During a recent interview on her newly published autobiography, former German chancellor Angela Merkel, explains why some journalists’ and academics’ references to her as “not an inborn but a taught democrat” and her upbringing as the “ballast of her GDR biography” were particularly hurtful to her. Merkel says that these “in the best case thoughtless” comments falsely jump from a critical assessment of the GDR as a state to implying that there was no worthy life to live there; that the first 35 years of her life were nothing but dead weight that could be thrown overboard, not worth anything. Merkel waited until one of her final speeches as acting chancellor to seriously address her east German identity. If these comments hurt Merkel, a former researcher with a doctorate in physics, the first woman holding the most powerful political office in Germany, and holding it over 16 years straight, we might understand better why, as the interviewer replies, many people in eastern Germany feel like second degree citizens. Merkel herself points out that attitudes like these are also impossibly offensive and degrading in relation to Poland and other states in Eastern Europe that joined the European Union more recently. She also explains that it was a very emotional state of mind which made her write this speech. 

     It is these kinds of emotional states which are starting points for many recent publications which question the narrative about the reasons for illiberal tendencies and the success of populist politics in post-communist Eastern Europe (for example, Mau 2024; Oschmann 2024; Kuisz & Wigura 2020; Rädel 2019; Kalmar 2020; Milev 2021; Rensmann 2019; Yoder 2020). Some recent studies, which have received a wide, if controversial, reception throughout Germany, turn to the lens of postcolonial critique for understanding and theorizing the German unity and its consequences for eastern German region (Oschmann, 2024; Rädel, 2019). Furthermore, recent studies within social theory, education sciences and political science turn to the deep intertwinement of emotion, affect and politics, particularly in trying to understand the recent rise of populist politics and growing antidemocratic sentiment (Ahmed, 2004; Illouz, 2023; Zembylas, 2023; Kuisz & Wigura, 2020). There is also growing interest in philosophy in the connection between emotions and our cognitive grasp of social reality (Mau 2024). Employing the double lens of “politics of emotion” and a structural post-colonial perspective, allows for analyzing the specificities and understanding the complexity of the current success of different populisms in eastern Germany, without exotifying and undermining the inspirational and instructive potential of the experience with an on-going struggle for democracy in the region. The approach allows to see parallels to developments in Baltic countries with long-established democratic traditions, such as Sweden, and also to the developments which Illouz (2023) describes so vividly for Israel, or prominent examples such as the most recent elections in the USA. 

As for philosophy of education, Zembylas is probably the most prolific writer in the field on the topics of populism, emotion and politics in the classroom (Zembylas, 2007, 2015, 2020, 2023, but see also Jackson 2020). Already in 1990, Habermas pointed out that the liberal reading of the German unity tends to ignore its own shortcomings. In the suggested reading of emotional populism in eastern Germany, I try to emphasize the importance of overcoming the modernist understanding of “not-yet-fully-learned democrats” and the narrative of the “authoritarian heritage” of Eastern Europe as a main cause for the success of populist politics in their relevance for a critical educational outlook. I take inspiration from Eva Illouz’ reworked Adornoian form of Ideologiekritik in terms of a critical engagement with “the perception of the social world through flawed social causal framework” (Illouz 2023, p. 7). The shift from “false consciousness” to conceiving of populism working through “flawed social causal frameworks” allows to see the “trace of real social experience which must be recovered by the analyst” as well as an openness to understanding the “inner coherence” of interviewees’ political thinking and to ask “just where and how thoughts about our social environment become distorted” (ibid.). This is of utmost relevance in educational contexts. How are teachers supposed to confront, navigate, approach and address “flawed social causal frameworks”?

During the recent two decades, a cosmopolitan orientation has been one of the dominant frameworks in education and education sciences (see Removed for peer review 2020). The currently growing undemocratic and anti-cosmopolitan sentiment in many countries throughout the world can be connected to the way in which neoliberal economic globalisation has affected the middle and working classes, much to the contrary of the hopes connected with the cosmopolitan outlook (Kalmar 2022; Kollmorgen 2009). Teachers in Sweden and in Germany alike have an explicit assignment to foster students in, through, and for democracy. What are possible ways forward? Is it possible to retain the valuable orientations embedded in a critical cosmopolitan vision? In eastern Germany, as well as in other post-communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe, populist politicians have been far more effective at acknowledging and engaging with the widespread “sense of loss” (Kuisz & Wigura 2020), which was widely ignored if not ridiculed by other politicians. Adorno also warned that is the fear of loss of privilege which becomes a driving factor for authoritarian politics’ success. For democracy education to be successful today, in eastern Germany, but also elsewhere in today’s world, teachers have to become sensitive and tune in to the emotional sentiment and the traces of real social experience informing students’ political attitudes, at the same time as they dare to critically analyze “flawed social causal frameworks” for what they are, flawed, and dangerous to democracy as well as a peaceful future.

Illouz, E. (2023). The emotional life of populism: How fear, disgust, resentment, and love undermine democracy. John Wiley & Sons. Jackson, L. (2020). Beyond Virture. The Politics of Educating Emotions. Cambridge University Press. Kalmar, I. (2022). The east is just like the west, only more so: Islamophobia and populism in Eastern Germany and the East of the European Union. In Racism in Contemporary Germany (pp. 15-29). Routledge. Kollmorgen, R. (2009). Ostdeutschlandforschung. Status quo und Entwicklungschancen. Soziologie, 38(2). Kuisz, Jarosław and Karolina Wigura. "The Pushback Against Populism: Reclaiming the Politics of Emotion." Journal of Democracy, vol. 31 no. 2, 2020, p. 41-53. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jod.2020.0035. Mau, S. (2024). Ungleich vereint. Warum der Osten anders bleibt. Suhrkamp. Maur, Imke von. "Soziale Wirklichkeit erfassen: Epistemische und gesellschaftspolitische Implikationen einer emotionalen Fähigkeit."Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, vol. 70, no. 6, 2022, pp. 955-971. https://doi.org/10.1515/dzph-2022-0066 Milev, Y. (2021). Entkoppelte Gesellschaft. Ostdeutschland seit 1989/90. New York et al.: Peter Lang. https://www.zhdk.ch/forschungsprojekt/entkoppelte-gesellschaft-552379 Oschmann, D. (2024). Der Osten. Eine westdeutsche Erfindung. Ullstein. Rädel, J. (2019). Two paradigmatic views on right-wing populism in East Germany. German politics and society, 37(4), 29-42. Zembylas, M. (2023). Democratic education in the post-democratic turn: Disenchantment with democracy and the pedagogical potential of ugly and negative feelings. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 18(2), 147-160. Zembylas, M. (2020). Hannah Arendt’s political thinking on emotions and education: implications for democratic education. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 41(4), 501-515.