STERN HOUR: Habeck and Zeh discuss a divided Germany

Monday evening, 7 p.m star celebrates its 75th birthday with a STERN HOUR. Gregor Peter Schmitz, editor-in-chief of the star, the Green Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck and bestselling author Juli Zeh. Topics of the evening: a divided Germany and the challenges for the traffic light coalition. “How much change can our society tolerate and what else can one actually say?” Both guests have a clear answer: Germany is by no means as divided as the media portrays it.

“Nothing is black or white,” says Zeh. However, she observes a growing distrust in political institutions. Zeh spoke to numerous people for her novels, and many of them only voted for AfD because the party would never coalition with the Greens. “It’s a fatal mood.” Habeck thinks that you have to work on that.

The traffic light coalition must become more positive

Why he is no longer the man for Germany’s problems, wants star– Editor-in-Chief Schmitz know. Zeh thinks that’s uninteresting. It’s not about the individual people, but about the question of who the population trusts to shape politics in their interest. “It has to do with the changes that have happened recently.” For example the Ukraine war. Or the corona pandemic. “Right there it blew down from above: You are stupid, you are lateral thinkers, you have no idea.” So it’s no wonder that a certain frustration among the elite towards “those up there” has spread.

Although negative headlines sell well, positive reports create trust, the Talk guests agree. There is an urgent need for more success stories, including when it comes to climate protection. For example from Lusatia, where coal is still used today. A year and a half ago, the mayors there would not have wanted to speak to him, says Habeck. “Now they say: Help us to implement our plans for the future.”

For the traffic light, it is now important to tell such success stories instead of producing negative headlines. “We can’t agree on scary scenarios,” says Habeck. Juli Zeh agrees. But, she objects, a positive attitude in times of crisis is far too quickly punished as trivialization. “If building a positive sense of togetherness is punished in the media as a naive view of the future. People notice that, then the next 20 kilos are on the scales of mistrust.” This is one of the reasons why the traffic light has hardly been able to tell any success stories in the past eight months, says Habeck.

How much strife does a democracy have to endure?

Habeck considers the assertion by CDU chairman Friedrich Merz that the Union and the Greens cannot work together to be “nonsense”. “That’s surprising, because half of the country is ruled by Black-Green,” he says. Merz “apparently made the calculation without his party”. He is not the press spokesman for the opposition leader. “If it were me, I would say to him, ‘Stop talking nonsense'”. But Germany is a free country, so Merz can “speak as much nonsense as he wants”.

Unlike Merz, Zeh believes disagreement in political cooperation makes sense. Parties do not always have to agree. Discourses and polarization are part of it, especially in a democracy. On the other hand, the promised political unity in the traffic light coalition would “undermine the idea of ​​democracy and I think that’s very dangerous”. With a view to the heated debates on X (formerly Twitter), the author points out: “I have the impression that we can only allow ourselves to conform. Anyone who weighs arguments is seen as a dissenter, polarizer, traitor.”

And she asks: “When did everything ever work perfectly in Germany?” To answer myself: never. The Federal Republic used to struggle with unemployment. Today it is a shrinking economy, high energy costs, inflation and a lack of digitalization, Habeck lists. “We have a problem with the combination,” he admits.

At the end of the talk, Zeh once again spread optimism. It is right to take stock of problems and challenges. It would just have to be made clear to the citizens that they would be involved in the solution. “It’s something people want. And it gives them a sense of empowerment and security.”