GERMANY - Even though Angela Merkel was reelected on Sunday, Germany doesn’t feel very celebratory. As a German, I’ve never seen such a worried, agitated and sullen public in my country. The life in beer gardens and cafes, the big BMWs and many carbon-frame bikes might project an image of a wealthy and content society.
But “there is immense unrest in Germany,” notes Stephan Grünewald from the Rheingold Institute in Cologne, who specializes in conducting psychological in-depth interviews with voters: “In our interviews, all the talk was about: refugee crisis, refugee crisis, refugee crisis. The psychological mood of the voters is wobbly, I have never before experienced such rage and so much hate among the test persons.”
At times when I think of Germany today, an image comes to my mind that is familiar to many older Germans who experienced the air raids in the last war. I see a group of people huddled together in a bomb shelter who hear the detonations come closer and closer. And they keep ducking their heads, hoping the war will soon end by itself.