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In today’s newsletter: the last word on the asylum debate?; who won the TV debate; and a closer look at drug policies.

Intervention from on high

Let’s face it, octogenarians haven’t had a great 12 months. When Joe Biden managed to make Donald Trump look like the most cogent person in the room in a TV debate last summer, he appeared to put the final nail in the coffin of the gerontocracy.

But an even older representative of the over 80s has made an intervention in the German election which is proving to be surprisingly influential. This time around, the octogenarian in question appears to have rescued the dictum that wisdom comes with age.

Heinrich August Winkler. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Heinrich August Winkler, 86, is one of the most respected German historians alive today. A retired professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin, he is the author of several standard works on German history and the recipient of the Große Bundesverdienstkreuz, the country’s highest order of merit.

This weekend, Winkler decided to intervene in the debate around Germany’s asylum laws. In an article called “the German asylum myth” he took Olaf Scholz and the SPD to task for claiming that the German constitution provides every individual who applies for asylum in Germany with the chance to have their case heard.