Book about inequality: “Poor people are constantly trying to survive”

taz: You write autobiographically and scientifically about poverty - why?

Ramona Wuttig: Poverty is not a sad individual fate, it is something that affects millions of people. Figures are repeated like a prayer wheel in the media - for example, that a fifth of the population cannot afford a week of vacation or that child poverty is increasing. But no outrage arises from this. Instead, we want to believe the fairy tale of meritocracy: everyone is the creator of their own luck.

Born in 1991, Master in Sociology and Bachelor in Psychology, currently studying law, lives in Erfurt. Runs the channel @klasse.gesellschaft on Instagram and Tiktok

taz: Do you need an emotional appeal in order to understand?

Wuttig: I tried from time to time to only publish videos and posts with facts and figures. That was hardly clicked. So I post a photo of myself in our dirty living room and say, "I am me. I'm twelve years old and my teeth were black." People react because they see: It's about this one girl.

taz: Why doesn't poverty in Germany cause more outrage?

Wuttig: I think a lot of people are not aware of two things: Firstly, that most of us are closer to basic security than to a billion. And compared to a billion, even a million isn't money at all. Second: Poverty is more than having little money. The entire life is affected: participation, education, food and even death.

Angry: A quarter of all men from the lowest income group do not live to see their pension. There have been studies on this for decades and yet it is hardly an issue. And if so, the reason is usually blamed on the individual: "Well, look at him, he also drinks, smokes and doesn't do anything for himself. Then he just has a heart attack and dies at 58."

Ramona Wuttig: "All advancement is difficult. Poor, East German, working-class child - the lie about equal opportunities", Rowohlt-Verlag Hamburg 2026. 252 pages, 18 euros

taz: How do you explain the apathy of politicians in this regard?

Wuttig: There are two possibilities: One is that politicians know nothing about the extent of poverty, but I can't assume that. The other is: you know it and you calculate it. The pension system no longer works. If all low-income earners also reached the age of 80 or 90, the current system would be over long ago. This also means that the higher you set the retirement age, the fewer people, especially poor people, experience it.

taz: In your book you write about the stress that being poor causes.

Wuttig: You spend a lot of time thinking about the near future: How do you get to the end of the month - and not just with toast, please? You don't ask yourself: When will my house be paid off? Or: Will I be able to travel well in my retirement? I still feel the same way today, even though I've gotten better financially: What will I do when I'm 40? No idea! I'll see what happens tomorrow. Then comes a new month and – oh God, now it’s Christmas!

taz: “Oh God!” because gifts have to be bought?

Wuttig: Showing emotions was difficult in my family. Firstly, because poor people are constantly busy trying to survive instead of living. In my case, I grew up with my grandparents. They belonged to the post-war generation and were brought up with a hard hand. I hugged my grandfather for the first time on his deathbed. An “I love you!” didn’t exist. But there was a: “I wear old aprons that are falling apart so I can give you a guitar for Christmas.”

taz: You moved to Erfurt alone at the age of 16 to attend high school there - what was that time like for you?

Wuttig: On the one hand, it was my absolute luck to get out of this precarious situation so early. This was due to my persistence, but also to individual people who made a lot possible for me. For example, renting your own apartment as a minor. At the same time, my move caused me to completely collapse. It wasn't until I finished my studies that things slowly started to improve.

taz: What was particularly important to you when writing the book?

Wuttig: I wanted to write a book for every demographic. That means: no academic talk and, if possible, no technical words. My editor and I paid a lot of attention to this. I want to be understood.

taz: I particularly remember a scene from the book: As a teenager, you walk noisily through the city center with your friends, throwing fries around and annoying passers-by. A moment of resistance!

Wuttig: The passage speaks to something that is generally important to me: people can be annoyed by my book. It is important to me that people affected by poverty feel seen. That they dare to talk about their experiences and are not ashamed of their situation or think that they have to make themselves small.

taz: Are poor people in the East doubly marginalized? Not much is said about the income gap between East and West

Wuttig: Except when we talk about the AfD. Then it says: "Look how blue the East is! They're all Nazis, they're all stupid." You can no longer say that very well, because the West is now following suit. But there was a time when the comment columns under newspaper articles were full of suggestions like: "Let's just build a wall around the East again. Then we'll have solved the Nazi problem."

taz: What could an approach look like?

Wuttig: The East – and by that I mean the people of the East – must take place. And everywhere: in the media, in politics, in business, in administration. Where decisions are made, there must be faces with whom one can identify, with whom one can discuss, and from whom one can learn. I like to compare this to the gender pay gap. The East-West gap is similar to the unadjusted gender pay gap. The absence of East Germans in the judiciary, politics and entrepreneurship is numerically similar to that of women.

Wuttig: No, that's not what I want to say. Because what is an Ossi anyway? Do I have to be born in the area of ​​the former GDR or can I have moved here? How many years do I have to have been growing up in the East if I moved away later? What I'm interested in is to think more deeply about the East-West issue, similar to what is already the case with regard to gender, sexuality or migration background.

taz: What do you think about the current political developments?

Wuttig: One bad piece of news follows the next: the welfare state is being dismantled, sawing on eight-hour days and employee rights in general... I think the psychotherapist regulation is particularly bad. People die because they don't have good access to mental health care. I didn't get an ADHD diagnosis until I was in my early 30s because the waiting lists were closed everywhere. If I had had severe depression, it would have been much more life-threatening.

Angry: strike. A strike is the employee's means of building pressure against the otherwise much more powerful employer - and thus also on politics. Incidentally, union loyalty is much lower in the East than in the West, similar to party loyalty. This, among other causes, also leads to lower wages, less collective bargaining and worse working conditions. There are many opportunities here to improve something structurally.

taz: What can you do as an individual to be less classist and discriminatory against the East?

Wuttig: In my observation, classism is particularly common among highly educated people. They think it's enough to believe that all people are equal. However, if they do not explicitly deal with the issue of poverty, they may consider themselves to be left-wing while discrediting poor and East German people as stupid. Unless privileged people make a big effort to learn about inequality, they often simply don't see it. This is no different for me in other areas: I have to actively deal with racism in order to understand what it means for those affected and when I behave racistly myself.

taz: How could the relationship between East and West be improved?

Wuttig: A fifth of people from West Germany have never been to the East. Maybe you can lure them there to become more familiar with each other. We are one country - you can also come to Erfurt from Schweinfurt.