On 29 April 2015, ZEIT published a remarkable editorial by deputy editor-in-chief Bernd Ulrich that made big waves in the political world. His text, “Warum sagen sie nicht, was ist?” (“Why don’t they say what’s going on?”), contained a fundamental criticism of Germany’s political class, which Ulrich accused of nothing less than dangerously repressing political reality. His thesis: “Never before have German politicians dodged the truth to this extent.” The truth – that is, the unsolved major crises of our present, which cause fear not just in the population at large but among politicians themselves: the flood of refugees, the Greek crisis, the European Union and Euro’s uncertain future, the war in Ukraine, the fundamentalist threat of ISIS and the breakdown of entire states in the Arab world.
In the face of this threat scenario, Bernd Ulrich emphatically formulates a demand for openness and honesty in confronting reality and criticizes the dominant policy of appeasement, which destroys rather than improves prospects for constructive solutions by political leaders. His self-critical examination also hones in on the role of the media. His polemic, now expanded to book-length form in “Sagt uns die Wahrheit!” (“Tell Us the Truth!),” looks for the roots of this public tendency to repress and downplay even as it calls for a new political culture of openness and fearless dialogue between politicians and the population, on an even playing field.
