Potsdamer Platz: Germania, Europa

The history of the evolution of Germany is summed up by two pictures taken at a distance of seventy years one from the other. The first is the photograph of a frightened boy in the Warsaw ghetto standing in front of a Nazi soldier, the second one is of another boy wearing the hat of a German policeman, happy to be welcomed as a refugee in Germany. The two pictures are symbolic of the long path of rehabilitation of a country that after the Second World War risked disappearing and becoming a simple ‘geographic entity’ (Stalin). As German philosopher Helmuth Plessner recounts in his book Die verspätete Nation , a few days after the German surrender on 8 May 1945, a friend and colleague in forced exile told him: “You really want to go back to Germany? But the country no longer exists!”

  A little over a year since Germany's about-face on energy , it is time to weigh up the effects it has had . In May 2011, the Ethics Commission , appointed by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany in the aftermath of Fukushima , “ advised” a rapid abandonment of nuclear energy . Already in the Commission’s final report , however, attention was drawn to the possible economic consequences . Today it is time to reflect on these and to analyze the German energy turnaround . What consequences are there in   economic , social and geo - political terms? And also: Why is the   German photovoltaic miracle over ?

The crisis of the European single currency is a systemic crisiswhich has been coming for some time. As long ago as 1999 the “Manifesto onUnemployment in the EuropeanUnion”written by economists Franco Modigliani, Jean Paul Fitoussi, Beniamino Moro, Dennis Snower, Robert Solow, Alfred Steinherr and Paolo Sylos Labini drewinternational attention to the lack of employment and growth. ... This “Manifesto” is still relevant today, as is shown by the fact that at the last EU Summit in Brussels the main topics of discussion were unemployment and growth. In fact Chancellor Angela Merkel had already emphasized the importance to theWestern economies of resolving work-related problems as well as those related to growth, at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Still today Europe finds itself in the position of having to find solutions to fundamental problems. The fact that almost 13 years later unemployment and growth are still being discussed shows that the present crisis of the euro and national de...