Serious. Passionate. Rigorous.
Behind the German passion for argument lies not so much hysteria as a traditional culture of democratic debate – By Mehmet Toprak
The nuclear disaster in Japan unleashed an intense debate in Germany about the future of energy provision – much to the astonishment of observers elsewhere, whose reaction might be summed up as: What is it with the Germans, anyway – are they neurotic or just smarter than us? Neither. They just hate risk and they love to examine all the options.
It is strange how disparate the reactions to Fukushima have been. The French barely raised an eyebrow and remain committed to nuclear energy. The US announced plans to review safety standards, but does not intend to close any of its nuclear power plants. Emerging countries like Brazil, Turkey or India happily continue to build new reactors.
As for Germany: Just three days after the first reports of problems in Fukushima, Chancellor Angela Merkel declared a three-month nuclear moratorium on plans to extend the operating lives of German reactors. Since then, the issue has hardly left the news.
Have the Germans become hysterical? No, they simply have a long tradition of addressing the issue of nuclear power – one that began prior to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Back then, of course, the debate was especially heated – but nuclear energy was a contentious issue long before that. It did not take a nuclear accident to alert Germans to the problems of generating power by splitting the atom.
In the mid-1970s there were protests against the construction of the nuclear power plant in Wyhl, in Baden-Württemberg. The issue there was not so much environmental concerns or radioactivity as suspicion towards the authorities. A lot of people saw nuclear power as a conspiracy between government and industry. They feared that the state wanted to curtail civil rights in order to protect risky advanced technology and the profits of the nuclear lobby.
The German nuclear power debate was the breeding ground for a successful new political party: the Greens. They eventually entered government with the Social Democrats in 1998, and in June 2000 the Red-Green coalition legislated to phase out nuclear energy. But that was far from the end of the German nuclear debate.
In September 2009, Merkel became chancellor at the head of a coalition of her Christian Democratic Union and the smaller, pro-business Free Democratic Party. Just months before Fukushima, her government granted generous extensions to the operating lives of German nuclear plants. Critics accused the government of a backroom deal with nuclear industry executives, an impression some members of the coalition did little to dispel by hinting that the door could be open to long-term rehabilitation of nuclear power in Germany.
But in the immediate aftermath of Fukushima, Merkel executed a U-turn that left even insiders speechless. Suddenly her center-right government is also intent on a future without reactors. Inevitably, the nuclear debate is starting all over again. But this time it has reached a new stage, where the question is not how long the reactors have to run, but how long it will take Germany to be able to fulfill its needs with clean energy.
All of a sudden the Germans are debating furiously again – about the necessity of new power lines or whether the price of electricity will rise. All the options are on the table. And it’s not just nuclear power: The financial crisis, military involvement in Afghanistan, juvenile delinquency, education, welfare, the health system, violent computer games – you name it, the media chat shows and online forums are discussing it.
Of course, it all comes with the usual unappealing side effects. German debating style wouldn’t be what it is without an army of opinionated know-it-alls and statistics fetishists. A quick comparison of comments on CNN.com with those on Spiegel Online reveals that posts on the German news site are longer. The Germans tend to haggle over facts, figures and arguments, whereas the Americans love short, snappy jibes and extreme sarcasm.
Rigor on the debating front is linked to another national trait: Germans hate risk and surprises, which is why the country is the most heavily insured in Europe. Here you can cover yourself against every conceivable danger. If you’re not keen on unresolved questions, you can always eliminate them by thinking them through to the end and discussing them to death. And that is, in a nutshell, the German way of problem solving, whether the issue is nuclear energy or the war in Afghanistan.
There are cultures that behave differently, where people inject less passion into planning and debating – while on the other hand being good at spontaneous correction and improvisation. See southern Europe. Then there are those who possess greater composure, as in Japan. Both are, to a certain degree, alien to Germans.
Despite this the Germans are critical of their own passion for discussion. They are, after all, champions at viewing themselves through others’ perceptions. This generally ends in self-criticism: we do not have the deadpan humour of the British or the savoir-vivre of the French; are not as spontaneous as the Italians, or as pragmatic and unbureaucratic as the Americans.
But even if the Germans are never going to be as cool as their allies and neighbors: their passion for discussion does have its positive aspects. This is evident in the current debate about the future of nuclear power. It is, incidentally, good for different cultures to have different approaches to challenges. Diversity is healthy. And Germany is part of that.