Kommentar: Die Zukunft hat in Deutschland keine Lobby
Laufen unsere Kinder eines Tages im VW-Werk Schlittschuh? Reisen nach Boston und Shenzhen zeigen, wie Transformation und Aufstieg gelingen – wenn man sie wirklich will.
In a past year, my children and I visited the ice rink at the Zollverein Coal Mine in Essen. It was a frosty afternoon; the sound system was playing "Last Christmas." Our five-year-old daughter was still not confident on ice skates, so we had to grip the wooden panels on the sidelines continuously. During one of these breaks, I noticed the brightly painted, rusted steel columns above us.
Once upon a time, up to 8,000 miners worked there, back when the mine was the economic powerhouse of the region. Now, it serves as a backdrop for our recreational activities.
What will my own children look back upon in the future when they view the symbols of prosperity as a relic of today's world? Will they skate on the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg, or at the Siemens factory in Nuremberg? Or will it be the locales that stand for future prospects, or even for success today, that will have a different fate?
For several years now, I have been writing about issues related to these questions – where a promising future might be developing in Germany, and also what can sometimes stand in the way of such a future.
Written by urgent.news from Handelsblatt's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
