Democracy

For a long time it was considered absurd that all people - really all! - were supposed to be equal. Hedwig Richter shows how this revolutionary idea came up and gradually took root, also in Germany. Especially here it was so radically rejected and became the norm again as naturally as nowhere else. Anyone who is afraid of the new authoritarian men today should read this wonderfully lightly written, optimistic book, which shows us the Trumps and Erdogan's of this world as grotesque last survivers.

Low participation in elections makes the alarm bells ring: disenchantment with democracy! But from the beginning, special efforts - from alcohol to money to state coercion - were needed to get people to vote. A better indicator of democratisation is therefore the way the human body is treated: the abolition of serfdom and corporal punishment, increasing prosperity, the humanisation of work, equal treatment of the sexes. Hedwig Richter tells the story of democracy as a chronology of mistakes, coincidences and learning processes with the breach of civilisation by the Holocaust in its center. Her vivid, refreshing book focuses on Germany, because it is precisely the German affair with democracy that makes it clear how internationally binding the paths to freedom, equality and justice are.