President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has warned his fellow Germans against viewing political and social problems in the United States with smug superiority, given the increasing divisions and radical politics at home in Germany.
"In my view, we look across the Atlantic with far too much arrogance and think that what has been happening in the United States for many years has nothing to do with us," Steinmeier said on Friday at a conference organized by the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspapers. "But we do not live on an island."
Steinmeier said that Germany is still a long way from what has "manifested itself as a division of society" in the US.
"We have quality media, we still have a high voter turnout by international standards, we have an intensive debate on all political events from Kiel to Munich," Steinmeier said during a discussion moderated by the newspaper's publisher, Berthold Kohler.
Even if that distinguishes politics and social relations from the US, people in Germany still have "lived for far too long in the idea that [they] are equipped with completely different guarantees of stability," said Steinmeier.
There is no guarantee that prosperity and economic growth will be maintained, he said.
