Nora Bossong is a writer. Your new volume of essays “Also tomorrow. Political Texts ”will be published by Suhrkamp in June. She discussed the subject at Körber History Forum, which will take place digitally on May 18th and 19th
One of the first maps of Europe is an allegorical one: a woman in a flowing robe with the scepter and orb of power raised. Later than Queen of Europe known, the female continent made a career from the middle of the sixteenth century.
The center and the periphery are different here than they are today, and yet a western orientation is already emerging. Portugal, pushed to the edge on today’s maps of Europe, sits enthroned as a crown on top of Spain, a place of reason and eloquence. Sicily, advancing south into the Mediterranean, is the orb of the empire.
France forms the décolleté and the heart is, of all places !, in Braunschweig – in other depictions, however, in Bohemia, and this wandering of the heart clearly shows that geography also has to do with which ruler and which power perspectives one wanted and wants to please. Eastern Europe unfolds on the garment, under which the exact physiognomy cannot be recognized, but one can assume legs and feet. Now they may be useful for steadfastness, but they have always been given less importance than the heart and mind.
Europe’s history is told today from Brussels
During the Cold War, Queen Europe was like a sawed-up maiden who in the nineties – oh magic! – got out of her box again. But unlike in the circus, the traces of their division on our continent are still real today.
[Wenn Sie alle aktuellen Entwicklungen zur Coronavirus-Pandemie live auf Ihr Handy haben wollen, empfehlen wir Ihnen unsere App, die Sie hier für Apple- und Android-Geräte herunterladen können.]
It is still primarily the history of Western Europe that is told and heard from Brussels. In addition, economic differences are strikingly noticeable, of course also between Northern and Southern Europe, but the former violent division of Queen Europe between East and West still shows the deepest upheavals, in Germany you can even notice it in your own country.
The basic optimism with which the EU expansion to the east was at least apparently accompanied in the past has given way to a basic skepticism, as if one did not trust those who joined the democracy class late to catch up on all the learning material that the others have been plowing for decades.
This western dominance and arrogance is not exactly the glue that holds the countries within the EU together particularly well, and it is a little cheap to make France and Germany something like a core EU on the one hand on the other hand, to ask why Hungary and Poland are not so enthusiastic EU-Europeans.
The fear of marginalization makes populism flourish
This does not mean that a country inevitably fails as a democracy because it is on the periphery of the EU, whether this is understood geographically, economically or culturally. The “right” demagogues have to appear at the right time in order to promote illiberality and exploit the fear of marginalization, and of course the population has to be willing enough to resent.
Poland and Hungary are less at risk of being overlooked in the EU than Romania or Lithuania, for example, and yet they are the most advanced EU members on the way out of the rule of law. Conversely, we also have right-wing populism in the center, and in France the great success Marine Le Pens has already made her reach for the key to the Elysée Palace.
Nevertheless, the neglected treatment of the east of the European Union and the resulting fear of marginalization is a real problem and not just an invention of nationalists. They play an instrument that they found.
“The aversions of the periphery in relation to the center of the EU have what it takes to revive a legacy of history in these countries or to create anew: an ethnic nationalism that can be picked up by unscrupulous political actors and used to create a To secure power that no longer knows any contradiction ”, writes Agnes Heller in an essay on the phenomenon of Orbanism and the“ illiberal democracy ”enforced by Viktor Orban.
A boredom for democracy can be felt in the West
Growing resentment against liberalism and democracy are not just a legacy of the former Eastern Bloc countries. The West can grab a hold of its own nose here, or to take a picture of the Queen of Europe to stay, we should also check our hearts and kidneys, mouth and crown.
It surprises me again and again when I read reports or essays that are ten or fifteen years old and that do not give a damn about representative democracy. What went through as a power-critical dense description today seems more like an anti-institutional evocation, which seems inappropriate, if not unpleasant, at the latest since the AfD has been sitting in parliament and holding up the plenary processes with absurd pseudo-questions. The processes too slow, the consensus too easy, the federal minister too boring when questioning the federal government in plenary! So the lament.
It is essential to democracy that the public expresses criticism of those who make legislative and executive decisions and also questions whether the structures are still keeping up with the demands of the times, and it is also part of the fact that people are wrong, including those who who criticize and ask.
What frightens me, however, is a boredom with democracy that has not only crept in from the right. At least it seems to me that things were so good that they were willing to gamble away the democratic control functions that existed. Too much certainty, too much constant, one was oversaturated.
This feeling of fullness is different from an inadequately implemented systemic change on which Viktor Orbán is so successfully building. Nevertheless, the weary pull together. What is particularly striking is the naive self-confidence of Western Europe, which for a long time felt immune to anti-democratic tendencies and thus underestimated its own vulnerability. We have learned more about immunity in the past year than we would have liked, and so we know that only one resistant mutant has to come, and the whole herd immunity breaks down.
In Germany, the most threatening threats are a lax chancellor or an inexperienced chancellor
Of course, just a few months before the election, the Federal Republic is not about to take power by lateral thinkers or AfD. It either comes down to a lax CDU Chancellor or a Green Chancellor who is currently promoting herself in the sense of “I have little experience, so I stand for renewal” and camouflaging power politics with soap bubbles. It is obvious that this is not just a good recommendation; But then nobody has to be afraid of an ecological dictatorship in the federal bullerboard. So everything is easy?
That depends on how the balance of power within the EU changes in the medium and long term, and thus also the map that we are, almost five centuries after Queen of Europe, imagine of this continent. Germany certainly does not threaten to be marginalized in the EU.
For 16 years Merkel slept away all crises with a power nap
After Merkel, one can speculate that Germany’s strength and stability will decline a little, which could at the same time drive the necessary innovations in administration and society. Such processes do not happen overnight, and the effects may not even be seen in the next legislative period.
It’s about how the periphery and the center relate to each other
Nevertheless, one can already ask whether that would be more of an opportunity or a risk for the EU. The paradox is already visible: if Germany stumbles politically or economically, then the EU also wavers, and if it continues to be so strong, then under its weight many rifts threaten to deepen. The demand for “more responsibility” in Germany is both the result and camouflage of it.
In essence, it is about the question of how the periphery and the center relate to one another, namely on three levels. The middle one looks at the EU and its member states. At the regional level, it must be answered how big cities and provinces could reduce the excess of meaning of the urban lifestyle, which is often perceived as overwhelming.
At the global level, Europe threatens to become increasingly peripheral, even if people often pretend that it can simply be overlooked and what we do not see is not real either. Imagine it’s Eurocentrism and nobody takes it seriously anymore.
No other great power defends human rights so clearly
Is Europe today a queen among queens or a lonely woman in a torn dress? It is clear that if the EU project fails, Europe will have a past, but no future. The rules for the twenty-first century will determine countries like China, Russia, India, and the United States.
This prognosis is not new, surprisingly it does not seem to worry many in Europe. Some have withdrawn into a nationalism anyway and overlooked the fact that this is only going well because of the supranational EU and that its relative prosperity will then go out in installments. The others are suspicious of Europe’s strength for understandable historical reasons. The only problem with their position is that currently no other great power defends and can defend human rights, the rule of law and democracy as clearly as the EU.
Illiberal forms of government, oligarchic structures and rule-free state capitalism are in the starting blocks to send their offer of authoritarian relief to all those who feel frustrated and overwhelmed with freedom and responsibility. Everyone may decide for themselves which political map is more comfortable to live on.
–
