Baden-Württemberg – Rooted at Home, Engaged with the World

How did a state with exceptionally strong local and regional ties become at the same time one of Europe’s most internationally connected centres of business, science and everyday life?

To an outside observer, Baden-Württemberg may initially appear to embody a contradiction. In few places are origin, region and locality cultivated so naturally: Badeners remain Badeners, Swabians remain Swabians, people from the Palatinate remain people from the Palatinate; dialects are not merely spoken but form part of people’s sense of themselves, while associations, municipalities, churches, festivals and local traditions continue to structure social life in many places. And yet this state is remarkably outward-looking. Its companies sell machinery, cars, pharmaceuticals and technologies across the world, its universities and research institutes attract people from many countries, and millions of its present-day inhabitants, or their families, themselves came from elsewhere.

Perhaps what is distinctive about Baden-Württemberg is precisely that these two sides have not become opposites. A sense of home and openness to the world have not displaced one another here. They have helped to produce one another.

Indeed, the very notion of an ancient Baden-Württemberg homeland is historically curious. Baden-Württemberg is younger than the Federal Republic itself. After the Second World War, south-western Germany was divided into Baden, Württemberg-Baden and Württemberg-Hohenzollern. Only a fiercely contested referendum led to their unification; on 25 April 1952, the new state came into being. In South Baden, more than 62 per cent had previously voted for the restoration of the old state of Baden. Opposition did not disappear after the new state was founded. Only in a further referendum in 1970 did almost 82 per cent of Baden’s population vote to remain within the united state. Baden-Württemberg is thus the only present-day German federal state whose creation resulted directly from a referendum.

This is more than a historical curiosity. It tells us something about the character of the state. Baden-Württemberg did not come into existence by erasing its older identities. It arose above them. Baden and Württemberg, Hohenlohe and the Electoral Palatinate, the Black Forest and Lake Constance, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, Mannheim, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Ulm and countless smaller towns and communities did not have to cease being themselves in order for a common state to emerge.

Perhaps the answer to our original question begins here. Home need not mean that everyone is the same. Home can also be a place in which people are rooted differently and nevertheless form something together.

Politically, this principle is particularly evident at the local level. Baden-Württemberg is not a state whose social life is organised exclusively from Stuttgart. Much happens in municipalities, associations, volunteer fire brigades, church communities, sports clubs, cultural initiatives and voluntary organisations. According to the state government, around 41 per cent of citizens are engaged in voluntary civic activity, most of it directly within their local communities. Municipal self-government is therefore more than an administrative arrangement; it forms part of the state’s political culture.

Yet political culture is not static. One of the most intense conflicts in the state’s recent history demonstrated precisely this. The protests surrounding Stuttgart 21 became an experience of what can happen when part of the population comes to feel that political and administrative decisions are being made too far away from them. From 2011 onwards, the state government responded by developing its Politik des Gehörtwerdens – a “politics of being heard” – and expanding new forms of public participation. One need not agree with every aspect of its implementation to recognise something characteristic in this: political belonging, too, must continually be renewed.

The apparent tension between home and the wider world becomes still more striking when we turn to the economy. Baden-Württemberg possesses an economic structure that is at once locally rooted and globally dependent. Alongside internationally famous corporations stands an enormous industrial and Mittelstand landscape. More than 1.4 million people work in industry; almost 30 per cent of gross value added is generated by manufacturing. Mechanical engineering, automotive manufacturing and electrical engineering predominate, and a large proportion of their output is sold abroad. In 2025, companies in Baden-Württemberg exported goods worth around €241 billion.

What is interesting is not simply the magnitude of these figures. It is the geography behind them. A company may be based in a comparatively small town or municipality, its history tied to that place for generations, while its customers, suppliers and employees are spread across several continents. The local and the global do not first encounter one another at Stuttgart Airport. They meet in workshops, laboratories and family businesses.

Behind this lies an older cultural disposition: problems are not merely discussed but dismantled, measured, constructed and – where possible – solved. Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler came from the south-west; Robert Bosch later explicitly combined technological innovation with entrepreneurial and social responsibility. Yet the more important story is not a genealogy of celebrated inventors. It is that invention itself became an infrastructure.

In 2023, 5.7 per cent of Baden-Württemberg’s entire economic output was devoted to research and development – compared with 3.2 per cent in Germany and 2.13 per cent in the European Union. The state therefore ranks among Europe’s most research-intensive regions. Universities, universities of applied sciences, companies and non-university institutions form a research network extending far beyond the state’s borders.

A particularly important expression of this connection between science, business and social responsibility can be found in healthcare. Baden-Württemberg has four university hospitals, in Freiburg, Heidelberg, Tübingen and Ulm, combining highly specialised patient care with research and medical education. They are complemented by the Medical Faculty Mannheim of Heidelberg University and University Hospital Mannheim, as well as the Central Institute of Mental Health. The four state university hospitals alone have around 6,900 beds, treat more than 250,000 patients as inpatients and around 1.5 million as outpatients each year, and employ approximately 33,000 people. Around 18,000 medical students are trained in the state.

Here, too, however, the real strength lies not in the number of hospitals. It lies in the connection between treatment, research, teaching and commercial innovation. Baden-Württemberg participates in numerous German Centres for Health Research, spanning cancer and infectious diseases, cardiovascular and pulmonary conditions, diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases. Heidelberg is also home to the German Cancer Research Center, while the Heidelberg Ion-Beam Therapy Center is one of the internationally outstanding facilities of its kind.

A significant health industry has developed around this scientific medicine. Pharmaceuticals, medical technology and biotechnology form another important part of the state’s economy. An analysis commissioned for the state put the gross value added generated in 2021 by human pharmaceuticals alone at €6.5 billion, medical technology at €4.1 billion and biotechnology at €3.3 billion. Around 43,600 people were employed in human pharmaceuticals, 49,300 in medical technology and 22,200 in biotechnology.

Perhaps nowhere is Baden-Württemberg more clearly revealed as a place that is simultaneously home and part of an international community of knowledge. A patient from the region may be treated in a hospital where scientists from around the world conduct research; a therapy developed there may later help people on other continents. Research then becomes more than an economic asset. It becomes a form of responsibility.

The future of this strength will depend on whether Baden-Württemberg can connect medicine, biotechnology, medical technology, digitalisation and artificial intelligence even more closely. The state already possesses an unusual concentration of the necessary building blocks: patient care, university medicine, fundamental research, industrial development and a strong Mittelstand. We should not merely administer this combination. We should expand it.

Yet it would be a mistake to turn a portrait into a hymn of praise. The economic model that made Baden-Württemberg prosperous is itself under pressure. Real economic output fell by 0.6 per cent in 2025, the third consecutive year of recession. Industry has been particularly affected. The automotive sector and mechanical engineering simultaneously face digitalisation, artificial intelligence, the transformation of propulsion technologies, Chinese competition, high costs and geopolitical change.

Perhaps it is precisely now that we will discover whether the much-celebrated Tüftlerland – the land of inventors and ingenious problem-solvers – remains a living reality or has become merely a fond memory of past achievements. Tradition has a future only if it can change. One can be proud of Carl Benz while still understanding that Carl Benz, were he alive today, would have to invent something new.

The connection between home and openness to the world becomes still clearer when we look at the people themselves. Baden-Württemberg today has more than 11.2 million inhabitants – over four million more than when the state was founded. More than three quarters of this population growth is attributable to immigration. After the war came displaced persons and refugees, later the so-called Gastarbeiter, workers from other parts of Germany, refugees from civil wars, people from eastern Germany after reunification, and eventually new arrivals from across Europe and the wider world. In 2024, around 3.55 million residents had a migration background, almost one third of the population.

This changes the meaning of home.

If home meant only that those belong whose ancestors have lived in the same place for centuries, present-day Baden-Württemberg would be inconceivable without a substantial part of its own population. Economically, too, without those who came here, the state could scarcely have become what it is today. Openness to the world is therefore not merely a moral self-description. It forms part of the state’s biography.

The interesting question, then, is not whether Baden-Württemberg is a homeland or a country of immigration. It is both. The more difficult task is to turn arrival into belonging. That also entails expectations of those who come: home does not arise merely because one resides somewhere. It grows through language, relationships, work, neighbourhood, responsibility, participation and a willingness to carry something of the common life. Equally necessary is the willingness of those already here not to reduce belonging to ancestry.

Perhaps this is a contemporary understanding of home: home is not only what we inherit. Home is also what we continue to build together.

Culturally, too, Baden-Württemberg can hardly be reduced to a single centre. More than 1,200 museums and museum institutions are distributed across the state; alongside internationally renowned institutions in Stuttgart and Karlsruhe are open-air, regional and local-history museums, many supported by volunteers. Theatres, orchestras, conservatoires, festivals and independent cultural organisations are found far beyond the state capital. At the same time, Fasnet, traditional dress, religious processions, dialects, craft traditions and local festivals continue to thrive.

Perhaps this is the most remarkable cultural feature of all: an internationally renowned ballet and the local Fasnet need not justify themselves to one another. A research institute staffed by scientists from around the world and a Swabian or Alemannic dialect can exist only a few miles apart. High culture, folk culture, science, industry and immigration do not form a contradiction-free unity – but they do form an extraordinarily dense landscape.

And perhaps this is precisely where a misunderstanding needs to be overcome. Openness to the world is not the opposite of rootedness.

Those who confuse openness with the dissolution of all differences ultimately make the world poorer. We do not have to eat the same food everywhere, celebrate the same festivals, speak the same dialects or tell the same stories in order to live together. Conversely, home becomes dangerous when love of one’s own turns into contempt for what is foreign. Between these two errors lies a wide space.

Baden-Württemberg has lived in that space since its foundation.

The state itself arose from difference. Its economic strength grew from companies that were often deeply rooted locally and, precisely from that position, ventured into world markets. Its scientific and medical strength depends upon international exchange. Its population growth would be inconceivable without immigration. Its political culture, meanwhile, remains strikingly anchored in municipalities and civic institutions.

Perhaps Baden-Württemberg therefore became open to the world not despite its attachment to home. Perhaps, in important respects, it was precisely from strong roots that it acquired the confidence to look outwards.

But this must not become a source of complacency. A state that depends on exports must confront a changing global economy. A state that depends on research must not allow innovation to suffocate under bureaucracy. A state with such powerful medical and healthcare infrastructure must ensure that scientific progress reaches people. A state whose prosperity was built in part by immigrants must make belonging possible while also expecting common rules and shared responsibility. And a state with strong local traditions must ensure that home does not become a closed door.

But security is part of home as well. A Christmas market, a church, a synagogue, a mosque, a town festival or a political gathering must be places where people can come together without fear. Attacks on such places do not merely attack individual people; they attack the freedom to live together in public. Baden-Württemberg must therefore identify violent extremism, whatever its origin, at an early stage, equip its security authorities accordingly, and intervene decisively where radicalisation threatens to turn into intimidation and violence. The rule of law and fundamental rights must apply without qualification. Openness to the world does not mean defencelessness. Anyone who wishes to live, worship, celebrate and express an opinion peacefully in Baden-Württemberg should be protected. Anyone who intimidates others or prepares acts of violence must know that this state will defend its freedom.

Baden-Württemberg is only 74 years old. Perhaps that is a useful reminder that home need not always be ancient. Sometimes a new political order can emerge, allow older identities to endure, welcome millions of new people and nevertheless, over time, become a home itself.

Home and openness to the world are then not opposites. Home tells us where we stand. Openness to the world determines how far we can see from there.