With 270K Germans Leaving, Berlin Imposes Crippling Exit Taxes to Prevent ‘Republikflucht’

Among the many problems bedevilling the West, collectively or individually, mass immigration and the pending massive demographic shifts are perhaps the defining issues of our time.

While I personally abhor the massive Islamisation of Europe—on a personal level because I’m the father of two girls whom I don’t want to live under Islamic law (sic)—this is mainly due to the transmogrification of ‘Islam’ from being quite o.k. to modernise in the third quarter of the 20th century to the stone age-like monstrosity it morphed into ever since. Yes, Western élites have their fair share of blame for this during the Cold War, but this doesn’t begin to even adequately render understandable why these same élites began to massively import Muslims to Western countries in the past quarter-century.

(As an aside, I think the answer to the question ‘Why Islam?’ has to do with the simple fact that Moslems, brainwashed for half a century, appear to make way less unruly subjects, as opposed to citizens, hence the élites’ preference.)

In Germany, the combination of dire future prospects and a strange past, barely understood, now make for a strange development: unified™ (sic) Germany is rapidly morphing into the second coming of the GDR. (ER: Former Communist East Germany)

While the really-existing (pun intended) GDR was consigned to the proverbial dustbin of history (oh, the irony), the womb that spawned this ooze is still not barren: yes, it would be possible to infer malign, anti-German sentiments to the former GDR citizen (sic) turned German chancellor Merkel (in office 2005-21), but that cannot explain adequately why German élites are pursuing policies (sic) that are detrimental to their own future.

It’s become so bad at this point that even (sic) legacy media has now spotted the malaise in the (rotting) heart of Europe: more and more Germans are seeking to leave, with a clear uptick in emigration since—2015. Reasons given range from few, if any, career prospects, high taxes, mass immigration. The answers by the gov’t are equally telling: a crack down (by massively hiking so-called ‘exit taxes’) while legacy media normalises GDR talk, as in what the communist régime in East Berlin considered Republikflucht, which is

German for ‘desertion from the republic’, lit. ‘republic flight’) [and] was the colloquial term in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) for illegal emigration to West Germany, West Berlin, and non-Warsaw Pact countries; the official term was Ungesetzlicher Grenzübertritt (‘unlawful border crossing’). Republikflucht applied to both the 3.5 million Germans who migrated legally from the Soviet occupation zone and East Germany before the Berlin Wall was built on 13 August 1961, and the thousands who migrated illegally across the Iron Curtain until 23 December 1989. It has been estimated that 30,000 people left the GDR per year between 1984 and 1988, and up to 300,000 per year before the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961.^[1]

The above paragraph is from Wikipedia, and I’d recommend the entry to your attention. Leaving the GDR was illegal according to Criminal Law, and while it’s not yet that bad in the present, levelling crippling exit taxes on citizens is perhaps more effective at preventing the tax base from leaving compared to physically shutting down the border.

On a somewhat related note, let’s not overlook one thing: in the below-related legacy media piece, ‘Republikflucht’ is put into scare quotes (making me wonder how much longer these scare quotes will be applied), but the exit taxes are but one aspect to consider: given the experiences of the Covid Mania, Republikflucht may be prevented in the future by way of imposition of vaccination requirements. And if that thought troubles you—which it should—you might wish to read up on the normalisation = institutionalisation of the EU’s draconian Covid Passports, which were adopted by WHO in summer 2023:

So, don’t tell me you can’t envision a future where gov’ts will (ab)use public health™ to keep taxpayers from leaving. Also: act accordingly.

Translation of the below piece mine, as are emphases and [snark].

How Germany Prevents Its Citizens from ‘Fleeing the Republic’ [Republikflucht]

More and more Germans want to turn their backs on their homeland, with its growing mountains of debt and its overwhelmed [orig. überfordert, i.e., incompetent] government. However, anyone who believes that every citizen has the freedom to leave unmolested with their belongings is mistaken.

By Dorothea Siems, Die Welt, 17 Aug. 2025 [source; archived]

Now, what Chancellor Friedrich Merz wanted to prevent at all costs has happened. After 100 days of the CDU/CSU-SPD coalition, the German economy continues to languish [for the fifth year in a row now]. Citizens and businesses are disappointed that the turnaround for the better promised by Merz and Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil is nowhere in sight.

As hasty as it would be to write off a government after such a short time, the resignation is understandable in an industrial nation that has been losing economic strength for more than half a decade [Germany’s manufacturing sector is back to May 2020 levels, as the Wirtschaftswoche, among others, reported]. Politicians’ reluctant fear of reform [orig. Reformangst] hangs over Germany like mildew. And so, these summer days, at garden parties and on the beach, many Germans are once again discussing whether emigrating might not be the path to a brighter future for them or their children [I’m originally from neighbouring Austria—same shit, different smell as regards the prospects—and I’ve lived abroad for 15 years now: check out my comments in the bottom lines]. Guides with tips for a fresh start, whether in faraway Canada [probably even worse than in Germany, at least in terms of its Covid tyranny on a federal level] or neighbouring Switzerland [in my opinion, Switzerland’s the by far best-working country with way higher wages; I lived there from 2010-20, and while Covid addled lots of brains there, too, it’s technically outside the EU and NATO, albeit Brussels’ pressures to assimilate to the BORG are increasing right now], are selling like hot cakes.

Simply turning one’s back on one’s Heimat [you cannot really translate this term, which means both strong local attachments to one’s, well, place of origin plus a larger, imagined/spiritual-potentially common space; do see the referenced work below1], with its aging population, growing mountains of debt, and overwhelmed government—this trend has been observed in this country for some time. Until 2015, the number of German emigrants remained fairly constant at around 140,000 per year. Since then, the flow of German citizens seeking their fortunes elsewhere has nearly doubled to 270,000 [gee, I wonder what happened in 2015 that made Germans to flee their (sic) country].

While most only stay abroad for a short time, to study or for a temporary job, more and more Germans are moving away permanently. The bottom line is that within a decade, Germany has already lost more than half a million natives. Because these are predominantly highly educated, younger people, the loss is enormously painful. This brain drain will further weaken Germany, with its workforce that is expected to shrink sharply despite the large number of migrants [here, Ms. Siems admits—in writing and in legacy media, of all places—that Ms. Merkel’s grand experiment™ to offset demographic shifts with mass immigration is: a failure, and, what’s worse in my view, is that no-one (yet) in politics™, academia™, or legacy media (sic) has had the balls to perform the rocket science-esque calculation 1 (mass immigration) + 1 (population decline) = de-racination of a country’s populace, soon followed by other peoples taking over].

But more and more high-performing individuals in this country are unwilling to allow future-blind policies to deprive them of the fruits of their labour [will that become the groundswell of the coming ‘revolt of the taxpayers’? While I personally would hope for that kind of change to come sooner rather than later, I also consider it highly unlikely as it would require a reversal of 80 years of foreign domination coupled with a re-emergence of national interests as guiding principle, not merely in Germany but also in the other European nations]. The global competition for talent is their opportunity. This applies to IT experts as much as it does to trained craftsmen, doctors and nurses, entrepreneurs, and freelancers. High earners and ambitious young talent know that they will ultimately be the ones to foot the bill for debt service and overstretched social security funds from politicians eager to distribute their wealth [Ms. Siems also notes that unlimited representative democracy—our democracy™—does not work: perhaps she once read Aristotle and Plato, but limited observational skills appear to suffice to recognise this]. The louder the SPD calls for higher income and wealth taxes, the more tempting other locations, with their generally significantly lower taxes and levies, appear [this is a bit unfair to the SPD’s partner-in-mischief, Chancellor Merz and his clown car CDU/CSU who have yet to notice a new levy they dislike (which doesn’t mean the SPD’s love of statism/collectivism is good, to the contrary)].

Anyone who believes that every citizen in Germany has the freedom to leave with their belongings unchallenged is mistaken. The tax authorities are closely monitoring whether they can still extract wealth from emigrants. Keyword: exit tax. The government may be acting sluggishly in many [most] matters these days. But the legislature reacted quickly to the increased emigration: even [sic] under the traffic light coalition [orig. Ampelkoalition, the last gov’t led by Olaf Scholz] government, this tax rule—completely unknown to many locals—was tightened twice. Since then, it has hit with greater force.

Every natural person who holds at least one per cent of a GmbH (limited liability company) or other corporation is subject to the exit tax. Investment funds and ETFs have also been subject to this since the beginning of the year. Even if the emigrant does not sell their shares, the tax is due. The tax office calculates a fictitious capital gain, which is then taxed at the personal income tax rate [it’s the same here in Norway in terms of the gov’t taxing ‘unrealised gains’, i.e., tax collectors are making up what your start-up may be worth and taxing you; needless to say, this is making those who can afford it move away (mainly to Switzerland) while innovation is stifled]. Capital losses, however, are not taken into account. Even if an heir lives abroad, the exit tax is levied upon the death of the testator [see, the cold, dead hand of the gov’t tax office never goes away].

Apparently, Germany once again feels the need to prevent its citizens from ‘Fleeing the Republic’ [Republikflucht]—as it was called in the GDR era. A hefty tax on emigrants was first introduced at the end of the First World War [same as passports, by the way, introduced to control the teeming masses of refugees upon the destruction of the dynastic empires east of the Rhine2], which the German Empire financed through national debt. Nevertheless, many left in the decades that followed.

Dorothea Siems is Chief Economist at Die Welt. She holds a doctorate in economics and received the Ludwig Erhard Prize for Economic Journalism in 2011.

Bottom Lines

We’ve come a long way towards regression to totalitarianisms of the past. It’s very much amazing, if historically quite apt, to equate what Western gov’ts are doing with these exit taxes to previous episodes, incl. the forced confiscation of whatever one owned before deportation.

Now, legacy media is getting rid of many, if not most, taboos in using language once levelled at the Unrechtsstaat, that is,

a pejorative meaning ‘unlawful state’ or ‘unconstitutional state’ (literally, ‘unjust state’) used to refer to a state in which the exercise of major aspects of governmental power is not constrained by the law, as opposed to a Rechtsstaat (constitutional state).^[1] It is used not only as a jurisprudential term but also as a political one.^[2]

As the rule of law is dying before our eyes, force and arbitrary impositions—ranging from Vaxx Passports for entering a restaurant or the like to ‘staying up-to-date’ on whatever imposition—are coming to a jurisdiction near you.

What can one do about it? I dunno, mainly because Western societies have become so materially affluent, brain-addled, and, frankly, disinterested in self-governance and the upholding of the rule of law that I consider it likely that a time of troubles must occur before meaningful change may be imposed.

Or a new dictatorship will come, depending on the character and ulterior motives of those in power once the time of troubles played out.

Also—where to go? I mean, I spent almost a decade in Switzerland before moving to Norway in 2020, and my own take on the former is that it took serious turns for the worse since I left.

Canada with its draconian Covid policies—and current horrible gov’t—isn’t an option, and neither are Australia or New Zealand. Having spent half a year in the US (in NYC, as a visiting professor at a fancy-name place in 2018), I’m unsure if America is a good idea: the problems of Germany are also visible there.

I sometimes long to go back to my own Heimat, but to be honest, I’ve visited Austria frequently since I left in 2010, and I can’t say it has gotten better. But it’s where I’m from, even though it’s easy to envision that this patch of land has changed massively in the past 15 years—and that it will continue to do so in the near-term.

To return, however briefly, to the piece above: 270,000 Germans leaving the homes a year now—that’s almost as high as the number of East Germans leaving before the Berlin Wall was built.

If you can’t read the writing on the wall, you’ll probably take another set of modRNA poison/death juices come autumn.

What, then, can be done? I suppose on an individual level one should strive to be prepared for a range of possibilities, incl. moving away.

The important issue is—to act accordingly.