No Way Back. Why I still am a Convinced European.

November 7th, 2011 • 6 comments Politics
Tags: Amsterdam, Europe, Germany, personal, Politics

I spent my last weekend in England where one of my best friends celebrated his wedding. My friend is German (as I am) and he married his English girlfriend. While spending the weekend with my friends I had an interesting conversation with one of his English friends about Germany’s role in the European bailout process. He told me what other Brits had told me before: They expressed compassion for all the money that specifically Germany has to stake now (the last bail out sum was EUR 211 bn) to save the EU – while the UK’s share as a traditionally Euro-sceptic nation is much lower.

Upon returning to Amsterdam my girlfriend and I got to know five young Italians at Schiphol airport who needed support to find the right train to get to the city center. They were tourists and asked a lot of questions about living in Amsterdam and our reasons for moving here. And at one point one of them asked us: “How do you like Italy?’

It is difficult to answer something reasonable when being asked something like that. But I quickly realized what this young guy from Turin actually wanted to know. He wanted to find out about our German perception of the weak econonomic situation that Italy finds itself in these days. His personal explanation of the current Italo-German relations sounded almost exactly like this: “Italians like to live – they enjoy long lunch breaks but nobody really works. Germans on the other hand are ambitious and they have a good working attitude which is why Germany is the richest country in Europe nowadays. And they wanted to push the EU further so they can help out.”

No doubt, I had to disagree. I have heard similar stereotypes before. But neither is there an economic German success gene nor is there something like inexhaustible money well in Germany. Just 10 years ago Germany was considered as the Sick Man of Europe. To quote an article from 2002:

The German economy’s underperformance is a result of an economic structure built on social consensus rather than market forces. The Weimar republic and the following Nazi era led to Germans attaching a very high premium on domestic stability. (…) The structural rigidity of the German economy has meant that it could not react quickly and nimbly to changing circumstances. (…) Occasionally the FDP (Germany’s liberal party) might mumble something that would be a step in the right direction, but aside from their self-inflicted implosion, they would in any case not be a major force.

A decade later and FDP – aka the only German party that gets it – is on the brink of disintegration. Europe’s market squares have become camp sites for OccupyWallstreet protesters, even Harvard’s Business Review asks ‘Was Marx right?,’ and Germany has miraculously become Europe’s fit man. This is not the result of the aspirational German working attitude. It is the result of something completely else.

That’s why I had to contradict the young Italian guy from the train: What is happening right now has nothing to do with Germans being ambitious and Italians (or Greeks, or Portugese, …) being lazy. It has got something to do with a clear Political agenda of economic reforms that Germany conducted in the mid-2000s. Many Germans had to accept extreme cuts and much lower levels of social grants than before (oh…and it cost our former Chancellor Schroeder his job – but that’s a different story). Just pretending that this is a mix of good luck and the right attitude is simply not true.

The result was a stronger economic climate as you can see in the following diagram which shows the German unemployment rate since the reunification.

In fact: this wealth was paid for by many Germans since the mid 2000s – and luckily it paid off. But we are not talking about money that was heaven-sent.

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Digital Conferences. Let’s create a list of the top Events in Europe.

Juni 24th, 2010 • Underway
Tags: Collaborative, Conferences, Europe, google wave, Ideas, Underway

I am currently in the process to find out which digital/tech/marketing conferences I would like to attend 2010 and 2011. And as I will never know as much as all of you, I decided to outsource this question to a Wave. In fact, this is my first try to create a list with a public google Wave in my blog. Please feel free to add all conferences that you endorse. Preferrably in Europe.

Warning: google Wave is a great collaborative platform but not exactly usable. To edit the list please click the little arrow in the top right hand corner of the box below and select enter…and you are ready to go.

Thanks a lot for participating.

Awesome. I am about to become European.

Juni 12th, 2010 • 6 comments Allgemein
Tags: Europe, Experimental, Germany, Underway, World

Over the last couple of weeks I once again found out why it is cool to be European.

As you might know I have moved from Frankfurt, Germany, to Amsterdam, the Netherlands to start my new job at Blast Radius. One week before my move I travelled to Madrid to hold a lecture at IED – Istituto Europeo di Design about the social revolution that is still in progress.

Yes, I am both, pretty excited and exhausted. But no matter what is going to happen, it is a privilege to get to know so many new people and find out about different cultural perspectives that I did not have by now. Becoming an expat in a city such as Amsterdam is a great thing. And my new agency offers a lot to ease the repatriation pain. But unfortunately too few Dutch colleagues. I will have to practice Dutch on the streets of Amsterdam. Since pretty much everyone around me comes from a different part of the world.

So why am I happy to be European?

Simply because right at the moment my own knowledge is challenged culturally as a European. Living in a more culturally open environment such as Amsterdam made me realize that the rest of Europe really is more into that web-thing than Germany (sorry, that is the truth). A trip to Spain made me understand that young Spaniards are some of the most social savvy people I have met so far. Nevertheless their generation struggles with the state’s high debts, unemployment and a painful depression. Something my country of origin, Germany, did not have to suffer from in that intensity.

Europe is a continent with many similar countries. But they are far from being identical. And that indeed is something which is nothing but a strength. I am now learning a similar language to Dutch and interact continuously with Europeans and non-Europeans who part of the new worldwide nation that is Expatria.

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