When the election results from North Rhine-Westphalia were analyzed, interpreted and examined for the necessary conclusions at the beginning of this week: It was sometimes as if the aging society was looking at itself in the mirror.

And wouldn't even have the strength to be frightened of one's own aging.

Claudius Seidl

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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The FDP had lost a lot, and obviously that was because they had not succeeded in winning over the elderly, the voters over sixty, to their politics.

It didn't help much that she got fairly good results from the younger, the under-30s, voters.

The CDU had won, which was also due to the fact that they got almost an absolute majority from voters over sixty.

Little did it matter that she only managed third place among voters under thirty, less than twenty percent.

It was thanks to the loyalty of its older voters that the SPD did not fall even further.

And the Greens, who have tripled their result, will only be able to overtake the SPD if they finally get stronger among the seniors.

Who owns the future?

The FDP recognized that a certain anti-pensioner attitude towards inflation aid had cost them votes;

and that with her youthful nonchalance towards the dangers of Corona she probably could not convince the more cautious older voters either.

However, after this election at the latest, everyone has realized that the future belongs to those who take care of the elderly – even if these elderly don't feel old at all, but have remained young, active, healthy and reasonably alert in their heads.

After all, one of their number, 63-year-old Olaf Scholz, hopes that there is still a whole decade of social democracy ahead of him, with him as Federal Chancellor at the helm.

It is a finding that seems to contradict every intuition: that the future belongs to young people and that the parties must therefore win over young people has always seemed to go without saying.

Seven years ago, Jens Spahn, then the young man of the future, and Peter Tauber, then Secretary General of the CDU, announced that the party should not only be available to “old, white men” in the future.

More than a decade earlier, with the same ambition, the Social Democrats had appointed a pop commissioner, the unforgettable Sigmar Gabriel.

And back then, when Joschka Fischer and Jürgen Trittin were in power, the Greens too were plagued by concerns that the party might be a passing phenomenon, a project of the '68 generation,

The realization that things are the other way around comes late;

but it is irrefutable.

In Germany, there were 778,000 people born in 2003, now eighteen to nineteen year olds.

For forty years older people, born in 1963, there are almost twice as many: 1,373,000 people.

And if you look at a graphic representation of the age structure, you are always startled at how the known facts form a picture of numerical superiority.

Among those eligible to vote, those over 50 have the absolute, unassailable majority.

When these people vote according to their own interests, the young have a problem.

Be young - or rather youthful?

And this problem doesn't get any smaller because the elderly don't feel old, because they try to prolong the life phase of their own activity and attractiveness with sport, healthy nutrition, mental and cultural activity.

Your own fitness, your own youthful self-confidence tends to prevent you from realizing that you are one of the older people and that you have correspondingly older interests and demands on politics.

Why should one be interested in youth when one feels oneself to be so youthful?

In this situation one would rather be youthful than really young - especially since we all, young and old alike, inhabit a present in which the decisions have to be made, the changes have to be effected, the consequences of which the younger ones will be grappling with for a few decades longer.

Decisions that will be made by the older people because of their numerical superiority.

The finding seems trivial;

it was always the case that the young found the world as the old had left it to them.

Except that, before the ecological catastrophe, they had every reason to hope that when they finally grew up and were in power, they could do things better.

In view of the number of births, however, this hope is contradicted by the prospect