Adventures in Germany: Stuttgart, Mercedes-Benz and the Arts and Sciences
Stuttgart: A Harmonious Blend of Science and Art
On Tuesday, 28 April 2026, during my trip to Germany, I visited Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof (the central railway station) beneath the high tower with its conspicuous Mercedes‑Benz symbol. Nearby is Königstraße (main pedestrian area). Further along is the Kunstgebäude (the art building), known for the aptly named exhibition Das kalte Herz (The Cold Heart), where ancient stories meet contemporary art under the intriguing tagline "a cold heart warmly written.”
These images show that Stuttgart embraces both science and art, which Kenya needs. Stuttgart built the revered Mercedes‑Benz and Porsche and still has art. In Kenya, we have bitterly argued about whether the sciences are “better” than the humanities, but Stuttgart has shown that we need both.
A Dual Legacy of Engineering Excellence and Literary Richness
Germany’s reputation as an engineering hub is world‑renowned. Say the country’s name to almost any Kenyan and they will picture a silver Mercedes star or Porsche’s rearing stallion (“German machines”). Interestingly, both Mercedes‑Benz and Porsche have their headquarters in Stuttgart. It is the German city that gave us the phrase associated with Mercedes‑Benz: Das Beste oder Nichts (“The Best or Nothing”), signalling the world‑class German aim to deliver top‑tier engineering.
Yet to reduce Stuttgart to machines is to tell only half the story. Stuttgart is also a city of books. Walk away from the engineering museums, follow the city’s slopes to the Stadtmitte (the central part of the city), and you enter one of the most extraordinary publishing ecosystems. Over 200 publishing houses in the Stuttgart region publish around 300 newspapers and magazines and 5,000 book titles every year.
Global Publishing Giants and Historic German Traditions
The publishing giant that gives Stuttgart its global literary reach is the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, which owns Macmillan Publishers. Macmillan is one of the “Big Five” English‑language publishers, in the league of Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster.
Stuttgart also hosts Klett‑Cotta (under the Klett Group), a publisher with roots in the historic Cotta tradition—the very house that first published Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. Goethe is the kind of writer who mixes reality with the eerie and startling, leaving one thinking: this is just like us in Kenya.
Embracing the Goethe: Beyond the Faustian Bargain
Goethe’s masterwork is Faust. The story is simple—and shocking: a brilliant man, dissatisfied with the limits of knowledge, makes a deal with the devil by selling his soul in exchange for power (the famous “Faustian bargain”). In Kenya, we know this reality: watching our own leaders, brilliant men and women who entered public life with seemingly genuine purpose, who then made their Faustian bargains and became tribal lords.
Goethe himself embodied the art–science paradox that Stuttgart represents. He was, at once, a lawyer, a civil servant, a novelist, playwright, scientist, botanist, and philosopher. He believed the fully lived life required all of them. When Kenya debates whether a child should study engineering or literature in this CBC era of pathways at Grade 10, Goethe’s life offers a direct response: the greatest minds refuse to be confined. The greatest minds should explore. That is what we should emphasise to our children as they navigate their CBC pathways. Children should not be forced to do what their parents want them to do, because children are different from their parents (and sometimes parents channel their failed dreams through their children).
The Interplay of Art, Politics, and Language: Lessons from Germany and Kenya
Another brilliant German writer is Thomas Mann, the 1929 Nobel literature laureate. Mann’s masterwork Doctor Faustus ties the collapse of an individual directly to the political collapse of a nation, arguing that art and politics cannot be kept separate: they mingle to make or break us. Kenya, too, has sometimes indulged in this separation, celebrating artists while keeping them at arm’s length from political life and commentary.
There is one more lesson from Stuttgart. Germans speak German. President William Ruto recently remarked that Kenyans speak better English than Nigerians—a comment that generated anger and laughter and maybe also an uncomfortable truth. Is linguistic prowess in a borrowed tongue a mark of national achievement or a measure of how far we have drifted from ourselves? The question is not whether Kenyans should speak English. Of course we should. English is a global tool, and we wield it well. The question is what we are doing with Kiswahili—one of Africa’s great literary and commercial languages—and with the dozens of mother tongues that carry the accumulated wisdom, humour, philosophy, and grief of our communities.
Embracing Diverse Narratives: Lessons for Kenya from Stuttgart
Standing in Stuttgart, one is reminded that national identity need not be a single side—what Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie called “the danger of a single story.” Kenya is sometimes tempted to define itself by a single story: its athletes.
The lesson for Kenya’s schools is clear. The debate between sciences and humanities is a false war. The greatest societies do not choose between the two; they build institutions, curricula, and funding frameworks that honour both.
The lesson for Kenyan publishing is that Kenya has a long literary tradition and a growing literary scene anchored by the Nairobi International Book Fair and the Kenya Publishers Association’s efforts to support the reading culture. But we still have a long way to go to build a publishing infrastructure that competes at the global level. Stuttgart, it turns out, has more to say to Kenya than the price of a Mercedes spare part.
The writer assists people in documenting their memoirs.
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