There are these placatory sentences. "It'll all be fine" is one. They suggest optimism without providing any reasons for it. "Germany will remain Germany" is another such tranquilizer, prescribed to reduce anxiety and enable people to relax. And it's true, isn't it, that we felt reassured when the Chancellor pronounced this simple sentence in the Bundestag last week? The message is: This country is not going to change so much that we'll feel as if we don't belong here - regardless, almost, of how many more refugees come in.

Yes, Germany is changing. That is the issue. And many people are afraid of this change. But hasn't the country changed repeatedly over the years? Certainly. The last time was in 1989. Remember the horror scenarios that did the rounds back then: A bigger Germany would start behaving like "Greater Germany" again; or the East would ruin the prosperity of the West. Leading left-wingers like Oskar Lafontaine or Günter Grass were particularly vocal amid the choir of scaremongers. If it had been up to them, they'd rather have left things as they were: divided.

Foreigners have always come to Germany

And think how (West) Germany changed in the 1960s and '70s, when the "guest workers" arrived. We begged them on our knees - the Italians, the Portuguese, and above all the (Muslim!) Turks and Kurds - to come and do all the work no Germans could be found to do. Back then, too, it was supposed to be for a limited time. Hence the "guest" before the "workers." There was no mention of them staying. But they stayed. Did it destroy the country?

Then there are the hundreds and thousands of Poles who, in the 19th century, left their homes in Eastern Europe to work down in the coalmines in Gelsenkirchen or Herne. This too was a historic change that completely altered German society, in the Ruhr region, at least. For the better, mind you.

And then there are all the insidious societal changes nobody talks about because they can't be tied to specific events or political decisions. How, for example, has the Internet changed the whole structure of trade right across the country, particularly in the smaller towns? Where are there still villages with shops? Living in the countryside nowadays often means living among mainly old people. And instead of shops, there's now a swingers' or sauna club in every other small town - without anyone getting upset about that. Only a minority of people attend the churches that would have mobilized against such institutions 50 years ago - despite all the talk on Germany's populist right about the Christian West.

So although change is the rule rather than the exception, it seems nonetheless to be the biggest worry of our time. Our most direct experience of this is not in terms of major political acts or acts of state, but in the workplace. For many 40- to 55-year-olds - the so-called "Middle Generation" - the tempo of constant "optimization," both in the office and in manufacturing, is disturbing. And it doesn't just annoy people; it makes them ill.

The recurring theme in our lives

Permanent reinvention has long since become the recurring theme of our lives - for every individual, for every company, for local authorities, the Christian churches, the state. The refugees' arrival is now fuelling basic fears. But feeling out of place in one's own country has little to do with these new arrivals. This unease is older; it is solidifying now because some sectors of our society think they have put a face on the enemy.

It's a snapshot of a particular moment in time. In fact, what has been changing in Germany since the summer of 2015 is a task to be addressed by a generation, not a single legislative period. If Angela Merkel intended her phrase "Germany will remain Germany" to mean that we Germans have always experienced change and have always coped with it, she's right about that. The country keeps moving forward, because to stand still is (usually) detrimental.

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