What Happened to "Made in Germany"?
There was a time when "Made in Germany" was more than a label. It was a promise. A mark of excellence. A quiet confidence that whatever you held in your hands—a car, a tool, a washing machine, a pen—was the product of engineering, care, and integrity. You didn’t just buy a thing. You bought into a culture of doing things right.
But today? That phrase carries less weight. Not because Germany stopped building things altogether, but because something more fundamental has shifted: our identity. We’re no longer the world’s proud manufacturers; we’ve become its exhausted managers. Not leaders of innovation but custodians of chaos. We don’t export dreams anymore. We import problems—and hope that by doing so, we’ll still feel useful. Or moral. Or needed.
This isn’t about cruelty. It’s not about building walls or closing hearts. It’s about balance. Vision. And asking a simple but uncomfortable question: when did Germany stop taking care of its own house?
We pride ourselves on moral leadership, humanitarian action, and collective responsibility. We raise money for far-off places, rally for causes, and open our doors with great fanfare. We fly in children from Ukraine to offer them a week of peace and joy in Bavaria. We collect stray dogs from Greece and rescue cats from Romania. We accommodate thousands of refugees fleeing war, poverty, and despair.
These actions are not evil. Many are beautiful. But they are also symptoms of a deeper pattern: the romanticisation of being needed elsewhere, while quietly neglecting the here and now. Like the burnt-out helper who fixes everyone else’s problems to avoid confronting their own.
Look around: our schools are crumbling. Hospitals are understaffed. Rural infrastructure is dying. Teachers are overworked. Elderly people sit alone for days without visitors. Children go to school without breakfast. But we remain obsessed with being the good guys on the world stage.
From a nation that once symbolised industry, clarity, and order, we have turned into a place where mismanagement is met with hashtags and moral applause. Where domestic failure is forgiven, so long as the international optics are virtuous.
"Made in Germany" has become a memory. "Managed by Germany" is our new reality. And it’s barely working.
This is not a call to become cruel. It is a plea to become clear. Because the question we need to ask ourselves is not whether we can help others, but whether we’re still able to help ourselves.
Let’s look at what that shift really means. Let’s talk about what we’ve chosen to import—and what we’ve quietly allowed to fall apart. Let’s explore what happens to a country that loses sight of its own foundations in an effort to be universally applauded.
And let’s ask the question that rarely dares speak its name:
Is it possible that our compassion has become more about us than those we claim to serve?
Infrastructure of a Nation on Pause
Before we can even begin to speak about what we import, we have to look at the foundation we’re standing on. Or rather — limping on. Germany, once admired for its meticulous systems and gold-standard efficiency, is creaking under the weight of its own neglected infrastructure. The cracks are no longer symbolic. They are literal.
Drive down any B-road in rural Bavaria or North Rhine-Westphalia, and you’ll find potholes wide enough to host a council debate. Visit a hospital — if you can get an appointment — and you’ll likely meet a nurse running two shifts back-to-back, whispering prayers over a printer from the 1990s. Public schools with leaky ceilings, broken heating, and outdated textbooks are no longer an exception. They are the rule. And yet, the prevailing political mantra seems to be: "Let’s do more for others."
Blackboard Battlefields: The Changing Face of German Classrooms
Germany’s education system is collapsing — not from a lack of funding, but from a fundamental shift in what schools are being asked to do. Once the backbone of the nation’s future, many schools now function more like frontline shelters than places of learning. Teachers, once regarded as respected educators, are being stretched beyond recognition. They are now expected to be part-time social workers, translators, mediators, crisis managers, and mental health responders — often simultaneously.
The retirement wave is in full swing, and replacements are scarce. Young teachers either burn out quickly or never enter the profession in the first place. The ones who remain face overflowing classrooms, relentless bureaucracy, and the daily emotional toll of a job that no longer resembles the one they trained for. Some say it feels more dangerous to work in a school than in law enforcement. And in certain neighbourhoods, that may not be hyperbole.
In major urban centres, up to 70% of students speak German as a second or even third language. Again, this is not inherently problematic. Multilingualism is a strength — but only when supported. Instead, we have a system that preaches inclusion but delivers chaos. There are too few trained integration specialists, not enough language support staff, and barely any institutional will to address the cultural tensions simmering just below the surface.
The result? Teachers regularly report incidents of intimidation, verbal abuse, and even physical threats. Classrooms are no longer sanctuaries of knowledge — they are contested zones of identity, power, and survival. The fundamental contract of mutual respect between teacher and student is fraying. And worse: many are too afraid to speak publicly about it, lest they be labelled reactionary or intolerant.
All the while, we paper over the cracks with hollow slogans. Colourful posters celebrating diversity line the hallways. But posters don’t teach maths. Slogans don’t restore order. And pretending everything is working fine doesn’t make it true.
This isn’t about demonising foreign students or denying cultural integration. It’s about telling the truth: that without adequate support, integration fails. That throwing teachers into multilingual, trauma-laden environments without backup is a form of systemic negligence. And that when we fail our educators, we fail our children — and therefore our future.
So the question is: how long can we ask more and more from those holding the line, while offering them less and less in return?
Hospitals: Where Care Meets Crisis
Germany’s hospitals — once models of excellence — are now under strain. Entire departments are closing for financial or staffing reasons. Wait times for specialist appointments can stretch into months for those insured under the public health system. Overloaded emergency rooms are stressed not just by volume, but by complexity: patients arriving with serious conditions, often after delays, with fewer resources than before.
What was once a health system admired across the world for its precision, availability, and humanity has begun to crack under the weight of demographic shifts, policy neglect, and an ever-expanding influx of demand that far exceeds capacity. Emergency rooms overflow, departments close for weekends or permanently, and in some areas, entire hospitals are being quietly dismantled or sold off — not because they’re no longer needed, but because they can no longer be staffed or financed.
Doctors and nurses are stretched thin. Many report burnout, long shifts, and administrative overload. Caring for patients is no longer only about medicine and healing — it’s also about navigating bureaucracy, managing understaffed wards, and trying to maintain dignity under pressure.
A particularly telling indicator: “Waiting times for outpatient treatment in Germany” reports regularly that accessing outpatient specialist care often means delays many months long. For families, this doesn’t just mean inconvenience — it sometimes means worsening illness. Pain doesn’t wait.
The issue is exacerbated by the growing demand. People fleeing conflict or hardship are arriving with substantial medical needs, often without immediate access to routine care in their home systems. The existing hospital capacity is being asked to stretch further and further. Some hospitals have implemented triage and prioritisation protocols that delay or redirect non-urgent cases because acute and emergency care can no longer keep pace.
It’s not just policy that suffers — the everyday human experience of care is changing. More patients are delayed, more people feel unseen, and medical staff frequently express the sense that the system is normalising decline. What was once labelled “performance issues” are now everyday protocol.
All this while Germany continues to wear the badge of global medical aid. We promise diplomas, research, outreach. We laud ourselves for assistance abroad. These are commendable. But there’s a tension: Can a country serve as healer of the world if its own hospitals are falling short of the standard its citizens expect? If its own people face months of waiting for care?
So what happens when a nation’s hospitals begin to collapse?
People stop going. Or they go abroad if they can afford it. Or they rely on luck, prayer, or alternative medicine. And those who can’t — the poor, the elderly, the overworked single mothers — are left to queue, to suffer, or to give up. The "universal" in universal healthcare becomes a cruel joke, especially when the universe you’re trying to treat keeps expanding.
It would be different if the conversation were honest. If politicians and policymakers stood up and said: "We are at capacity. We cannot continue to expand services outward without stabilising them inward." But instead, we hear the same worn-out platitudes about compassion, responsibility, and being a beacon to the world.
Here’s a truth no one wants to say out loud:
You cannot export morality from a burning house.
You cannot offer a helping hand when your own are tied behind your back. You cannot pride yourself on being a sanctuary if your own systems resemble a battlefield.
Germany’s hospitals are not just buildings. They are mirrors — revealing who we are, what we prioritise, and where we are failing. And right now, the reflection is devastating.
Roads, Rails & Bureaucratic Quicksand
If you’ve travelled across Germany recently, chances are you’ve been delayed — probably more than once. The trains don’t run on time anymore. They often don’t run at all. Deutsche Bahn, once a symbol of precision and reliability, has become a national punchline. Passengers share memes of cancelled routes, app crashes, and "Schienenersatzverkehr" (rail replacement bus services) as if it were a dark hobby. Delays have become so normalised that we no longer ask if the train is late — but by how much.
In 2023 alone, only 63% of long-distance trains arrived on time. And Deutsche Bahn’s own definition of punctuality allows a delay of up to six minutes to still count as "on time." If you remove that generosity, the picture is even bleaker. This is not a rural hiccup or a seasonal issue — it’s systemic. Germany’s once-envied rail system is groaning under the weight of underinvestment, neglected infrastructure, and overambitious expansion goals that can’t keep pace with operational reality.
The autobahn, too, once the pride of the German engineering myth, is increasingly a patchwork of temporary lanes, half-finished repairs, and speed-limit zones that seem to spring up overnight and stay forever. Construction zones on major routes like the A3 or A8 stretch for dozens of kilometres, creating bottlenecks that can turn a two-hour trip into a four-hour odyssey. And it’s not just the physical roads — it’s the planning behind them. Projects take years to approve, decades to complete, and by the time they do, the traffic forecasts they were based on are already obsolete.
It would be comical if it weren’t so costly. For commuters. For logistics. For the environment. For the economy. Germany — a country that once built the world’s fastest trains, finest cars, and most admired traffic systems — now limps along on crumbling bridges and creaky platforms, like a retired athlete who can’t quite accept that the glory days are over.
And then there’s the bureaucracy.
If you’ve tried to apply for anything — a passport, a driver’s licence, a visa extension, parental leave, a tax ID, or a business registration — you’ve likely entered what feels like a bureaucratic escape room. One that only lets you out after four appointments, seventeen forms, three forgotten documents, and a brief existential crisis.
Berlin’s Bürgerämter (citizen service offices) are infamous for their months-long wait times, but the problem is not isolated. Across the country, local administrations are overwhelmed, under-digitalised, and understaffed. Many offices still rely on paper-based systems, fax machines, and manual data entry. Digital transformation exists more as a buzzword than a reality — especially at the municipal level.
Want to renew your passport? Good luck getting an appointment. Offices are frequently closed on Mondays — not for lack of work, but due to staff shortages. Want to register your address after moving? Be prepared to wait weeks for an opening. Want to start a business? You’ll need patience, courage, and a printer that hasn’t run out of toner. And yes, you really might need to bring a document last updated in 1987 — because that’s the version still referenced in the administrative handbook.
There’s a quiet absurdity in all of this. A country that prides itself on order, regulation, and diligence has accidentally turned those same traits into a form of national paralysis. The rules that once ensured fairness now ensure inertia. The processes that once symbolised efficiency now serve as barriers to entry. We've begun to confuse complexity with competence — as if adding more paperwork automatically means better oversight.
The real kicker? Many Germans no longer question it. The delays, the broken systems, the waiting rooms — they've been absorbed into the cultural rhythm. We grumble, we sigh, we make jokes, and then we keep going. But the cumulative cost is real. Trust in public administration is eroding. People feel less served, less heard, and increasingly like supplicants in a system that was supposed to serve them.
And all the while, the political class insists we can take on more — more tasks, more global leadership, more “responsibility.” Yet we can’t even schedule an online appointment without the server crashing or the available slots being booked for the next four months. It would be tragic if it weren’t so predictable.
We are a country that now worships process over progress. And nowhere is this more obvious than in our crumbling infrastructure and our bloated administrative landscape. The tragedy isn’t that these systems are old — it’s that we keep pretending they still work.
But it’s not just the delays and breakdowns that make people hesitant to use public transport. It’s fear.
In recent years, there has been a noticeable rise in reported violent incidents on trains, buses, and in stations. Knife attacks, sexual assaults, and group violence have shaken public confidence — especially in larger cities and on late-night routes. According to official crime statistics from the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) and regional police reports, certain categories of violent crime in public spaces — including in and around transit hubs — have significantly increased since 2015, particularly in urban areas with strained social infrastructure. While the media and politicians often tread carefully around these numbers, the public feels the shift viscerally — not through headlines, but through lived experience.
Women report feeling increasingly unsafe on evening commutes. Parents caution their children to avoid empty platforms. Even conductors and ticket inspectors have voiced concerns, with unions demanding better security or refusing to operate on certain lines after dark. In response, Deutsche Bahn has increased security patrols at selected stations, and some regions have debated surveillance expansion.
But the overarching atmosphere is one of uncertainty — not assurance.
So instead of acting to prevent violence, we throw more money at surveillance.
At least now, we’ll be able to find the culprit faster — after someone has been assaulted or killed.
What does it mean when citizens avoid their own public transport system out of fear? When infrastructure meant to connect and liberate begins to feel like a gamble? This, too, is a kind of collapse — not of steel and concrete, but of trust.
Philosophical Pause: What Is Solidarity?
All of this begs a fundamental question: Can you call it solidarity if it’s built on neglect?
It’s easy — almost addictive — to say yes to every cause, every crisis, every call for help. But there is a moral cost to ignoring your own community in the process. Solidarity, in its truest form, means lifting others with you — not instead of you. Not while you’re sinking. Not when the floorboards beneath your feet are rotting.
We talk about humanity as though it's a limitless resource. But compassion without capacity is just sentiment. And right now, our capacity is crumbling.
We cannot build a sanctuary on shaky ground. Nor should we pretend that our house is in order while the windows are shattered and the roof is leaking. True generosity requires strength. It requires sustainability. It requires looking at the hard truths of your own backyard and asking: Who have we already forgotten?
Because behind every crumbling school and broken hospital is a child who didn’t get the help they needed. An elderly woman who waited too long for care. A teacher who burned out trying to make it all work. These are not invisible costs. They are just unacknowledged.
So the next time we pat ourselves on the back for our welcoming arms, perhaps we should first look at the hands we’ve let slip. At the faces we see every day but have somehow stopped noticing. The ones already here. Waiting.
Not in a war zone, not on the news — just quietly waiting. The child without a school lunch. The elderly neighbour no one checks on. The mother who’s been told her urgent scan will take six months.
They don’t trend. They don’t make headlines. And maybe that’s why it feels easier to care elsewhere — for causes with clean narratives and distant pain.
A dog limping through the streets of Bucharest is easier to face than the boy next door falling behind in school.
Maybe the real question isn’t where we show compassion — but why it so rarely starts at home.
From Stray Dogs to System Failures
There’s something heartbreakingly noble about rescuing a dog from a Romanian kill shelter.
Or a one-eyed cat found near a trash heap in Greece.
The stories are moving. The pictures pull at your heart. And the idea that you can save a life with a single plane ticket and some paperwork? Irresistible.
It’s not wrong. It’s not even illogical.
But it is… revealing.
Because while we import compassion by the crate — while vans drive across borders packed with trembling tails and glassy eyes — the question lingers:
What about the ones already here?
There is an entire economy built on rescue.
Foundations. Volunteer networks. Social media campaigns with before-and-after photos.
You know the ones:
Dog on cold concrete / dog in fuzzy blanket.
"Look what love can do."
And again — this is not mockery. Love can do incredible things. But the rise of transnational animal rescue speaks to something deeper. Something oddly displaced.
At home, shelters overflow. German Tierheime are at capacity, often begging for funding, volunteers, and adoptive families. And yet, even they now routinely coordinate with foreign partners to fly in more animals — from Spain, from Hungary, from Serbia. The compassion is real, but the logic? A little fuzzy.
One of the reasons people turn to adoption abroad is surprisingly simple: it’s often easier.
In Germany, shelters — rightly — have high standards.
They conduct detailed interviews. They consider things like breed-specific behaviour, prior trauma, and even medical conditions like hip dysplasia (HD), which might make a multi-stair flat unsuitable for certain dogs.
Some find this frustrating. They feel judged or rejected. But in reality, these measures are designed to protect both the animal and the human. They are signs of care.
I adopted one of my cats from a local shelter — a beautiful little creature who had been rescued from an irresponsible animal hoarder. A few months later, the shelter called and asked if they could come for a home visit. Not to check on me, but on him— to see how he had adjusted, whether he seemed safe, cared for, and content.
I welcomed them. Because their questions weren’t an invasion. They were an act of love and care.
And yet…
This level of attentiveness can also turn people away.
They opt instead for quicker, less demanding alternatives.
No home visit. No post-adoption check-in. Just a form, a flight, and a feel-good story.
The Psychology of the Distant Cause
It’s easy to see why. Foreign pain feels somehow cleaner. It comes without baggage.
You can rescue a Greek street dog without confronting your own prejudices, your local politics, your family dysfunction, your neighbourhood decline. The animal you bring in doesn’t remind you of your ex, your failed marriage, or your emotionally absent father. It just wants food. And love. And in return, it gives you purpose.
But the neglected kid down the street? The elderly woman with dementia whose cries echo through the apartment block? The teenager who is already being labelled a “problem case”?
They are harder.
More complex.
Less photogenic.
And they don’t wag their tails when you walk in.
Meanwhile, in the Same Town...
You know what else is overflowing? Foster care.
You know who else is lonely, scared, and malnourished?
German children. Elderly people. Refugees already here, thrown into makeshift housing and forgotten once the cameras turned off. There are no “adopt me” posts for them. There is no trendy Instagram filter for generational neglect. You don’t get social media likes for volunteering at a failing inner-city school. Or helping your depressed neighbour fill out welfare forms. Or calling your estranged brother just to check in.
That kind of compassion is quiet.
Unseen.
Messy.
And that, perhaps, is the problem.
Compassion vs. Performance
What happens when care becomes content? When love becomes optics?
We live in a culture of performance — and rescue is no exception. It’s easier to post about saving a dog from Croatia than confronting the fact that your own mother is wasting away in a care home and no one visits. It’s easier to "sponsor" a Syrian orphan than to sit across from a German welfare mother at the Bürgeramt and ask what she needs. One is romantic. The other is real. And strangely, real is rarely rewarded.
But What About the Animals?
Let’s be clear: the animals are not to blame. Nor are the people who care for them. Every being deserves dignity. Every life saved matters.
But I believe when a society bends over backwards to rescue dogs from abroad while people freeze on the streets, starve in plain sight, or die waiting for a bed in a clinic — something has gone very, very wrong.
This is not an argument against animal welfare. It’s an argument against imbalance.
I also believe you can love animals and demand more for humans. You can hold both truths. But when compassion is only visible through the lens of imported tragedy — when it skips over the homeless man on the corner but races to sponsor a Labrador in Lisbon — we need to ask ourselves what we’re really doing.
Are we helping?
Or are we avoiding?
Selective Rescue, Selective Sight
Here’s a quiet truth:
We don’t want to see what’s too close.
Because proximity demands responsibility. And taking responsibility is often hard.
Rescuing a street dog is a beautiful act. But it's also tidy. It ends with a signature on a form and a leash in your hand. You’ve done something so you must be a good and righteous person.
Fixing a broken neighbourhood? Supporting a burnt-out teacher? Visiting your lonely father who won’t stop talking about the war?
That’s not tidy.
That’s lifelong.
That asks something of you that a rescue flight never will.
When Good Intentions Get in the Way
Here’s what no one really wants to admit:
Some compassion is performative. Some is escapist. Some is even narcissistic.
And some is truly, deeply generous — but often misdirected.
We are not bad people for wanting to help. But we become less honest when we only help in the ways that make us feel good. When we curate our kindness to match our comfort levels.
When the world is on fire, every act of care matters. But some of us are pouring water on distant flames while our own living room smolders.
The Real Work
The real work of compassion? It’s really not very glamorous. It’s also not always public. And it rarely earns applause.
It looks like community outreach. Like caring for an addict relative. Like holding your tongue in a political argument so that your sister doesn’t hang up on you again. Like staying in the country you’re fed up with — not because you love the politics, but because you still believe in people.
It’s not very sexy.
But it’s rewarding nonetheless.
A Final Mirror
The stray dogs from abroad hold up a mirror. Not just to our hearts, but to our blind spots. They show us where our empathy goes. But also where it doesn’t. And as we move forward — into more crises, more migration, more economic pressure — we’d do well to ask:
What stories of pain are we willing to see?
And what stories are we still pretending not to notice?
Because true compassion is not about rescue. It’s more about recognition.
Ukrainian Children, German Poverty
There was a news headline a while back: Children from Ukraine, battered by war, brought to Bavaria to forget the war.” Images of their small faces, temporary relief, a week of laughter against a background of trauma. A beautiful impulse: joy where there was sorrow. But also a complicated mirror, I believe, should be addressed.
Because not far from those narratives, also here in Germany, children are living in shadows that no one asked them to escape. They don’t always make the front pages because their war is quieter: hunger, instability, cold rooms, empty pantries. And while war-traumatised children deserve joy, so do those who have never had enough to eat, even while living in a country of abundance.
Poverty’s Quiet Toll: The Numbers
The facts are stark and growing. According to a European report in 2022, nearly 23.5% of German children lived at risk of poverty or social exclusion. That is almost one in four: children in single-parent households, families with multiple children, or with migrant backgrounds disproportionately bear the burden.
The German non‑profit Human Rights Watch’s recent report (2025) confirms that child poverty is not a fringe phenomenon but a systemic one: one in five children in Germany is “at risk of poverty or social exclusion.” The same report points out that single-parent families often struggle not just with low income but with the complexity and strictness of welfare eligibility—that many benefits don’t cover rising costs of heating, food, and housing.
Food banks are a visible sign. In 2020, about 1.1 million people in Germany used food banks, which is about 1.3% of private households. Of those, children make up about 25% of users. That means that in many homes, children are not just at risk on paper—they are going to food banks to eat. These are not far‑away stories; they are right here in front of us.
Homelessness data is harder to pin down, especially for children. But there is evidence that the number of homeless people in Germany has risen in recent years, including many who have refugee backgrounds. Some estimates suggest tens of thousands of children are among them. The point is not to prove how many with exactness, but to show that invisibility is growing at a frightening rate.
The Moral Tension: Near vs Far
So when war-traumatised Ukrainian children are flown into Bavaria to find safety, joy, and a semblance of childhood, it feels like an act of generosity. It should be. They deserve it. But generosity doesn’t absolve us of responsibility elsewhere.
Because if one child deserves a clean room, a hot meal, laughter, and schooling, so do the children in German towns whose parents are working multiple jobs, or who are navigating welfare bureaucracy, or who are cut off from resources because of where they live or who their parents are. These children deserve attention. They deserve relief.
The moral contradiction is: it’s easier to help the distant because we don’t have to face our own discomfort. For war-traumatised children, the narrative is clear: victim, saviour, healing. For German poverty, there’s shame, scandal, politics, and excuses. It demands more than a trip or a donation. It demands structural change, policy shifts, and admitting that we have failed many of our own – too many.
Why It’s So Hard to See
Part of the issue is proximity. When suffering is far away, it’s visible, it’s in the news, in the headlines. When it’s in houses next door, it’s often ignored or rationalised. It doesn’t look like an emergency at the moment until it becomes one.
Politics helps by keeping the focus on what can turn stories of far‑away suffering into symbols that move votes or get donations. The narrative of “refugee children” resonates. The narrative of local child hunger usually doesn’t.
There is also a moral comfort in helping those who are already victims, who are clearly wronged. But when you turn to your own country, when you admit that your society has children looking at empty bowls, that your social safety net is no longer tight enough, that welfare is too slow and too stingy — that demands accountability. And many don’t want to look.
Factual Hardships: Welfare Gaps, Rising Costs, Invisible Failures
Germany’s benefits system is means-tested, complex, and often rigid. Although welfare is generous in many respects, the rising cost of housing, heating, energy, and everyday goods means many families are falling through the cracks. Reports show many single parents cutting back on food or heating in winter to keep their children fed.
The “food bank use” data also shows that households with children are overrepresented among those relying on food banks. These are often families receiving welfare, low-wage workers, or those with unstable work. The need is regular, not occasional.
The influx of refugees and displaced people adds pressure. It is honourable to open doors, to offer safety, to share support. Yet, our social services, education, housing, and health systems are not infinitely elastic. As we take in more, the shortages in public systems become more visible: waiting lists, crowded classrooms, housing bottlenecks, and rising rents.
Reflection: Compassion’s Double Edge
Compassion is beautiful. It’s even essential. But unexamined compassion can also be blind. It can allow us to ignore what is close while rescuing what is far. It can permit us to celebrate foreign children’s respite from war while local children sleep on floors or worry about tomorrow’s heating bill and the nonexistent breakfast.
The question then becomes: Does helping those who flee war or disaster also give moral cover for neglect at home? Do we think our virtue is judged by how far we stretch our arms outward, rather than how well we care for those under our own roof?
Towards a Morally Coherent Compassion
It feels urgent that compassion be coherent. That we do not let our impulse to help others become an excuse to neglect our own. Because those in our own country deserve more than crumbs from leftover generosity.
What would it mean to care first for children in one’s own town? To ensure a school lunch for all who need it, warm apartments, after-school support, mental health care access, dignity, not charity.
What would it mean to enact policies that say: no child is at risk of poverty just because of who their parents are or where they live? What would it mean to measure success by how many children in Germany are thriving, not just how many we host from abroad?
This may sound harsh — I know. And I also know we can’t save everyone. Life is not that simple, and compassion alone does not create capacity. But neither does denial.
I’m not writing this as someone detached from the issue. I am — by nature and by choice — someone who feels deeply, who helps where I can, and who believes in the quiet power of local action. I don’t donate to institutions. Not because I don’t care, but because I’ve seen too often how the lion’s share is eaten by administration, bureaucracy, and branding. The glossy reports. The annual dinners. The overhead.
Instead, I choose to help people directly. Locally. Quietly. It may not be grand, and it won’t change the world — but I know where it lands. I know who it reaches. And I believe that matters.
No, I don’t have a magic solution. But I do believe we have to start somewhere. And maybe that “somewhere” isn’t always the next big campaign, the next international mission, or the next headline. Maybe it’s just down the road. Across the hallway. On your train platform. In your child’s classroom.
Before we try to save the world, perhaps we could try saving what’s left of the ground we’re standing on.
Refugees, Reality & Rhetoric
In the midst of Germany’s crumbling infrastructure — overburdened schools, collapsing hospitals, delayed trains, and a public overwhelmed by rising insecurity — we continue to engage in a humanitarian project of monumental proportions. And here’s the paradox: we are importing instability while exporting accountability. We are carrying a moral weight heavier than our political will, and the cracks are beginning to show.
In 2023 alone, Germany registered over 350,000 asylum applications — the highest number in seven years. Many of these applicants were young, single men from countries like Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and North African nations. Some are fleeing war, others poverty, persecution, or hopelessness. Their stories are often harrowing. Their pain is real. But pain does not arrive in a vacuum. It arrives in systems, and Germany’s systems are no longer resilient.
The numbers aren’t just numbers — they translate into human friction. Integration isn’t just about language courses and welcome kits. It’s about time, space, cultural literacy, and mutual willingness. It’s about finding work, housing, purpose, and stability in a nation that is itself increasingly unstable.
Many of the young men who arrive — often undocumented, sometimes traumatised, mostly with little to no understanding or interest in the culture they’ve entered — are dropped into cities and towns already stretched to their limits. In shelters, language schools, and low-income neighbourhoods, this influx creates tension. Not because compassion is lacking, but because capacity is.
There are cultural gaps too wide to gloss over. Ideas about gender, authority, religion, and freedom clash — sometimes subtly, more and more often violently. Women report increased harassment on public transport. Police note a rise in certain crimes. Municipal leaders from small towns write desperate letters to Berlin, pleading for relief, support, and control. They are not racists. They are realists.
Still, the rhetoric remains the same: “We must help.” Apparently, at ALL costs.
Must we really? But how?
The idea that Germany can serve as a sanctuary for all the world’s displaced is not just naïve — it’s mathematically impossible. Compassion without structure becomes utter chaos. And when people who voice concern are labelled as cold-hearted or worse, we silence the very debate we need to be having urgently.
Here’s the irony: We used to be the world champions in export and are now becoming the world champions in importing problems and chaos. We talk about shared responsibility in Brussels, while small towns in Saxony or Bavaria are absorbing more refugees per capita than entire EU countries. We declare that “Germany is strong” while food banks turn people away. We issue integration slogans while kindergartens hire security.
Meanwhile, the bureaucracy grinds on. Asylum decisions take months — sometimes years. Appeals clog the courts. Deportation orders are issued but rarely enforced. And the longer people stay in limbo, the harder integration becomes. Desperation breeds anger. Anger leads to alienation. Alienation festers into resentment — on both sides.
No one wins.
To even write this is to risk being misunderstood. But it must be said: kindness must coexist with realism. Otherwise, we’re not helping — we’re lying. And lies — even well-intentioned ones — always have consequences.
Germany is not a fortress. Nor is it a limitless well of generosity. It is a nation of people who have paid into a system — financially, emotionally, structurally — with the belief that it would protect them in return. Right now, many of those people feel betrayed – and rightfully so.
This isn’t about blaming the refugees. It’s about blaming the refusal to plan and to act.
A refugee is not a problem. But unmanaged migration is. And until we are willing to name that distinction, we will keep spinning in rhetorical circles while real communities suffer.
We need borders that function — not because we want to shut the world out, but because we need to hold what is already inside.
We need honesty about what we can realistically offer — not to shame those who seek help, but to protect the dignity of both the givers and the receivers.
And we need to stop pretending that virtue alone can carry the weight of reality.
Germany’s generosity is not in question. Its sustainability is.
And if we do not correct course — with courage, with clarity, and yes, with compassion — then the very ideals we think we’re defending will collapse under the weight of our own denial.
From Paralysis to Purpose: What Comes After Guilt?
Germany today feels like a household managed by guilt and paralysed by fear — where the adults say yes to everything, not because it makes sense, but because they’re terrified of being called selfish or God forbid, a bad parent.
We are like the exhausted parent who lets strangers camp in the living room while the children sleep in cold beds. Who keeps apologising for mistakes long since repented, while neglecting the needs of the people who rely on them most.
This isn’t an accusation. It’s an observation. One shared quietly around dinner tables, whispered in work break rooms, sighed out of exhausted mouths that are too afraid to speak it plainly in public. Because I feel that in Germany, it’s not the crisis itself that silences people. It’s the fear of being misread. Of being misunderstood. Of being mislabeled — as racist, heartless, privileged, cold, right-winged extremist, Nazi.
So we shrink. We self-censor. We nod, applaud, donate, repost, and obey — hoping our goodness will be visible enough to exempt us from critique.
But moral performance is not the same as moral courage. And moral courage — the kind that changes systems, cultures, countries — is precisely what we need right now, more than ever.
Because here’s what I believe:
We have become a nation that manages decline instead of redesigning the future.
A nation that excels at damage control but has forgotten what it means to build. To lead. To imagine.
We react — constantly. But we don’t rethink.
We explain — endlessly. But we rarely recalibrate.
We import instability and export idealism. We promise more than we can deliver — not out of malice, but out of deeply rooted guilt and the seductive safety of symbolic virtue to the whole world.
We are not evil.
We are exhausted.
We are not unkind.
We are unfocused.
And somewhere along the way, we replaced purpose with penance. Especially the performative kind.
Yes, history matters. Yes, responsibility matters. Yes, Germany must remain vigilant about its past.
But there is a moment — and it may just be now — where historical guilt stops guiding and starts suffocating. When it no longer sharpens moral clarity but distorts it into something horrific. When it doesn’t foster caution, it breeds paralysis.
That moment is more dangerous than most of us can even imagine.
Because what happens to a country that only ever reacts?
It stops acting altogether.
What happens to a society that’s so afraid of being wrong that it refuses to be clear?
It becomes unintelligible — to itself and to others.
And what happens when good people — decent people — no longer dare to speak the truth of their lived experience?
It’s not justice that wins. It’s confusion. Noise. Cynicism. And most of all it is the inevitable end of democracy.
We can — and must — do better.
But that will require a shift – a big one.
A shift away from spectacle and toward structure.
A shift away from shame and toward stewardship.
A shift away from apologetic chaos and toward unapologetic clarity.
Because rebuilding doesn’t mean rejecting compassion. It means anchoring it. Not in trends. Not in hashtags. But in a grounded, local, actionable sense of what needs to be done — here, now, for the people already among us, and also what can be done, what is realistically doable.
It means that schools need teachers, not slogans.
That hospitals need hands, not headlines.
That trains need function, not branding.
That old people need heat — not hashtags.
That children need breakfast — not blurred-out documentaries about hunger in faraway places.
This isn’t a call to nationalism. It’s a call to coherence. To the kind of functionality that once defined us — and could again, if we chose to value it. Germany used to be known for care. For responsibility. For doing things properly, even when it was difficult. Not perfectly, but with a certain pride — not loud or boastful, but quiet, steady, and earned.
Somewhere along the line, that pride began to feel suspicious. Duty became unfashionable. Functionality, a burden. And the word “first” — even when applied to things like schools, hospitals, or workers — became untouchable. But maybe it’s time to shift our focus. Not backwards. Not in anger. But inward, and forward. To stop managing decline with symbolic gestures. To start asking how things could work again.
This isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about being willing to ask better questions.
Questions about priorities, about limits, and about the kind of future we’re building — or failing to build — while trying to look good and keep up appearances. Because there is dignity in looking after what is yours. There is wisdom in getting your house in order before opening every door without question.
Germany is not alone in this. Much of Europe — and the wider world — is wrestling with similar contradictions. It’s not just a German story. It’s a pattern. A mood. A kind of spreading confusion we haven’t yet found the words for. And maybe that’s where it begins — by finding those words. Not to fight anyone. But to remember who we are. And who we could still be.
So maybe that is the question we now need to ask:
Can Germany become a country that means something again — not because we import every crisis, but because we finally take care of what’s ours, with pride, with clarity, and with courage?
🎶My Song for you
I chose “No Love Today” by Chris Smithers which is not only a great song but also has amazing lyrics that fit the sentiment of today’s letter:
“If hungry is what's eatin' you
I'll sell you peace of mind
But this ain't what you came to hear me say
And I hate to disappoint you
But I got no love today”
For more good music, go to this Spotify playlist where you can find all the songs from the Change & Evolve Letters!
📚My Poem for you
Is by Robert Hayden (1913—1980)
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?
👀Impression
Some snap shots are just worth sharing… 😹
What does real solidarity mean to you — and where do you personally draw the line between helping others and losing yourself in the process?
Do you feel that some topics have become almost impossible to talk about without being immediately labelled or judged?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments, leave a ❤️ or send me a message. I always love hearing from you.
Wishing you a beautiful weekend wherever you are.
Yours
Tanja 🤗
PS. You can now also find my podcast on Spotify
Change & Evolve and feel free to get in touch
