Transformationsinfarkt

I brought a word with me today, so that – before we start remembering – we can better comprehend the present day that we are remembering back from. And of course, at the end I will remember something as well – namely, a barber shop conversation.

I'm using the term ‘Transformationsinfarkt’ [transformation failure, cardiac arrest, infarction] to attempt to describe a state in which continuous change and constant adaptation to new conditions suddenly come to a standstill. This can be caused by different factors such as political measures, economic crises or societal resistance. In the past few years, transformation has been the motor for change and development – "progress". But now a ‘Transformationsinfarkt’ is threatening to set in – a sudden standstill.

In today’s world, which is characterized by fast changes and constant optimization, the word ‘Transformationsinfarkt’ serves as a metaphor for situations in which progress and innovation are suddenly stalled.

Austerity policies, also known as a radical budget cutting, serve as the legitimation or necessity for it. However, – and I'll get to this soon – it is not the only shift, because we have known periods of austerity since the bank crisis or before that. The austerity measures are especially applied to the fields of health, social affairs, education, culture and the environment. Here, budget cuts in social services lead to an exacerbation of social inequality, since especially disadvantaged groups are affected, such as hybrid or solo employees, for example in the performing arts.

Austerity policies also mean a standstill in structures, the begin of decay for infrastructures such as streets, bridges and public buildings such as schools.
Reduced means compromise the quality and availability of services in the areas of education, health and social security.
Cultural institutions such as museums, theaters and libraries are strongly compromised when their budgets are cut; this leads to a decrease in cultural offerings.

Civil society organizations, which are often reliant on state support, can also be limited in their community services.
Cuts in climate and environmental programs can interfere with the protection of natural spaces and battling climate change.
In addition to austerity policies, a political agenda is dominating to thwart progressive developments. These two political fields of influence are coinciding.

Radical right-wing movements are currently applying five different strategies:

1. Mobilization and propaganda 
Emotional appeals: Right-wing movements often use emotional and identity-focused issues to mobilize people. They appeal to fears and insecurities that are created due to social changes. They are adept at using social media and other platforms to spread their messages and gain supporters.

2. Political strategies 
Right-wing extremist movements influence politics and work closely with political parties or found their own parties to advance their agendas.
Due to their political power, they can block or delay progressive law initiatives. In the meantime, they can even set political agendas to limit progressive developments – not least by democratic forces taking up these unconstitutional policies.

3. Cultural and social factors 
Right-wing movements propagate the return to traditional values and norms. They often emphasize national, ethnic or religious identities in order to create a supposed unity of the people and subvert progressive approaches.

4. Reaction to progressive movements 
Right-wing movements are often created as a reaction to progressive movements. They partially take over their protest forms and discourses in order to achieve their own goals. They try to discredit progressive movements and polarize society in order to gain support for their own positions. In the meantime, they have started attacking activists in a targeted way.

5. Economic interests 
Right-wing movements receive support from those economic stakeholders who profit from national conservative policies. Therefore, they invest to oppose measures that would advance the redistribution of resources and power to disadvantaged groups.

These five factors contribute to the ability of far-right movements to slow down progressive developments and push through their own agendas. 

The road to a Infarkt is paved when these strategies coincide with austerity policies at local, state or federal levels.

This is the political reality in 2025; if it is true that capitalism needs precisely these crises and fuels them, then we must ask ourselves: what can we remember as a society, as a pluralist assembly of the MANY within the borders of the nation states of the 19th and 20th centuries, in order to meet the challenges of the future? How do we remember times that initially bore the symptoms of transformational failure and often led to an Infarkt, a “cardiac arrest” for thousands or even millions of people just a few years later?

It is often the inhumanity, the horror at the end of reason that we justly remember, or the sporadic resistance of individuals as a generational therapeutic measure. But we know very little about why societies really collapsed. What changed people so much as human beings? A conversation I had with my Yugoslavian hairdresser decades ago - and he made a point of it - keeps popping into my head as a very personal memory:

An emotional and long talk about racism – towards him and his family – here in this country which then led our thoughts to the initiation of war in Kosovo. Ivo and his family were given asylum and later opened up a little barbershop in the Ruhr area close to the apartment I had back them. What I haven’t forgotten since this visit to the hairdresser was his experience of powerlessness when he said: It started with a few crazies – that’s what we thought – who started marching, waving regional flags. And then more and more people began telling bad stories about each other, and there were bigger and bigger rallies, attacks on people because they came from a different region or prayed to a different God. But suddenly there were only evil people all around us, in our own city, in our neighborhood or in our circle of friends. Overcome by his memories, he had to cry, as I then did with him and his memories.

And I can tell you, these days I often think about this most emotional haircut that I have ever gotten. 

Suddenly there are evil people all around you - I now have an idea how it works, how people can become so evil that they can deny persecuted and threatened people the right to asylum, to a place as a home (whether first, second or third) or the right to love or even to life.

As Hannah Arendt described it, evil can “devastate the whole world, precisely because it continues to grow like a fungus on the surface”. What I understand today is that evil must be combated and prevented - not the opinions, attitudes or behaviors that are not my own, but the toxic malignancy that proliferates in extremist attitudes, opinions and people.

This is the challenge for think tanks, also and especially in art and culture. We have stories for this, and for this we need strong dramaturgies that pose content-related challenges to aesthetics and forms. After all, theater is a secular specialist for GOOD and EVIL. Let's reverse the spiral of hate. Let's work towards more love and a pluralist community. Let's set in motion a transformation of the human. This will allow us to further develop our coexistence in a climate-friendly, non-discriminatory and open-minded way, free from ideology and to simply define it as a good future.

I wish you many insights as you remember.
Thank you.