Will Germany pull out of the EU as the UK did? Going by the latest developments, this may not be a figment of imagination

There has been a news item in an esteemed journal recently, stating that the Alternative für Deutschland (AFD or Alternative for Germany), a right-wing German political party gaining prominence, has declared that the European Union is a failed project. The AFD has castigated the EU as a failure in all areas of governance like imagination policy, climate change and security. The party is both right and wrong. They are right about the EU’s failure, but incorrect about the reasons for it. One recollects that Britain joined the EU but kept the pound sterling from being amalgamated into the Euro. The then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had doubts about the workability of the European Union from the beginning. She was no ideologue, but had immense common sense of a successful politician, and quoted many examples of successful and unsuccessful national experiments. The successful nations are mostly those whose citizens’ souls throb as one.

The European Union too has souls that throb, but not in unison; rather in more than 25 ways. The reasons quoted by the AFD, namely immigration, climate change and security, are important, but curable. Germany has been a comparatively new country even before it entered into the EU. There were twenty-odd principalities until the Chancellor of Prussia, Otto von Bismarck, finally united them as late as 1870. Bismarck put the final seal of unification while arresting Emperor Napoleon III of France on the battlefield of Sedan. Though France and Germany became the first two promoters and today’s leaders of the European Union, their souls don’t throb in unison.

While on a visit to Greece, a local taxi driver predicted dark days when he told me that Germany’s assets lay in technology, while those of Greece are in history. He said the Greeks live by inviting tourists while the Germans flourish by exporting machinery. He asked me how could these two coexist in the same house.

A look into history would show that the continent of Europe was ambling along medieval potentials. Much of the continent had two seasons, summer for work and winter for hibernation. Mediterranean countries like Spain and Italy are gifted with longer summers and shorter winters, and experienced the Renaissance with the advent of the Reformation, i.e., the split between the state and the Church in the 17th century; religion began to move to the back seat. Less money had to be remitted to the Vatican and more wealth stayed at home in various parts of Europe.

The vacuum religion left behind began being filled by nationalism. Hitherto, the hearts of the people would beat for their monarch. With the advent of nationalism, more and more people became conscious of nationality, whereby their hearts within a nation began to beat in unison.

The invention of the steam engine came next, heralding the Industrial Revolution. Nationalism took the high seat of an ideology, which in turn, drove the Europeans into a race for prosperity.

Communism made every attempt to disrupt the flowering of nationalism but did not succeed. No ideology has come on the European horizon since and hence the reluctance of the Europeans to embrace the European Union with any ardour. When the push and urge of nationalism could not be satisfied in Europe, it overflowed into imperialism, with the discovery of South America and Asia.

Prussia, whose capital was Berlin, was the largest of the German-speaking principalities. Bismark, the Chancellor in the latter part of the 19th century, enlisted by diplomacy or the force of arms the various Germanic principalities into the fuller Deutschland. The Chancellor, however, did not consider it wise to include Austria in Deutschland. Incidentally, Sudetenland, one of the constituents of later Czechoslovakia, was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the successor to the Holy Roman Empire. This was the replacement of the Roman Empire based in Rome, which by then become unable to keep off the barbarians of the north like the Vandals, Visigoths and Goths.

The holy origins of Austria kept Bismark away from incorporating its empire. The unfortunate exploits of Adolf Hitler, especially his anti-Semitism, drove the Germans into a shell of embarrassment and guilt. History moulded Germany into a continental entity. The European Union was a peaceful, friendly substitute for the domination of Europe. Nationalism provides a thrilling urge that the EU cannot satisfy. The proud sentiment personified by the German national anthem “Deutschland Uber Alles” (Germany above all) is a distant pole from what the EU can provide. Germany’s Angela Merkel represented the cooperative spirit, which she probably imbibed under the communist East German regime, under which she grew up.

A medicine that may satisfy even a hero when prostate with illness or defeat, cannot be food for his life. Once Merkel had stepped down from power, Germans began to feel deprived and hungry. They would like to unshackle themselves from the cooperative framework they had brought on themselves. More so, when the waves of Syrian refugees kept arriving and being welcomed by Merkel. The Christians and Muslims are both Abrahamic religions of the Book. But when it comes to co-existing in the same country, the Protestant stallion cannot live with the pony beholden to Allah the Merciful.

(The writer is a well-known columnist, an author, and a former member of the Rajya Sabha. The views expressed are personal)