BERLIN — Germany's hero bin is nearly empty and the mood is sour.
Business and political scandals are making for a cynical public. The economy is stagnating for a fourth year. Welfare cuts are ruffling the utopian spirit, and German ingenuity seems like a ghost from another time. Outgoing President Johannes Rau says the nation has spiraled into a "collective depression" caused by an elite that runs on "egoism, greed and self-righteousness."
One need only listen to the mutterings of cyclists in the Tiergarten here to realize that there are chinks the size of Volkswagens in the Teutonic pride. Germans are wondering how so much has gone wrong in a land full of promise. They are learning that past laurels and ideologies mean little and that reinvention, even for a nation that spawned some of the best minds of the last century, is necessary to thrive in the global marketplace.
"Germans are feeling like they're in a trap," said Hans Fleisch, an entrepreneur who bemoans the German bureaucracy he sees as hampering the capitalist spirit. "The future isn't bright, and the solution isn't visible. Hope has diminished, especially among businesspeople. They are angry and frustrated."
Such sentiments represent more than a fleeting bout of malaise, but few are giving up on one of the world's largest economies. Germany has become more prominent in world affairs -- opposing the U.S.-led war in Iraq and lobbying for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. The nation will be a leading player in the newly expanded European Union, and this year it helped defuse the crisis over Iran's nuclear plants.
Yet Germans don't feel inspired. The desire for a singular German accomplishment has reached such a pitch that an 18-year-old recently arrested for creating the "Sasser" computer worm has been quietly praised for his innovation. The daily newspaper Die Welt wrote that some Germans "could not help but harbor clandestine admiration for the effectiveness of the worm," which disabled computers around the world.
"We're starting to take a mocking, shoulder-shrugging view of ourselves," said Rau, who leaves his largely ceremonial post July 1, in a recent speech.
He added: "Haven't we perhaps talked ourselves down to the point that we no longer trust ourselves to do anything right?"
