The Primacy of Politics

I. The Last Instance

There was a time when even kings had to answer to something greater than themselves. To God. To natural law. To a cosmic order that no parliamentary majority could amend. The Emperor could walk to Canossa and kneel in the snow. The Pope could excommunicate him. There existed — for all the crimes committed in its name — an authority beyond worldly power.

And there was the court jester. The only person at court permitted to tell the king the truth without losing his head. His licence was tied to one condition: he had to clothe the truth in a form the king could bear — as a joke, a parable, a seeming absurdity. But the truth was there. It was heard. It could not be ignored without the king making himself ridiculous.

Both correctives have vanished.

Transcendence — dissolved by secularisation. The court jester — degenerated into an entertainer. What remains is a political class that acknowledges nothing above it and no longer hears anything below.

II. The Böckenförde Vacuum

In 1964, the constitutional scholar Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde — later a judge on Germany's Federal Constitutional Court — formulated a sentence that became the most cited in post-war German philosophy:

Commentator Heribert Prantl called this sentence "the E=mc² of constitutional law". It describes a problem that cannot be solved without destroying the solution: a liberal state requires a moral substance that it cannot enforce through the instruments of law. If it tries, it becomes totalitarian. If it does not, it risks hollowing itself out.

Böckenförde spoke of a "risk". Sixty years later, the balance can be drawn: the gamble has been lost.

Not because democracy was abolished. But because the moral substance Böckenförde spoke of has been exhausted — and no mechanism exists to renew it. Religion, which once fulfilled this function, has lost its binding force. Only 43 per cent of Germans over 16 describe themselves as religious. In the former East, the figure is below 20 per cent.

What has replaced transcendence? The answer is: nothing. Or more precisely: the primacy of politics itself. Politics has declared itself the last instance. It is legislator, judge, and priest rolled into one. It defines what is good, what is permitted, what may be thought. Not through dogma — through something subtler: the administration of the sayable.

III. The Last Court Jester

Georg Schramm, born 1949, qualified psychologist, former fixed-term soldier and reserve officer, was the last German cabaret artist who took his role as court jester seriously.

As Lothar Dombrowski, the cantankerous pensioner with the black hand prosthesis, he dismantled the political system with a sharpness his colleagues did not dare. He spoke about the financial crisis not as an anecdote but as a crime. About the care crisis not as a punchline but as a scandal. About the dehumanisation of the economy not as a joke but as a diagnosis.

What distinguished Schramm from his colleagues was a quality noted by the jury of the Bavarian Cabaret Prize in 2016: "His anger still drives him, his analytical sharpness shuns no depth, and his formidable language — all of it Georg Schramm places in the service of reason."

In the service of reason. Not in the service of entertainment.

And precisely that became his undoing. In a 2013 interview with the Berlin newspaper taz, the interviewer put the paradox to him:

The audience came, laughed, applauded — and went home. Without changing anything. Without seeing anything differently. The laughter was not the beginning of an insight. It was its end. Catharsis replaced action. The applause discharged the tension Schramm had built — and rendered it harmless.

Schramm understood what was happening. He, the psychologist, recognised the mechanism: political cabaret had become a pressure valve. It released the steam the system generated. It offered citizens the illusion of resistance — an hour of controlled outrage in a comfortable seat, with interval drinks and a cloakroom — and thereby stabilised the very system it purported to criticise.

At his farewell, Schramm declared that for his Dombrowski it would be the ultimate punishment to end up as "a poor man's Dieter Nuhr". He stopped. Not because he had nothing left to say. But because he recognised that saying it no longer helped.

IV. The Degeneration of Cabaret

What came after Schramm confirms his diagnosis. The cabaret landscape of 2026 looks like this:

Mario Barth fills stadiums with relationship jokes. Ten million tickets sold. Political substance: zero.

Dieter Nuhr serves the educated middle class with the comfortable feeling of being cleverer than others. His satire has a clear direction: downward. Against activists, against the outraged, against those who still believe in change. Never upward. Never against those who actually hold power.

"Die Anstalt" on ZDF — the successor to "Neues aus der Anstalt", the programme where Schramm once performed — delivers competent research in satirical packaging. Claus von Wagner and Max Uthoff try honestly. But they broadcast on a channel whose supervisory bodies are largely co-appointed by the very parties they criticise. They are the court jester paid by the king. Their reach is limited, their impact channelled.

Jan Böhmermann has definitively transferred cabaret into the television format. His strength — investigative research with a satirical frame — is simultaneously his limit: he is part of the public broadcasting system he comments on. His conflicts are calculated, his provocations priced in.

The comedy scene has entirely absorbed cabaret. Two hundred shows monthly in Germany. Topics: relationships, family, mental health. "Shows used to be political," an industry analysis notes drily. "Today it's about everyday life." Professionalisation is complete: agencies, tour bookings, Netflix specials, social media funnels. Humour as commodity. Entertainment as business model. Insight as disruption.

Dieter Hildebrandt — Schramm's predecessor at "Scheibenwischer" — attempted in 2013 to build a counter-model with the online format "stoersender.tv". Together with Schramm and singer Konstantin Wecker. Hildebrandt died the same year. The disruptor fell silent.

V. The Function of the Valve

The insight that drove Schramm to quit has a long tradition. It goes back to a question as old as theatre itself: does catharsis liberate — or does it domesticate?

Aristotle saw in tragedy a purification: the spectator experiences fear and pity, lives through them vicariously, and returns cleansed. Brecht objected radically: this very purification was the problem. It made the spectator a passive recipient. Epic theatre must instead alienate — wrench the spectator from empathy, force them to think, provoke them to act.

Today's cabaret has chosen Aristotle. Unconsciously, but totally.

The spectator enters the auditorium with a diffuse feeling that something is wrong. Two hours later, they leave with the feeling of having done the right thing — without having done anything. They laughed where they should have grown angry. They applauded where they should have stood up. They paid where they should have refused.

Too much for an entertaining evening. The whole tragedy is in that sentence. For reality is always too much for an entertaining evening. Whoever makes reality entertaining trivialises it. Whoever does not trivialise it becomes unpalatable. Schramm faced this dilemma — and drew the honest consequence.

His successors have chosen trivialisation. Not out of malice. Out of survival instinct. Because the market demands it. Because a cabaret artist who makes their audience weep instead of laugh no longer sells tickets.

VI. Primacy Without Corrective

The absence of both correctives — transcendence and the court jester — produces a political order without precedent in history:

A power that limits itself only through itself.

Germany's Basic Law attempts to assume the role of transcendence. The eternity clause (Article 79, Paragraph 3) declares certain principles inviolable — human dignity, federalism, democracy. But who interprets the Basic Law? The Federal Constitutional Court. Who elects its judges? The parties the Basic Law is meant to constrain. The chain is circular. The Basic Law is no substitute for transcendence — it is a rule book interpreted by those it is supposed to regulate.

The media attempt to assume the role of the court jester. Investigative journalism, satire, commentary. But public broadcasters are controlled by the parties. Private media belong to corporations whose business models depend on the political framework. And digital platforms — the only space where uncontrolled criticism would be possible — are increasingly regulated. Not to combat disinformation. But to secure the monopoly over the sayable.

De Gaulle trusted neither his gold nor his allies and brought 3,000 tonnes back from the United States. He did not blindly trust his own institutions either — which is why he insisted on the nuclear Force de frappe as the ultimate guarantee of sovereignty. He knew: power needs counterweights that lie outside power itself.

Germany has no counterweights left. The churches are empty. The unions are tamed. The intellectuals have fallen silent or vanished into echo chambers. The cabaret artists entertain. The constitutional judges are elected by the parties. The media are supervised by the parties.

It is not that no one tells the truth. It is that there is no longer a place where the truth has consequences.

VII. What Is Missing

What Böckenförde described as a "risk" has turned out to be a loss. Not a loss of religion — that would be backward-looking and wrong. But a loss of the principle religion once embodied: that there exists something greater than today's majority decision.

The Enlightenment replaced religion with reason. But reason has no institutional home. It has no building, no ritual, no congregation. It has no power that could confront the power of politics. It is an idea without infrastructure.

And the court jester? Schramm demonstrated that the role no longer functions in a society that consumes everything. Satire becomes a commodity. Provocation is priced in. Dissent becomes content. Everything that is said is instantly absorbed, classified, resold — and thereby neutralised.

At the end of his final programme, Schramm recommended the audience read Stéphane Hessel's "Time for Outrage!". He was well aware that his own art was no longer sufficient. That the role of the court jester only works when the king still listens. And when the audience does not merely applaud, but acts.

Neither was any longer the case.

VIII. The Dilemma

The dilemma is structural and has no simple solution:

Return to religion? Impossible and undesirable. Secularisation is an achievement, not an accident. But it left a vacuum that would need to be filled — by something transcendent without being religious. By principles that are not up for negotiation. By a commitment to the long term that extends beyond the legislative period.

Return to the court jester? Impossible in a society that has blurred the distinction between entertainment and enlightenment. Schramm could still play the role because he came from a tradition — Hildebrandt, Hüsch, Kittner — in which cabaret had a political function. That tradition has been severed. What grows in its place is comedy. Not because the young artists are less talented. But because the market, the media, and the audience demand nothing else.

Returned — and then taken away again. Because there was no one to pick it up.

What remains is the primacy of politics. A power without transcendence that considers itself absolute. A power without court jesters that no longer needs to fear anyone telling it the truth. A power that does not fill the Böckenförde vacuum but exploits it — because in the absence of any higher authority, the ruling majority of the moment becomes the last instance.