[Skybird]

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At the Christmas market we see the true reality of life for many Germans

If you are looking for the reasons for the alienation between politics and the population, for the increasing political apathy of large sections of society and thus also for the high proportion of non-voters, you can ask sociologists or read the dispatches of the pollsters.

But it would always be more promising to start looking for clues directly at the source, i.e. among the people themselves. For example, with people like Oliver Börner from the Eifel, a person unknown to me, who shared his view of the world with me this week:


We should not exclude that the Christmas market of Ochtendung is more representative for our country than the German Bundestag. In our mind's eye we see the festively decorated Christmas trees, the mulled wine stand and the charcoal grill. In reality, however, we are looking into the soul of the cultural and economic center of the country.

In places like Ochtendung, people don't want to save the world, but their own normality. People's favorite vocabulary is not Breakthrough Innovation, but Gemütlichkeit. This "inner life district of man," as Sebastian Haffner once put it, is defended by passive resistance against the hostilities of modernity. Here, people want prosperity and an after-work beer, not revolution and socialism.

In these cathedrals of normality, people don't dream of car sharing, but of carports. One does not fight against soil sealing, but for a plot in the new development area. One has nothing against binary personalities, but unfortunately one does not know them at all. One has here nothing against the call of the Greens for an extension of the public local traffic. Only one would like that apart from slogans also now and then a bus comes by.

It is not the construction of the new Federal Chancellery per se that is disturbing, but the simultaneity of new construction in Berlin and the closure of the library, swimming pool and savings bank in one's own town. In the past, the state built village community centers; today it builds homes for asylum seekers.

Given the choice between another evening at the Schwenkgrill or an identity politics lesson from Ricarda Lang, the majority of people in Germany would know how to decide. In places like Ochtendung, Winnetou is still an Indian and not a representative of an indigenous tribe. Here, people expect our national soccer team to hit the goal, not the note first.

And the youthful part of Ochtendung will presumably not gender at the Christmas market, but dance, drink and flirt. One feels part of a new, not the last generation. One hangs on to habits, but does not stick to the street.

One does not want to do without here, but travel. Of course, you would also like to save the world, but getting to know it first wouldn't be bad either. Because one suspects that behind the place name sign of Ochtendung there is a colorful, a crazy variety of countries and peoples to discover.

While young people are drawn to faraway places, politicians and capital city journalists should definitely travel in the opposite direction. Perhaps they will find in Ochtendung in the Eifel what they lost in Berlin many years ago: the political center.
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