If The Economist is to be trusted , Bavaria gives the lie to the secularist story of modernity, according to which man has only achieved health, wealth, and education in proportion as he has cast off the fetters of religion and tradition. This deeply traditional and still strongly Catholic Freistaat has “Germany’s lowest unemployment rate, the lowest debt per head and a budget surplus.” Furthermore, “[s]ince 1970, GDP per person in Bavaria has grown faster than in other western German states . . . . Crime rates are well below the German average. In international tests of maths and reading, its schoolchildren outscore their peers from the rest of Germany.”
Now, however, the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) that has governed Bavaria for the past forty years is in danger of losing power. The reason? Among other things, the sucess of Bavaria has encouraged immigration, which has diluted the political power of Bavaria’s conservative, rural Catholics. The new breed of young, cosmopolitan Bavarians tend not to be enthusiastic about preserving Bavarian culture, and feel no duty to support the party that symbolizes it. The Economist notes the irony: “The CSU helped modernise Bavaria; now it is stalked by modernity.”
Assuming that this erosive trend continues, can Bavaria lose its religious and traditional character but keep its enviable advantages? It will be very interesting to look into this petri dish thirty years from now.
