Personal Essay Explores Widespread Exhaustion and Burnout in Contemporary German Society

A personal essay by author Ebru Tasdemir examines the pervasive experience of exhaustion and burnout in modern German life. The text describes a state of constant fatigue that affects half of the German population, detailing daily routines where people rush to offices in the morning only to collapse on couches in the evening. Tasdemir questions the origins of this collective weariness and whether it was similarly prevalent in the past. She notes that stories of exhaustion typically focus on the aftermath, while her writing captures the in-between phase where outwardly successful individuals—with jobs, children, healthy diets, and exercise routines—internally feel drained and depleted. The essay appears in the current issue of the publication Freitag.