Germany, once a beacon of order and economic might, is fraying at the edges, with its education system sounding the alarm. Die Welt, as cited by Mandiner and Remix News in August 2025, paints a grim picture: schools overwhelmed by migrant students who barely speak German, rampant violence (97 incidents daily in 2024), and a crippling teacher shortage projected to hit 56,000 by 2035. The paper's stark conclusion — "Berlin is everywhere" — suggests a nation unravelling under the weight of poorly managed immigration, from the 1960s guest workers, to the post-2015 influx. This trajectory, critics argue, is Germany "leading the charge to dissolve itself," eroding the cultural and educational foundations that sustain its economy. But if it all falls apart, how would local capitalists, Germany's industrial titans and entrepreneurs, fare? The answer: not well. A collapsing social order threatens the stability, workforce, and markets that capitalism needs to thrive.
Germany's schools are in "hell," per Die Welt, with language barriers at the core. In Ludwigshafen's Hemshof district, 98% of Gräfenau elementary school students are migrants, speaking little to no German. Principal Barbara Mächtle debunks the myth of "language immersion," noting that children remain in "Arab, Turkish, Afghan pools," mastering only a 50-100-word slang insufficient for professional life. A third of first-graders risk repeating grades, not as punishment but to "save" them from falling further behind. This isn't isolated, 40% of Berlin students and 38% of elementary students nationwide have migrant backgrounds, per Remix News.
Violence compounds the chaos. In 2024, Germany recorded 35,570 school violence incidents, including 743 involving knives, with 40% of violent crimes tied to foreign students. Teachers, stretched thin, act as social workers, managing aggressive behaviour often linked to cultural differences, such as students expressing Islam "aggressively" in class. Meanwhile, a teacher shortage, 14,000 vacant positions now, potentially 80,000 by 2030, forces curriculum cuts and four-day school weeks. In Mannheim, principal Andreas Baudisch laments that fourth-grade math now relies on pictures, as many students can't formulate sentences or perform basic operations.
These issues stem from decades of immigration without adequate integration. Die Welt traces the waves: Italian, Greek, and Turkish guest workers since the 1960s, followed by a post-2015 surge from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Policies assuming automatic assimilation have failed, leaving schools as battlegrounds where German language and culture recede. A 2023 Robert Bosch Foundation survey found 80% of principals in underprivileged areas cite staffing as their top challenge, with half unable to accept more migrant students. This isn't progress, it's a system buckling under its own weight.
The Die Welt narrative frames Germany as dissolving its identity through unchecked immigration and inadequate integration policies. The 2015 migrant crisis, welcoming over 1 million people, strained schools already grappling with earlier waves. A 2022 government study noted declining fourth-grade math and German skills across all states, blaming an "overburdened" system and non-German-speaking students. Education Minister Karin Prien's July 2025 suggestion of migrant quotas (30-40% per class) sparked backlash for its impracticality and potential discrimination, highlighting the lack of viable solutions. The German Teachers' Association, while rejecting quotas, calls for more language experts and social workers, but bureaucracy hinders hiring foreign teachers, like Ukrainians, who could ease the load.
This dissolution isn't just cultural, it's structural. The Inklusion initiative, meant to integrate all students, lacks resources, per Memesita. Schools in deprived areas, where migrant students are concentrated, face poorer equipment and funding, exacerbating inequalities. Andreas Schleicher, OECD education expert, warns that neglecting migrant students' language needs destabilises entire schools. The result is a vicious cycle: underfunded schools, overworked teachers, and disengaged students, with 35-65% showing learning gaps, per the 2023 German School Barometer. If Germany can't educate its youth, it risks a generation unprepared for its high-skill economy.
Local capitalists, Germany's Mittelstand, tech giants, and industrial powerhouses like Volkswagen and Siemens, rely on a skilled, stable workforce and a cohesive society. If the education system collapses, the economic fallout would be severe. First, the labour pipeline would dry up. Germany's economy, driven by engineering and manufacturing, demands workers fluent in German and proficient in technical skills. A 2024 German Economic Institute study estimates a need for 1.5 million skilled workers by 2030, yet schools producing graduates with only "basic slang" can't meet this demand. Indian students, who learn German faster due to home practice, are an exception, but most migrant families lack this focus.
Second, social instability threatens markets. School violence and cultural fragmentation, as seen in Ludwigshafen's 98% migrant schools, erode social trust. A 2024 Pew survey found 55% of Germans view immigration as a strain on public services, fuelling resentment. If unaddressed, this could spark unrest, disrupting consumer confidence and investment. The 2023 French pension protests, costing businesses €1 billion, show how social discord hits profits. A destabilised Germany, with declining education and rising violence, risks similar economic paralysis.
Third, teacher shortages and curriculum degradation weaken innovation. Germany's R&D sector, contributing 3.1% of GDP in 2024, depends on educated talent. If schools prioritise pictures over text-based maths, as in Mannheim, future engineers will be scarce. The Robert Bosch Foundation warns that 70% of principals need more funding to address learning gaps, but Germany's €2 billion COVID catch-up program failed, especially in deprived areas. Capitalists face a shrinking pool of innovators, threatening Germany's edge in global markets.
Germany's dissolution isn't inevitable, but it requires bold action. Streamline foreign teacher credentialing, only 2% of Germany's 800,000 teachers are non-EU, despite demand. Invest in mandatory language programs before school entry, as Prien suggests, with €20 billion already pledged for migrant-heavy schools. Enforce discipline to curb violence, as 40% of teachers report burnout from managing behaviour. Capitalists could fund private training academies, as BMW does for apprentices, to bridge the gap. Without these, Germany risks becoming a cautionary tale, a nation that invited diversity, but forgot to build the systems to sustain it. A lesson in white national suicide.
For capitalists, a fractured society is bad business. A workforce that can't read, write, or innovate, coupled with social unrest, spells declining profits and global irrelevance. Germany must reverse course, slash immigration fuelling this inferno, prioritise language integration, bolster schools, and restore stability, or watch its economic engine crash. The "hell" in its classrooms is a warning; ignoring it would be economic suicide.
"German schools are dealing with "hell." That's the conclusion reached by Die Welt newspaper, as cited by Hungarian outlet Mandiner. Based on numerous case studies, it is clear that "far too many children are being sent to school who can barely concentrate and, above all, who do not speak German."
Families, children, and teachers are suffering the consequences of the bad policies from politicians. In short, they "have failed." One major issue is the death of the German language itself, across Germany.
In the Hemshof district of Ludwigshafen, for example, barely a word of German is heard. The students in the district's Gräfenau elementary school are 98 percent migrants.
Welt indicates that plenty of Asian, African, and Slavic languages present, but as Germany has become a nation of migrants, the German language recedes.
"Italian, Greek, Turkish guest workers since the 1960s, and since 2015, the rest of the world," Die Welt writes about the progression of immigration waves in the country.
The school principal in the Hemshof district, Barbara Mächtle, has been vocal about the issues.
For example, some 40 first-year students, a third of the year, may not be ready to enter the second grade. According to the newspaper, Mächtle "knows the tricks to cover this up, but he doesn't use them." For example, these children are enrolled in the second grade, but then "voluntarily drop out" on the first day of school. Machete refuses to play these games and will force these students to repeat the grade – "not to punish them, but to save them."
Mächtle also dispels the illusion that being surrounded by German, migrant kids will "absorb it on their own." She says there is no "language immersion" because children "hear everything except German."
"No child here is swimming in German waters, they remain in their Arab, Turkish, Afghan pools," and "at best they develop a basic slang, a German of 50-100 words, which is enough for the street and the schoolyard, but not for a profession that can be understood even partially," Welt reports.
And then there is the violence inflicting schools, which the paper calls a widespread fire, not just here or there. In 2024, the authorities registered 35,570 school violence incidents, an average of 97 per day; 743 of these involved a knife. Students also express their religion, Islam, "aggressively" in the classroom. As Remix News has reported, 40 percent of all violent crime in the German school system is from foreigners. In addition, many of the German students have a foreign background.
This has created a situation where teachers are expected to be social workers first, taking immense time away from their actual work as teachers. With these students, the parents are not doing their jobs in preparing children to behave properly in the classroom.
It is no wonder teachers are leaving the field, and many are discouraged from entering, which is yet another major issue: a massive teacher shortage.
In Germany, it is no longer possible to provide the current student population with trained teachers. In the countryside, people are not applying for teaching jobs, and in the cities, teachers cannot afford to pay the rent, so many people apply for teaching positions immediately after graduating, only to quickly fail.
"In the past 20 years, fourth-grade maths assignments were often purely text-based. Today, books are full of pictures to make understanding possible at all," bemoans Andreas Baudisch, the principal of the Humboldt primary school in Mannheim.
"Basic operations are a great deal of work for many children. Many cannot formulate a complete sentence," says the principal. There are some bright spots. Children from Indian families learn German better in four months than those born here because 'they practice at home, they are interested in it,' and this is something that is lacking in many other people who are second or third generation Germans living here."
Die Welt warns that no so long ago, these issues could only be found in troubled neighborhoods of Berlin, a situation that "horrified" people in the rest of the country.
"That's over, Berlin is everywhere," the paper writes.