Although English loanwords have been pouring into German for decades, German has left its mark on English, too. Nobody is going to take Autobahn or Kindergarten away from us. And the much-debated Brandmauer separating Germany’s established mainstream parties from a far-right force whose popularity has soared of late could be the next German word to cross the Channel.

In late summer this year, Germany’s fruit growers issued a Brandbrief – a cry for help, or perhaps more aptly, an urgent appeal – directed at retailers, politicians and consumers alike. The linguistic parallel is tempting: while Brandbrief translates most naturally as a distress call, Brandmauer, outside the realm of fire safety, comes closest to the political concept of a cordon sanitaire.

A bumper crop of contradictions

What prompted the growers’ appeal were, in their words, “images you simply couldn’t make up: In the same warehouse, thousands of tonnes of German apples were being sent for juice processing, while just a few metres away, apples from the Southern Hemisphere were being packed for the fresh market. On German fruit farms, premium sweet cherries were left hanging on the trees because cheap imports were flooding the market.

Plums and blueberries were being traded below the cost of production. More and more growers were asking themselves whether harvesting is even worth the effort. And this year, Germany was expecting its smallest outdoor strawberry crop in more than 30 years.“

That is bad enough. But the 2026 season is not an isolated disaster; it is simply the latest turn in a downward spiral that has been gathering pace for years: “Anyone who sees these developments as nothing more than a bad spell in the market is missing the point. We are witnessing the rapid demise of domestic fruit production. The question is as simple as it is uncomfortable: do we actually want to keep growing our own fruit in Germany?”

In early October, with harvest thanksgiving offering a timely backdrop, the growers brought their message to the public in a striking piece of visual shorthand. They displayed sets of five fruit crates, four of them empty, to highlight the fact that only one-fifth of the fruit consumed in Germany is actually grown there.

The message was hard to miss. But if the answer to the growers’ question is yes, they argue, that yes must mean more than warm words. It must translate into action. Here is how they put it:

“German fruit growers produce to the highest standards of quality, environmental protection and social responsibility. For years, they have been investing in biodiversity, water conservation, climate protection and modern, resource-efficient production methods. They provide jobs, preserve traditional landscapes and ensure short transport distances and value creation close to home.

At the same time, the operating environment is becoming increasingly difficult. Production costs, and wages in particular, are rising sharply. There are no tailored provisions for labour-intensive speciality crops. Running a fruit farm today means dealing not only with extreme weather, but also with political and economic conditions that are increasingly stacked against you.

The consequences are dramatic: roughly every two days a fruit-growing business in Germany now closes forever. More dramatic still is the fact that we seem to have grown accustomed to it.

We talk about regional sourcing, sustainability and security of supply. Yet at the same time, we accept that home-grown fruit is increasingly being replaced by imports. Regionality must not become a marketing slogan that holds good only as long as it doesn’t cost a single cent more.

If we want home-grown fruit, we must also be prepared to make home-grown production viable. Of course, Germany will never be able to grow all the fruit it consumes. But do we really want to accept that our children and grandchildren may one day know German apples only as something that used to be taken for granted?

This is no longer just about fruit growers. It is about how we want to feed ourselves in the future. Do we want to preserve regional food production, or are we content to become ever more dependent on imports?

Fruit growers are ready to do their part. They have been doing so for generations. What they cannot do is fight indefinitely against misguided political decisions, relentlessly rising costs and ruinous competition.

That is why our appeal is directed at retailers and consumers alike: let us make a conscious choice in favour of domestic fruit production now. Not in lofty speeches or advertising campaigns, but in retailers’ purchasing decisions and, ultimately, at the checkout. For one thing is certain: what disappears today cannot simply be rebuilt tomorrow. The choice is still ours.”

The rise of the Wutbürger

The farmers’ anger is hardly new. Around the turn of 2023–24, German farmers took to the streets in force. They first scored a victory in Berlin, protesting against plans to scrap a tax concession, before taking their grievances to Brussels. In early February 2024, they rallied against agricultural red tape, mounting costs and regulatory burdens at the summit of EU heads of state and government.

The protests added to the pressure on the European Commission, which subsequently withdrew its proposal to substantially tighten pesticide regulations. It was a reminder that farmers’ anger, when sufficiently concentrated and visible, can have political consequences.

The figure of the Wutbürger – literally, the “angry citizen” – predates those demonstrations. The term emerged from a protest movement against an infrastructure project in southern Germany. It described educated, relatively affluent citizens, many of them once pillars of the establishment, who had turned against political decisions and officeholders they regarded as hopelessly out of touch.

In hindsight, the Wutbürger uprising of 2010 looks anything but coincidental. In 2013, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the far-right party mentioned at the outset of this article, emerged from a largely academic milieu. What began as a protest against political decisions and perceived elite arrogance would become part of a much broader realignment of German politics.

The Wutbürger never really went away. Resentment towards “the people up there” has spread across all walks of life. The political centre is crumbling, while anger and outrage have become the soundtrack of our times.

Economists, of course, are not exactly known for being an angry bunch. Nor have emotions traditionally played much of a role in their standard models. For a discipline built around incentives, prices and rational choices, anger has long been something of an awkward variable.

But that is beginning to change. Researchers are increasingly recognising that the force of human emotion can sometimes explain more than a central bank’s key interest rate or the second decimal place in a growth forecast.

Why facts fail to hit home

A quartet of economists led by Harvard’s Stefanie Stantcheva recently used millions of individual data points to chart anger in the public sphere dating back to 1870, showing just how deeply emotions shape political attitudes. Anger, in particular, plays a pivotal role.

The researchers trawled through speeches by members of Congress, tweets by politicians and voters, and posts on online forums. Across these very different sources, the verdict was strikingly consistent: anger is on the rise.

Perhaps that helps explain why the German fruit growers’ distress call met with so little response. Their case is rooted in tangible problems – rising costs, squeezed margins, cheap imports and farms closing at an alarming rate. Yet facts alone do not necessarily move people, especially when public debate is increasingly driven by emotion, grievance and distrust.

Sadly, the researchers offer little advice on how to defuse the anger. There is no ready-made formula for turning outrage into understanding, or resentment into constructive action. Perhaps it pays to start small – and simply smile the next time a Wutbürger comes around the corner.

Tim Jacobsen