Six months into the genocide in Gaza, a group of German civil servants wrote to Chancellor Olaf Scholz voicing opposition to his government’s support for Israel’s crimes against international law. His coalition’s policies, they explained, are in contravention of the German constitution. While they did speak to the press, over six hundred signatories and supporters of the letter chose to remain anonymous “due to . . . [its] sensitive content and the excessive state repression that criticism in this area is met with.”

The silent desperation of these nameless duty-bearers recalls the rather pathetic incognito acts of arson in the 2009 movie The White Ribbon — Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke’s cinematic parable about life in a mythical German village ruled by fear and tyrannical hierarchy. Set in 1913, the film depicts a bitter world of suffocating deference, where openly challenging the powerful is simply not an option for women, children, and peasants oppressed by hated patriarchs.

Germany’s Stiftungen — state-funded political foundations — have articulated no similar critique of government positions, anonymously or otherwise. Unlike civil servants, generally expected to maintain neutrality, these foundations are mandated to stimulate political engagement. Most of their funding comes from Germany’s federal budget. The best known are Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (Christian Democrats), Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung (Die Linke), Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (Greens), and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (Social Democrats). The last, the oldest, celebrates its hundredth anniversary next year.