Tractor chaos, neo-Nazis and a flatlining economy: why has Germany lost the plot? | Peter Kuras

A few years ago, Germany seemed like it had all the answers. But in 2024, we find ourselves in a land of bleak absurdity

Germany doesn't have a reputation as a funny country, but its dark humour is currently shaming the best recent efforts of both Britain and the US. Not that there is a sudden bumper crop of talented comedians in Germany, but who needs them when reality itself is already so bleakly cartoonish? A few years ago, Germany seemed like it had all the answers: a robust economy and a stable and broad-based coalition against the far right. Now, the economy is faltering as the combined effects of mismanagement collide with a bureaucratic culture that makes investment and innovation difficult. Striking rail workers and protesting farmers have brought chaos to the cities. The only thing collapsing faster than the German economy is the country's status as a moral example, which hit an all-time high with the refugee crisis of 2015-16 and has now tumbled like a vaudeville star on a banana peel.

Jewish critics of Israel being arrested by Berlin police for allegedly antisemitic speech? It's a joke worthy of Franz Kafka, who would also certainly have got a kick out of the enormous disparity between the treatment of protests in support of a ceasefire in Gaza and the farmers' protests and their cavalcades of tractors.

Peter Kuras is a writer and translator based in Berlin

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