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Crashes, risks and helplessness: lately, the news about the euro crisis makes us incredulous on a daily basis. Yet, it is about far more than a currency; Europe’s cultural identity is at stake. We need a Europe of the people, demands Klaus-Dieter Lehmann.

On Goethe’s birthday in late August, the Goethe-Institut conferred this year’s medals in Weimar to three great Europeans who stand for a cultural and autonomous Europe: Ariane Mnouchkine, John le Carré and Adam Michnik. In contrast to this, we are presently experiencing the ticker of the daily news, beginning with the opening of the stock market in Tokyo, then leading over to Frankfurt and London, and ending in New York, to begin again in Tokyo.

The other clock is the euro with its bailouts, some bigger, small smaller, the debt “haircuts,” the risks of the European nations of Greece, Italy and Portugal as bankrupt states, the contagiousness and the helplessness of the political decision-makers. We, or those who experience this news day for day, stand before it either in astonishment or incredulousness. It’s not really our world.

The largely economic focus of the EU federation of states as a monetary union apparently is not enough to develop a community awareness that is resilient even in crisis. As long as the paymaster could pay, everything was okay. We did not need to think very much about other areas of life; the euro would take care of things. But now, at the possibility of a breakdown of Euroland, we tangibly experience the weakness of the ties than bind Europe. And since the dangers are of a direct nature, there is little time for major reforms. Again, the focus is exclusively on the fiscal sphere and political or socio-political aspects are disregarded.

Perhaps this way of thinking is related to our social change over recent years. While at one time, the market economy system usually affected only one segment of life – the production of goods and services – lately we have been experiencing major repercussions in all areas of life. Everything must subordinate itself to the principle of the utilitarian and the profitable. Jürgen Habermas speaks of a colonization of the living environment. We can observe this in sport, in how we organize our leisure time, also in the arts, in the scramble for ratings by public broadcasters. In times of crisis, political decision-making abilities are additionally undermined or at least greatly limited by the autonomization of inherent necessities. That is what we are presently experiencing in Europe.

Historic milestones have already been achieved with the community treaties, the European Community and the European Union: the development of a place of freedom, of security, of free movement. So, the older generation has its stories. But, what does the younger generation have? How, today, do we create a binding and emotional relationship to Europe? Do we have new stories to tell? The European Union has expanded considerably geographically and also given the new acceding countries prospects. Yet, in political growth, we are hesitant. And there continue to be democratic deficiencies.

Culture as part of and means for European processes

It is no wonder that the lack of transparency leads to increasing renunciation by the citizens and the rising feeling that Europe is ordered from above. It is not about the Europe of those governing or the elites, but about the Europe of the citizens. This is also where the work of the Goethe-Institut comes in, as an actor for education, for culture and for civil societal activities. Europe is also and most of all its culture, it is and always was an educational project. And Europe is more than just Euroland. It is a matter of the political power of the culture. It is not a private playground for artists and intellectuals, it is also not the raw material for commercialization, but is the foundation of our society, for being open and thinking innovatively. This applies in particular for Germany, as a “middle country” with its nine neighbouring nations.

Foreign cultural and educational policy is called upon more than ever to face its responsibility for Europe as a cultural region that belongs together. Cultural diversity should be able to communicate itself, to act reciprocally and be understood as an object of knowledge, of science and of education. This makes culture more than just a collective term for an identity or for vague national sentiments. It makes it part of and means for European processes.

Acceptance in its own country remains the basis for foreign cultural policy. Only when it is understood that home and abroad are no longer separate worlds can we develop competence for Europe and ultimately for the world via actively shaped relationships. Without local competence we can have no credible long-distance competence. That is why Europe, with its wealth of cultural forms of expression, is a pool of insights and experiences, not for competition between systems, not for instrumentalization by politics, but for a learning community that enables an imaginative conversation with and in the world.

There is more than the utilitarian and the profitable. There is a responsibility for a mutual cultural space, which in its freedom, its diversity and in the positive acceptance of its differences is Europe’s unique strength in the world. New stories can be written with these. What former foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher demands is also the obligation of the Goethe-Institut: “Germany is not just a leading economic nation, we are a cultural nation. This alone forbids us to allow an economization of the image of Germany in the world. This is why foreign cultural and educational policy is more than an ornamental appendage to our foreign policy, and certainly not an aesthetic means of promoting foreign trade.”

Klaus-Dieter Lehmann is the president of the Goethe-Institut. His article first appeared in the Tagesspiegel on 12 October 2011.