For the first time since reunification-era surveys began, the gap between pocketbook anxiety and geopolitical fear in Germany is widening in the wrong direction. The R+V insurer's 2026 "Germans' Fears" study — 2,400 respondents, ages 14+, surveyed May through July — finds 59% of Germans cite the rising cost of daily life as their top concern, up from 52% last year. Energy, housing, and food prices are the named culprits. Financial leeway for leisure and purchases is shrinking in real terms. The hierarchy of anxiety is revealing. Cost of living sits at 59%. Fear that refugees are overwhelming the state is at 52%, holding third place. Fear that Trump is making the world more dangerous has cratered to 45%, down from 69% during his first term in 2018. Fear of war involving Germany dropped to 34% from 41%. Job-loss anxiety hit an all-time survey low at 20%. Germans are not panicking about the world — they are panicking about their own budgets. Political scientist Isabelle Borucki, who consulted on the study, identifies the core mechanism: rising taxes and social-contribution hikes are now widely expected, and the question has shifted from whether the burden will grow to who will carry it. Both the state pension fund and long-term care insurance are chronically running deficits. "Behind the fear of higher taxes and benefit cuts lies the question of fairness," she said. "People wonder who will bear the costs of modernization." The Merz government draws the sharpest criticism. Germans gave their politicians an average grade of 4.1 on the 1-to-6 school scale — barely a pass. The CDU-SPD coalition that took office in May 2025 was elected on promises of leadership, less infighting, and a rapid economic turnaround. Borucki's verdict is blunt: "There is now a gap between the grand announcements and tangible results. People are disappointed and losing confidence." The declining fear of external threats is not optimism — it is habituation. Brower-Rabinowitsch frames it plainly: "After years of constant geopolitical alarm bells, people are starting to get used to it." This is a population that has metabolized the Ukraine war, Trump's return, and refugee surges into background noise. What they have not metabolized is the monthly grocery receipt. The structural picture is a slow squeeze. Social insurance deficits require either higher contributions or benefit cuts. Energy transition costs are passed to consumers. Housing construction lags demand. None of these resolve on their own. The political class gets a near-failing grade precisely because voters sense this trajectory and see no credible plan to alter it. Voter turnout in the 2025 state elections in Saxony-Anhalt, Berlin, and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania was notably high — Germans are engaged, not apathetic. But engagement without perceived results breeds the precise disappointment this survey documents. The risk is that a politically active electorate with eroding purchasing power and eroding trust in governing institutions becomes fertile ground for populist alternatives that promise simple solutions to structural problems.
