Since German reunification in 1990, Europe’s political center has steadily gravitated from Brussels to Berlin. In clashes over the eurozone’s future, Angela Merkel’s government has consistently posed as the defender of order and stability, as against the chaos unleashed by the debtor nations.

Yet the situation is not so pretty in Chancellor Merkel’s own backyard. With both its main centrist parties slumping in the polls and the far right on the rise, analysts’ attention has turned to the social ills underlying the country’s veneer of success.

Author of the recent book Germany’s Hidden Crisis, Oliver Nachtwey spoke to Jacobin’s Julia Damphouse about the decline in upward mobility, the falling expectations among young Germans, and the reasons why the post-World War II political order has begun to crack.