External interactions become crises if existing resources for handling changes are not enough respectively are not experienced sufficiently. That means crises are challenging existing resources for activity, economic, social and cultural resources or institutional standards as well as aspirations. So they offer reason to reconsider aims and instruments, to introduce learning processes and reforms. This also refers to the changes after 2008, experienced as global economic crisis. Accordingly good material is being offered in order to examine successful and not so successful patterns of handling. The emphasis of the following paper is on the Federal Republic of Germany, presently being comparatively successful in managing the crisis. At the same time the development in other European countries is included to gain an outline for the present short analysis and to derive first generalizable conclusions.