A class-based perspective is not a theory. It’s what differentiates a city seen from the street level from how it appears in the media and expert opinions.

Germany? But where is it?

Hamburg is a unique city. Here, the SPD consistently wins elections, Turkish locals sit in neighborhood restaurants, and Islamists share a district with the LGBT community and drug dealers. These are the streets I walk, and this is my perspective on Germany. And on elections.

To get to Hamburg, I first have to leave my forest.
500 meters to the bus stop, 600 meters to the nearest neighbor, one and a half kilometers to the nearest village, 300 meters to the nearest nature reserve. And this is nothing unusual in Lower Saxony. The Luneburger Heide region is the potato heart of Germany, an area of agriculture, forests, and tourism. In season, it’s full of German retirees.

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This region is also special because, for over a hundred years, it was closer to London than Berlin when Hanover and England were in a personal union. And Prussia was, essentially, an occupier. The Kingdom of Hanover was annexed by Prussian troops in 1866 during the Austro-Prussian War. That was also when Prussia began subjugating the free Hanseatic cities of Bremen and Hamburg, a process the Nazis…