History shows Germans can beat the odds
If there is a people other people think they comprehend, it is the Germans. No holds are barred in talk about the nation, with outsiders emboldened by a feeling of superiority, based on the fact that the Germans were for 12 years party to Nazi crimes they cannot imagine themselves committing. Such freedom of discourse is a travesty of the country's history and unfair to new generations. But it is also rooted in a memory no penance or reparations can now appease. Germans who want to improve their image are better advised to tackle problems of substance they can resolve.
One such problem is the “German disease” of a chronically stagnant economy. The combination of a 35-hour week, six weeks of annual leave, retirement at 55, social spending at 30 per cent of gross domestic product all amid the world's highest wages and taxes suggest self-indulgence unbefitting the world's third largest economy.
The numbers are not good: Germany has suffered four consecutive years of stagnation, 10 per cent unemployment and a continued lack of investment. But the straws in the wind are encouraging. Germany still accounts for a third of the European Union economy. Its business has learnt the art of the hostile takeover and how to downsize a company. Threatening outsourcing, industries bargain harder and unions agree to longer working weeks without increased compensation.
Yet German public opinion remains quick to condemn companies that bully customers, employees or shareholders. As political parties study tax simplification, polls show the great majority of Germans support an economic makeover. At the price of party leadership, Gerhard Schr?der, the chancellor, installed a tough reform programme (Agenda 2010) and implemented legislation (Hartz IV) forcing 1.7m hard-core unemployed to accept state-offered jobs as a condition of continuing assistance.
A second soluble problem is the integration of Germany's 7.3m foreign residents, half of whom are Muslim and 70 per cent of those Turkish. The numbers are startling and observers worry that secular Germans are no match for devout Muslims who honour Islamic law over German constitutional law.
To ease that threat a new immigration law, which came into force last September, requires foreigners seeking permanent residence to take courses in German language, law, culture and history. The goal is integration with mutual respect for cultural variety, under the slogan “Learning From One Another, Living Together”. More accommodation than assimilation, the law recognises parallel cultural worlds and layered regional identities familiar to Germans since Roman times.
But will Germans put their economic and social houses in order? The future scenario of the academic doomsayers has a demographically and economically stressed Germany and EU falling prostrate before the American colossus. How can so dire a fate be predicated on mere estimated birth rates and revenues that are still decades away? History is a better measure of who a people are and how they may fare and German history reveals a people as adept at beating the odds against them as they are at raising them. In the second half of the 20th century, as the cold war began to thaw, the two Germanys, on their own initiative (“We are the people”), united and presented themselves as the world's youngest liberal democracy.
In the fourth century, German warriors controlled virtually every senior military post in the Roman army and ran the Roman empire in its last decades. During the Middle Ages, Frankish and succeeding Germanic dynasties melded Germanic, Jewish-Christian, Greco-Roman and Byzantine cultures into a new European civilisation. In the 16th century, the Saxons and the Hessians repelled papal Rome and the Holy Roman Emperor, as Martin Luther, in spite of himself, laid the foundation of modern religious freedom and pluralism. And in the 19th century, Germans survived Napoleon's occupation and dissolution of their empire before defeating him with the help of allies and, as always, taking as their own the best features of their enemy.
Who, in 1945, would have believed that a European Union with German wealth would be integrating eastern and western Europe at the turn of the century, or that Germany's foreign minister would be the champion of Turkey's admission into that Union? Today's pundits and political advisers who tell world leaders to count the Germans out only prepare them for unexpected surprises.
The writer is a professor of history at Harvard University and author of A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People (HarperCollins/Granta Books)
如何治愈“德国病”？
如果有哪个民族会被其他民族认为可以理解，这个民族就是德意志民族。在长达12年的时间里，德国人曾伦为纳粹的同党，并犯下了连他们自己也难以想象的罪行。正是基于此，德意志以外的民族便产生一种优越感，以至于当他们在谈到这一民族时，敢于畅所欲言，不顾及任何禁忌。人们对这个民族毫无顾忌的谈论，不仅对德国历史是一种歪曲，同时也对德国新的几代人显失公平。然而，这种毫无顾忌的态度，乃是深深根植于一种记忆，这种记忆是任何忏悔或赔偿都无法平抚的。希望改善其自身形象的德国人的明智之举，应是尽其所能解决实质问题。
其中一个问题就是经济长期停滞的问题，即所谓的“德国病”。德国人享有每周35小时的工作时间，6周的带薪年假，55岁的退休年龄，占到国内生产总值30%的社会福利支出，加之工资水平和税收均位居世界最高之列，所有这些因素综合起来表明，德国已陷入一种自我满足的状态，这不利于这个世界第三经济大国的健康发展。
统计数据不容乐观：德国经济已经连续4年处于停滞状态，失业率高达10%，并且投资资金始终匮乏。但仍有种种迹象显示出令人鼓舞的信息。德国仍占有欧盟经济总量的1/3。德国企业界已经学会如何巧妙应对恶意收购以及如何缩减企业规模。工业企业以采用外包手段作为威胁，在讨价还价中立场更加强硬，并迫使工会同意在不增加工资的情况下延长每周的工作时间。
然而德国公众意见却对此做出快速反击，谴责了企业这种欺压消费者、雇员或股东的做法。在德国各政党研究简化税收之时，民意调查显示大多数德国人支持经济改革。德国总理格哈特?施罗德(Gerhard Schr?der)启动了一项力度很大的改革计划(即所谓的“2010改革议程Agenda 2010”)，并贯彻执行法律规定(哈尔茨改革计划Hartz IV)，强迫170万长期失业人群接受国家提供的工作岗位，以此作为继续提供失业资助的条件。为此，他付出了失去党内领导地位的代价。
第二个可以解决的问题是使德国730万外国居民融入德国社会的问题。这些外国居民中一半是穆斯林，其中70%是土耳其人。这些数字十分惊人，观察人士担忧，一旦接受这些外国居民，没有宗教信仰的德国人可能不是虔诚的穆斯林的对手。相对于德国宪法来说，这些穆斯林更信奉伊斯兰法律。
为缓解这一威胁，去年9月起生效的新移民法要求那些在德寻求永久居留权的外国人学习德语、德国法律、德国文化和德国历史的课程。在“互相学习，和谐共存”的口号下，此举旨在实现文化融合，使双方互相尊重彼此的文化差异。该法律承认不同文化世界的平行共存，承认多层次的地区认同。它所提倡的是包容，而非同化。自罗马时代以来，这一理念就已为德国人所熟知了。
然而，德国人是否能处理好经济与社会的问题呢？学术界有人悲观的预测，在未来德国将面临人口和经济的双重压力，欧盟将倒地屈服于美国巨人。怎么能仅仅根据几十年以后的人口出生率和收入预测估值就预言出如此凶险的命运呢？在评判一个民族现在以及未来的命运时，历史是一个更好的尺度。德国历史显出，德意志民族虽然善于挑起对自己不利的厄运，但更善于打破这种逆境。20世纪后半叶，随着冷战开始消融，两个德国在自主自愿的前提下(“我们都是德国人”)联合起来，成为了世界上最年轻的自由民主国家。
在公元四世纪时，德国武士几乎掌控了罗马军队中所有的高级军事职位，并在公元四世纪最后几十年中统治了罗马帝国。在中世纪时期，法兰克王朝及随后的德意志王朝将德意志文化、犹太基督教文化、希腊罗马文化和拜占庭文化融合为一个新的欧洲文明。在16世纪，萨克森(Saxon)和黑森(Hessians)人驱逐了罗马帝国(papal Rome)和神圣罗马帝国(Holy Roman)皇帝。同一时期，马丁?路德(Martin Luther)在无意之间为现代宗教自由和多元宗教论奠定了基础。到了19世纪，德国人在拿破仑的占领中和拿破仑帝国的瓦解中顽强的存活下来，并在后来欧洲反法联盟盟军的帮助下打败了拿破仑。一如既往，德国再一次将敌人的优势学为己用。
在1945年谁会相信，一个欧洲联盟会在德国财富的支持下于世纪之交之时将东西欧融为一体？谁能想到德国外交部长将会成为土耳其加入欧盟的支持者？现在的学者和政治顾问，如果还有谁会建议世界领导人将德国排除在外的话，实际的情形只能使他们大感意外。
本文作者是哈佛大学历史学教授，著有《强有力的堡垒：德意志民族新史(A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People) 》一书(HarperCollins/Granta Books出版社出版)。
