Long-term residents and journalists who adopt German habits still often feel excluded and like Fremdkörper despite learning language, customs, and participating in family and civic life. Surface assimilation through food, media, social norms, and parenting interactions does not guarantee belonging or inclusion for many newcomers. The sense of exclusion points to a deeper national identity crisis rooted in reliance on shared prosperity and a moral self-image derived from overcoming Nazism. Economic concerns expand into political fragmentation, internal divisions, and racism when the rhetoric of Willkommenskultur fails to produce genuine social belonging.
Despite our earnest efforts to battle through German grammar, to enjoy woody white asparagus and to watchTatort (still hoping and waiting for a good episode), the feeling of belonging here in our adopted homeland remained elusive. We've been here for more than three decades combined, and as journalists our job is to get to know the country in many cases better than natives.
But the feeling of being a guest or as Germans might say a Fremdkorper (foreign object) persists, despite the country's claims of offering a Willkommenskultur. When we started writing a book about Germany, we realised it's not just a subjective personal experience. It points to a deeper void at the heart of modern Germany. The initial goal of writing "Broken Republik" was to cover the cracks in the German economy, but that quickly expanded to political fragmentation and then internal divisions and racism.
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