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Study: Older, educated Germans fill protests

Published: 2 Feb 13 12:37 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/society/20130202-47721.html

The average German protestor is not a politically-engaged student, but more likely an older, well-educated engineer or scientist, it was reported on Saturday.

The “Institute for Democracy Research” sent investigators out to the occupy movement tent cities and to the Stuttgart 21 anti-railroad protest as well as to citizen’s initiative protests against construction projects and to anti-nuclear energy demonstrations, said newspaper theFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

The group found that engineers had replaced social workers in demonstrations and more often than not the activists were male, pensioners or about to be, well educated and either not religious or at most protestant. The group released its report on Wednesday.

“Protestors in Germany come from those who do not have children,” the report said. It said this group was expected to expand between 2015 and 2035, as hundreds of thousands of highly motivated and educated pensioners take to the streets.

The study showed that protests – except when they are about educational topics – are dominated by men. Whoever expected protestors to mainly include those from the lower ranks of the socio-economic rankings would be disappointed.

The researchers found that the average German protestor is “above all a person with a high level of education, with a regular, normally good, income with good social connections and often with a challenging career.”

More than half of those queried were university graduates. It was hard to find the so-called underprivileged, the researchers said.

This is quite different than the protest scene of the 1970s, which was dominated by social science professions. The institute theorized that since many of today’s protests deal with energy, city planning and construction projects, people with technical professions, like engineers, are more likely to protest.

They can show up not only as objective experts, but through their training can produce confident and precise alternatives to what is trying to be pushed through, the report said.

The Local/mw

What do you think? Leave your comment below.


Your comments about this article:

13:36 February 2, 2013 by pepsionice
In a perfect society, why would anyone bother to protest?

If you walk around a hundred Germans....ninety of them would have almost no reason to protest anything. The remaining ten? The folks might protest on something like Stuttgart-21, or taxes, or expansion of the Frankfurt airport, or foreigners in the country, or jobs....but that's just about it. The under-21 crowd have little to complain about.
13:47 February 2, 2013 by smart2012
Pepsionice is Deutschland über alles. There are plenty of things to complain in Germany. Work conditions got worse and worse, and temp agency and 400 euro jobs are crap. Money are less, and housing price is so high that u can hardly survive.

Dictators always tried to keep their people uneducated. Cause they knew that te problem could be represented by educated people. This easily explains the article.

Second, Germans are not a protestor country, as they just follow. This is good for the politician, not good for the people. Example. Hitler
13:50 February 2, 2013 by Eric1
Only people with too much time on their hands, living on the labor of others, have time for such non-sense.
21:33 February 2, 2013 by melbournite
"Second, Germans are not a protestor country, as they just follow."

You obviously have never heard of the Rotfrontkämpferbund or the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund or know that the German Greens were the first Green party in the world in government
00:13 February 3, 2013 by smart2012
Melbourneville, sorry but it is a fact that Germans are followers, history told it already many times. And if 70% of Germans read Bild without telling Bild is crap there will be a reason
00:16 February 3, 2013 by GuidoGoth
Pensioners are the only group with enough time to protest.

HtH
01:51 February 3, 2013 by yllusion
@smart2012 These arguments that date back to Hitler are starting to be unfair and outdated, since today's generation has little to do with people from those times. And the world has changed quite significantly since. It is fairly clear to me that the germans are a very proactive society compared to others in Europe. I see gatherings, reunions, manifestations and protests about many different topics, even morally questionable topics such as the one we have seen recently here at the Local about zoophiles. In many other countries people just sit on their couches and say "meh.. this is the country we have, life sucks". And that is exactly the reason why they are lagging behind countries like Germany.
04:17 February 3, 2013 by vonSchwerin
"more likely an older, well-educated engineer or scientist"

Maybe they are bored '68ers and young pensioners, looking to spend their silver years trying to recapture the enthusiasm and idealism of their youth.

Meanwhile, German Gen-Xers are busing working hard to establish themselves in their jobs, raising families, and dealing with the everyday issues.
08:35 February 3, 2013 by melbournite
@smart2012 I just gave you three examples of years long struggle by Germans against their government (including one against the NAZIs), and you just gave an unsupported assertion. As if people anywhere are in control of their governments. Are Italians to blame for Mussolini, or the Spanish for Franco?
10:57 February 3, 2013 by raandy
melbournite or martin, those were good examples, thanks for the info.
19:32 February 3, 2013 by Englishted
Sadly nearly every protest in German is a green issue ,and judging from who they say protest no wonder social issues don't get a look in.
05:25 February 4, 2013 by RainerL
Yeah! Obviously out of a Job or being paid to do nothing but being neusance. If these People where earning their crust then they would not have the time to do what they are doing.
22:47 February 4, 2013 by zeddriver
If they feel guilty about their success. They should buy their neighbor a Prius.

Of course they have a lot of time on their hands. Don't they have about 2 months worth of holidays here. Nobody seems to be at work in August.
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