Is “change” generally accepted in our society? If so, under what conditions? What about acceptance in areas where change is actually taking place? Do East and West Germans view change differently? And finally, are attitudes toward transformation influenced by regional environments?
These and other questions are addressed in the current Deutschland-Monitor 2025 in its current focus topic “How ready for change is Germany?”
It also includes current data on the population's attitudes toward satisfaction with democracy, populism, trust in political and social institutions, perceived responsiveness of politics, social cohesion, life satisfaction, and the current assessment of reunification. One result of the survey stands out: the majority of the German population is by no means generally weary of change. Just under a quarter (23%) of respondents are open to and ready for social change and tend to see it as a social opportunity. A good half (52%) are undecided about transformation, giving neither clearly positive nor distinctly negative assessments of change. A quarter (26%) are critical of or opposed to change and primarily associate change with social risks.
The Germany Monitor is a newly developed scientific study on political attitudes and social moods in Germany, which has been conducted annually since 2023. The study is carried out by a consortium of scientists from the Center for Social Research Halle (ZSH), the Institute for Political Science at the University of Jena, and GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences Mannheim. The Deutschland-Monitor was initiated at the suggestion of the Commission 30 Years of Peaceful Revolution and German Unity and is being funded during its four-year test phase from 2023 to 2026 by a grant from the Federal Government Commissioner for Eastern Germany. In order to capture the Federal Republic's regional diversity, the Deutschland-Monitor is based on a methodologically innovative approach using two samples. The first sample, with approximately 4,000 respondents, represents the population aged 16 and over in Germany. The second sample is a regional sample in selected structurally strong and structurally weak urban and rural districts in eastern and western Germany, with a further 4,000 respondents who are also representative. Thanks to this unique study design, both Germany-wide and regional developments can be examined and contrasted with each other. In addition, qualitative focus group interviews are conducted in four districts, which deepen the findings of the standardized surveys. In 2025, the nationwide representative survey took place in April/May, the regional in-depth survey in July to September, and the focus group interviews in September and October of that year.
The full report is available on the project website https://deutschland-monitor.info/.