. But that was, of course, a misjudgment. Um, democracy in Germany was at its most vital when voter turnout was relatively high. In my political socialization, that was naturally the Willy Brandt elections of the late 60s and early 70s. Um, in which it was about real issues, such as the question of Eastern policy and much more, or Willy Brandt’s phrase: "We want to dare more democracy." Well, the former emigrant Brandt knew that democracy is a venture. Yes, it's often quoted like that: "We want to dare more democracy." Yes, it gets hung out there, so to speak. Yes, he is aware that the end of the Weimar Republic was an end on a democratic basis. Yes, well, it is a risk to commit to democracy, and democracy must, in a way, be constantly reaffirmed and worked for. In that respect, it is perhaps the most strenuous and demanding form of government that exists. And the desire for order in a certain sense, or a single party, that is, in a way, the desire for a lack of worry. Yes, but in a democracy, there is, in that sense, no right to a lack of worry. Um, and when authoritarians say, yes, there is a right to be carefree, you don't have to worry about anything. The leader will take care of it all. Yes, like that. Um, then you see afterward what comes of that. Um, the Russians will see that sometime soon. The Germans saw that after '45, and then there is something that one should really never have let them get away with, that statement. Yes, that’s not what we wanted. Mhm. Yes, that is in principle the admission that we are overwhelmed by democracy because we didn't want it at all. We wanted something completely different. That means, in short, we didn't think for ourselves, but rather gave in to certain preferences, moods, and the like, as we increasingly shifted from the centrist parties to the NPD and the NSDAP. One really has to think about that again. Um, but how, do you know of good methods to bring home to people, so to speak, that , yes, it is work. Um, don't believe anyone who tries to convince you that they will take away all your worries; get involved. I mean, one does want to despair sometimes. I mean, on the ride here, I asked myself a little bit, what is the point of continuing to talk about this, because actually, we know everything; we do know everything. Yes, that’s why that joke I told earlier about that Frankfurt family, right, where the wife makes the small decisions, like how the apartment is wallpapered and what is cooked, and the husband makes the big decisions, like whether we invade Cuba or something like that, yes, it's quite helpful. The wife decides from now on. No, I would say democracy becomes tangible at the local level, in a manageable space. Um, at the national level. Those are, um, we are often dealing with processes there that one must think about for a very long time. You have to know a great deal to make wise decisions. I could give you X examples now of how difficult it is to act in those areas. But the local level has the great advantage of being manageable. Mm. Yes, from the first thought to the building inauguration or something like that. Um, that is why democracy must be practiced excessively here. And if something goes wrong, then it is a learning process, and you can usually afford that, uh, because it only has a limited reach, so to speak, in terms of what happens. And through that, something like a sense of political responsibility emerges. Mm. Which is anything but a matter of course. I mean, these non-voters who go to the polls once, yes, what kind of form of political re-of political responsibility is that, in a way, to go vote once just to vent, to put it clearly. Yeah, not at all. Yes. And then they come here and say that is democracy. Nope, that’s all I can say to that. Much too simplistic. Last place. Yes, that’s that’s great, because then I probably have to change the narrative of where democracy actually takes place, because in this great survey, um, people in Saxony-Anhalt, for example, perceived their own state parliament very positively. Also institutions like the police were actually rated positively. So, the experience of democracy there is obviously very positive. Now we unfortunately only have 10 minutes left , which is why I would like to open the floor for questions, even though it could of course go on forever. And now the question is, are there are there questions back there? Go ahead, the lady right in the middle. Yes, well you put forward the thesis at the beginning that the culture of remembrance in the FRG was better than in the GDR. And I was born in the GDR, and I experienced that in elementary school, which was still in the GDR era, fascism and anti-fascism were topics every week, and um, in the FRG during my entire time in high school, not once. And that is why I do not see it as a GDR problem and the culture of remembrance, but as a failure of the West German um systems . Especially in education and culture. Where did you go to school? At a gymnasium in Thuringia, on the border to Saxony-Anhalt. Well, so to speak, it was then, to a certain extent, the Federal Republic that was exercising there with GDR teachers. Well, the GDR teachers were left in the lurch, so to speak, by federal politics, because they received old textbooks from the 80s for history and political science that no longer reflected reality at all. There was no financial provision by federal politics 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 its education policy vote much less for, um, the right-wing. So, those over 70 are only at 31%, while the 35-to 59-year-olds vote 52% for the AfD. These are not the people who were socialized in the GDR's education system at all. Thank you. We understood the question. Go ahead. You Yes, I would say you named the problem yourself. You 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 generally do not talk about racism. We don't talk about exclusion, but rather we talk about capital and labor. That was, so to speak, a connection to Dimitrov: fascism as the highest stage of capitalism. The basic view of the GDR. That means they didn't really deal with the specificity of National Socialism at all. They learned something, so to speak, that they incorporated into the history of class struggle with the corresponding self-confidence. We are, after all, as the GDR, the victors of history. That is a term that was, let's say, emblematic of their self-image. And therefore, there is also no engagement with what exclusion actually means. Mhm . Um, what does the dissolution of the state monopoly on the use of force mean ? The appearance of gangs of thugs, which was already the case before '33, and much else besides. And you can't debunk that by saying, well, the very old who might have experienced the Nazi era directly or in its direct effects are more immunized than those who only had it taught to them in school. One could say the school just taught it very poorly and didn't make an effort. Um, and the thesis between the Federal Republic's engagement with National Socialism, which certainly wasn't 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 contrast that now with Lower Saxony and the 48.3 or so. 48.8. Hm. Yes. 48.3. in Saxony-Anhalt. But one also has to say, of course, that in Saxony-Anhalt, the most dynamic elements of society probably left. They aren't there anymore. They are in Baden-Württemberg or in Bavaria or in Hesse or in Lower Saxony or wherever. These are these are the the well-educated women. We should perhaps briefly just see if we can manage two more questions, because there are very many questions. The gentleman here in front, please. Mr. Münkler, how optimistic or pessimistic are you regarding the question of whether your most important insights will at least reach enough people in time? Well, if I were pessimistic, I wouldn't have come here. I would have said it's pointless anyway . Um, I'm not optimistic either, though ; rather, I tell myself what I’ve generally said: confidence must be earned anew every single day. Um, optimism is also a form of somewhat lazy thinking, because you think, so to speak, that everything will turn out fine. Um, I am not convinced that everything will turn out fine; instead, it will depend on us, on every single one of us, whether things work and turn out well, or whether we descend into a series of new catastrophes. Mhm. We have another question back here . The lady in the last row with the long braid. Thank you. Um, my name is Eriike Docker and I’m with More Democracy in Hamburg, and you’ve expressed several times this evening how critically you view referendums or plebiscites. It sounded a bit like the citizen is too stupid to decide on things. Um, my question would be whether you only see it that way for referendums from above, so to speak, or whether you also find direct democracy—like citizens ' initiatives—critical, as is possible in Hamburg and has been practiced for 30 years. And, uh, the other thing is whether you think the decisions made by representative officials are so much smarter and more effective than the results of citizens' initiatives. Mhm. Well, I don’t have anything against citizens 'initiatives in principle, even if I like to say that I don't like the word "people" in that context. Um, if they are called citizens' initiatives, I find that more agreeable, because the term "the people " already asserts a totalitarian claim, so to speak. As a political scientist, I must 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 votes on a European constitutional treaty in France and the Netherlands, where they didn't even grasp the issue of a European constitution, but instead used it as a protest vote against their respective governments. That is often the case. And when you list the history of plebiscites and analyze them, it’s not a strong argument for plebiscites. It’s a different matter in Switzerland, where people are constantly called upon, but there, the referendum acts, so to speak, as a balance to the fact that the Swiss have a concordance system. That means that all parties elected to the Federal Council are also represented in the government. Yes, the grand coalition, so to speak. And in that respect, it is a completely different system, where, however, very low voter turnout can sometimes be observed, meaning the quorum isn't met and it fails. We have a son who lives in Switzerland, and he once showed me the books you get with arguments for and against in such referendums. Um, and I would say, yes, that is indeed an engagement with the goal of developing political judgment. That is the deliberative process expected of the individual before the final decision. So, that costs a relatively large amount of time and relies on a habit, on a custom of participating. And if you aren't able to engage with it, you don't go to vote , because in principle you have no well-founded opinion on it. Switzerland can afford such things, uh, due to its small size. The fact that it is virtually not represented in international politics, and so on and so forth. Um, in Germany, such plebiscites are not conceivable in that way, or one would basically need a period of 30 years to get people used to the idea that plebiscites are not places for protest votes, but really delicate decisions. Whether one can afford that, 30 years, and whether we have the time for it, that is another question. I would say, in Berlin, there was a vote on the question of expropriating the large housing corporations. Um, something that is now back to what is now potentially coming into play again after Sunday. But if you try to implement this plebiscite, you won't get a single additional apartment; instead, you will solidify and manage the shortage. And the result will be that allocation offices, which would then have to be created, would basically decide whether someone gets an apartment or not. So, basically, GDR-like conditions. Whether that is desirable is the question, or if it makes more sense to say, yes, those were stupid politicians who sold the existing municipal or state-owned apartments to, uh, Deutsche Wohnen and, uh, whoever else was hanging around, just to balance the budget because they were too weak. to push through the corresponding cuts. Yes. So. Um, but to say in hindsight, we'll, we'll buy it back now from these companies, presumably at double the price. Um, in any case, everyone who knows anything about it says they will be paying double the price. Well, there is, so to speak, over 20 years, a certain inflation rate, uh, included and so on and so forth. But in principle, it overstrains the capacity of the State of Berlin to act. Mhm. In that respect, I would say this is also no ringing endorsement for the wisdom of plebiscites. So, I see this dispassionately, as someone who evaluates the history of plebiscites and what one can observe, and arrives at a conclusion. But perhaps, in conclusion, we have— as you mentioned yourself—elections coming up this Sunday in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Yes, where other topics are likely more at the forefront. Um, what would you say? Let's assume the elections turn out there as the current forecasts suggest. The AfD will be quite strong, but they won't have that landslide victory like in Saxony-Anhalt. Do you see it as a danger, for instance, that this is taken as a reason to stop talking about the state of democracy and the difficulties that exist? Oh, the election in Berlin will certainly turn out in a way that we will have to talk about democracy again , because it is an election result that leaves room for many interpretations and forming a government will be difficult enough. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, it’s a different story; if Ms. Schwesig actually succeeds in crossing the finish line ahead of the AfD with her battered Social Democracy, which the polls are currently suggesting, which could be the case, then that is a dent in the AfD's upward momentum, and such dents are not uninteresting. The NSDAP, by the way, had those in the last Reichstag elections as well. Many had already believed that they were going downhill. Then the last cabinet finally collapsed, and Hindenburg was quite relieved that he, in principle, had a majority in the Reichstag again with this government, whose Reich Chancellor would then be Hitler. Yes, in a sense, no minority government ruling by emergency decree, but the old man—who was certainly no democrat— had the feeling he was acting within the framework of the constitutional structure. Um, one might have perhaps, if one had held out, been able to see how the NSDAP, after this dent, would have gradually lost the fascination associated with it. We cannot trace that. Yes, natural scientists can run their experiments over and over. Social scientists, thank God, cannot turn back time and let the years 32 and 33 play out again under changed conditions to observe how it would turn out then. Um, that’s why we are left with comparisons and thought experiments. And the thought experiment says, if there is such a setback and Ms. Weidel then has to appear much more subdued— well, she'll spin it to her favor, um, but has to appear much more subdued— uh, then that is also something through which parties could lose their appeal. You know that as Hamburgers, when Schill with the Schill Party didn't, so to speak, go up, and at some point the setback came and eventually he was gone and then only appeared as a nude model in Brazil. Yes. Um, whether Ms. Weidel is suited for that, I don't know. On that note, on that note I thank you very much for this wonderful evening. Yes, many thanks for the great discussion. Many thanks to you all. As always, we would be pleased if you would stay with us a moment in the foyer and continue discussing everything we heard today. And we look forward to the next event together. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Yes. Yeah.