The Prussian state still runs Germany

As the state expands and the economy stagnates, a privileged class of officials is drawing growing resentment — and deepening the divide between those inside the system and those on the outside.

Dear Reader,

Germany is often described as a country that reinvented itself three times in the first half of the 20th century.

First there was the strictly hierarchical Prussian monarchy, which was swept away by the chaotic Weimar Republic. That in turn was overthrown by a fascist dictatorship. And from its ruins emerged the liberal democracy that governs Germany today. Each step is typically framed as a clean rupture with what came before.

That is not quite true. Despite the upheaval of that period, fundamental aspects of modern German democracy are better understood as a democratic refashioning of the Prussian state than as an import of Anglo liberalism. Laws that police speech, for instance, have their origins in the Prussian state. However, the clearest expression of that continuity is the survival of the Beamtentum — a class of public officials whose lineage stretches back well before 1918.

The modern German state still rests on the figure of the Beamter: a public official who swears…