marginal revolution read out: Florian Schneider, RIP
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Today's post from Marginal Revolution is Florian Schneider, RIP. The author's opening note is short: one of the titans, and yes from the BRD.
That first entry carries the same title as the post and serves as a brief memorial note. The author places Florian Schneider among the titans, and ties the statement to the BRD, the Bundesrepublik Deutschland, or West Germany.
The second link is titled from the BRD. It points to a longer essay by Tyler Cowen called Bundesrepublik Deutschland, published in late September. The author's commentary on the link is that same sentence: one of the titans, and yes from the BRD.
Cowen begins with the scale of the transformation. At the end of the Second World War, Germany was one of the sickest and cruelest societies in history. Not many years later, it had become one of the best and most successful. By the nineteen eighties, living standards had caught up with the United States, and public goods were sometimes superior. The country was democratic, pro-Western, and largely pro-American. The rail system and postal service, he says, were among the best ever created.
He then runs through the intellectual and cultural record. In thought, there were Hans Blumenberg, Habermas, Peter Weiss, Gadamer, late Heidegger, late Carl Schmitt, Reinhart Koselleck, Klaus Theweleit, Niklas Luhmann, and members of the Frankfurt School. In visual art, there were Richter, Polke, Baselitz, Beuys, Penck, and Palermo. In music, there were Stockhausen, Henze, Lachenmann, Rihm, Zimmerman, Kraftwerk, Can, all of Krautrock, and later techno. He adds that it is hard to think of anywhere better for hearing opera.
Literature gets a slightly more qualified mention. The author says he may prefer Austrian and Swiss fiction, but Germany was an extraordinarily literate country, with remarkable bookstores and a strong list of domestic writers, including Böll, Patrick Süskind, Siegfried Lenz, Wolfgang Koeppen, Uwe Johnson, Arno Schmidt, and, though he does not like Grass, he says it would be wrong not to list him.
He also mentions food, especially in the southwest, Michelin-starred restaurants across the country, well-functioning cities, excellent transit, nuclear power, a strong industrial base, and the excitement and mystery of West Berlin. He notes the Autobahn's lack of a speed limit, though he is less sure that was a virtue. Then he asks what the worst thing was: no Sunday shopping, discrimination in shopping and work hours against women, too much smoking, or the national obsession with Waldsterben, the fear of forest death.
The final turn is darker. After unification, he says, so much seems not to work well, so many policy mistakes have been made, so much leadership has been lost, and so much pessimism, sadly, seems justified. He asks where all the good performance went, and why it left. Possible answers include the loss of the communist enemy, the absorption of East Germany, or simply the growing distance from pre-war German creativity. The essay ends with a line: Johannes, we hardly knew ye.
Taken together, the two entries make a small, pointed tribute. The first is a one-sentence memorial. The second is the author's fuller case that the BRD was an extraordinary achievement, a country that produced a remarkable run of art, thought, and music, and a context for calling one of its figures a titan.