Each year the Anholt-Ipsos Nation Brands Index asks people in 20 countries how they see other nations. In 2022, with 60 nations rated, Germany came first for the eighth time and for the sixth year in a row. Ipsos Austria announced the result as Deutschland erneut Imageweltmeister, Germany image world champion again. Respondents rated German products particularly highly. In 2023 Germany fell to second place. In 2025 it was still second.
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Trust at Home
In 2021, 64 percent of German consumers said they trusted German products very much. By 2024 the share had fallen to 54 percent, according to the pollster YouGov. A YouGov survey of February 2025, commissioned by the classifieds platform Kleinanzeigen, found that only about a third of consumers still see the label as important for quality and safety. Only 12 percent believed that German products are technically superior.
A Party’s Report on Its Own Defeat
After the SPD’s defeat in the federal election of 2017, deputy party leader Olaf Scholz demanded a schonungslose Betrachtung der Lage, an unsparing look at the situation. There should be no more excuses in the search for causes, he said. The party leadership under Martin Schulz commissioned an outside working group to analyze the campaign. Its report appeared in June 2018 under the title Aus Fehlern lernen, learning from mistakes. “Die SPD ist in der Krise. In der womöglich tiefsten seit 1949.” The SPD is in crisis, possibly the deepest since 1949. The report says that crisis communication was not among the strengths of the Schulz team.
The Annual List of Defects by Car Model
Every year the German inspection organizations publish the TÜV-Report, the results of the main vehicle inspection, the Hauptuntersuchung, model by model. The TÜV-Report 2026 appeared on 20 November 2025. It is based on about 9.5 million inspections from July 2024 to June 2025. More than one car in five, 21.5 percent, had major or dangerous defects. Among cars two to three years old, the Tesla Model Y came last of 110 models, with a defect rate of 17.3 percent. The Mazda 2 was the overall winner.
Many Employees Hold Back
For its DGB-Index Gute Arbeit, the German Trade Union Confederation analyzed the answers of 8,011 employees to three questions on the climate at work in 2018. Almost half of them, 44 percent, described the climate for expressing opinions in their workplace as critical. These employees dare to raise problems with superiors or management not at all, or only to a small degree.
Tired of the Coalition’s Quarrels
In August 2023 the polling institute Forsa asked Germans about the disputes inside the governing coalition of SPD, Greens and FDP. Thirty-five percent said they understood that the three parties argued because their opinions differed. Sixty-one percent said they were so tired of the constant disputes that they no longer listened closely to what the disputes were about. The coalition broke apart in November 2024.
The First Chapter of a Thesis
Many German theses open with a section called Problemstellung, the statement of the problem. University guides set out what it must contain. A guide from the FOM University of Applied Sciences asks students to formulate here the questions the study will answer and to explain why they chose this research question. The goals of the work follow in a separate section. A bachelor’s thesis guide at the Free University of Berlin asks students to delimit the topic clearly in the introduction. The introduction should not anticipate the main part.
Typically German, Say the Germans
In autumn 2012 the brewery Oettinger commissioned a survey on German virtues. According to the Tagesspiegel, 90 percent of respondents said that virtues such as reliability, diligence and order were typically German. Two thirds also admitted that Germans are not all as honest, punctual and conscientious as people always think. The newspaper also quoted Winfried Kretschmann, Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg, on troubled large building projects such as Berlin’s new airport: “Wir ruinieren doch mit solchen Desastern allmählich unseren Ruf als Ingenieurnation.” With disasters like these, we are slowly ruining our reputation as an engineering nation.
Bureaucracy, in Germans’ Own Eyes
In a YouGov survey for the German Press Agency, published in January 2026, 89 percent of adults in Germany named bureaucracy as typically German. Punctuality followed with 78 percent and diligence with 64 percent. Fifty-six percent named fear of change. In July 2026 a forsa survey for the civil service union dbb found that 79 percent of citizens think the state is overwhelmed by its tasks and problems. Only 17 percent trusted the state to solve its problems, a new low. Eighty-six percent said a clear reduction and simplification of official rules was important.
A Mentality of Improvement
In April 2016 the Federal Agency for Civic Education published an essay on start-ups in Germany. Its authors, Nancy Richter and Thomas Schildhauer, wrote: Aber man muss wissen, dass die deutsche Innovationsmentalität eher inkrementelles Wachstum und damit die Verbesserung von bestehenden Produkten, Services, Prozessen und Geschäftsmodellen unterstützt. (But one must know that the German innovation mentality tends to support incremental growth, and with it the improvement of existing products, services, processes and business models.) Incremental innovation, they noted, needs investments whose use and results can be planned fairly well. According to the innovation reports, Germany is very well positioned in it.