Germany and the Germans ...

What a strange time, this last month during the football world cup 2006! What on earth happened to good old steady Germany? This country seems to be going crazy, leaving me to believe that some extraterrestrials have taken over, body-swapping with the usually reserved and controlled, sober-minded Germans ...

Being half German and raised in Germany myself, I know only too good the problems we have with national identity or patriotism even. Just four weeks ago patriotism seemed to be a relic of the past, something solely existent in history books, like the black plague or the German Kaiser (and I'm not talking about Franz Beckenbauer here ...)

Patriotism – the word left a foul taste in our mouths, like rotten food. While we had no problem understanding foreign patriotism and almost envy the Irish for their St. Parick's Day, it would never have occured to my generation that it might be at all possible for an average German to actually experience that same emotion - except if being some misguided extreme right wing faschist. I don't think that we were aware of even the slightest possibility of a German patriotism in a more positive context than that, not blindly and uncritically whitewashing some imaginary "fatherland" but feeling some kind of cultural identity and national self-confidence.

For me life as an "innocent German" ended with elementary school. Until I was ten years old I found nothing wrong with being German. But as soon as I went to secondary school I was quickly made aware that I was expected to feel ashamed and guilty for the rest of my life. An old and penitent teacher with a clear conscience projected all the Nazi's deeds on every single one of us kids. They made us watch even the most cruel documentaries, again and again, telling us we may never, never, NEVER EVER forget these things (which was most unlikely after all that). And finally we were told that the whole world condemned us for what happened in the past (and rightly so). We were more or less born guilty. And I won't say these teachers were wrong. I know there is still a whole lot of people in the world agreeing. Just maybe the methods weren't all so healthy, considering we were only kids, after all.

The sensible German of my time, born in the sixties and early seventies, raised and educated in the eighties, felt awkward und uneasy, travelling abroad. Always expecting to be unwelcome, to be the enemy, feeling the constant urge to apologize. Being German seemed to be more or less equivalent to being a nazi.
Honestly - I often wondered whether there might just be the slightest causal connection between a whole lot of youths in the eighties almost globally labelled nazis ... and some actually becoming nazis in the end.

At the same time I wondered what a sick condition this was and how it could come to this, when even my parents have been born way after the war. How come that I was expected to be the "evil German" by people who have also been born long after that war?
It occured to me that maybe my generation of Germans lacked any kind of cultural identity or cultural awareness because we have never really been taught one. We never talked about German history in school, except to hear of the cruelty and terror of the Nazis. German history was reduced to WW II for most of my generation. So what was there left to be proud of? To identify with? I guess we just mirrored that guilty conscience we have been inoculated with for so long. We had forgotten there may have been times before and after the Nazis that might make you feel proud to be German. To share a cultural background. We reduced ourselves to the cliché the world had in mind when thinking of anything German. Effectiveness. Punctuality. Order. BOREDOM!!!

Nobody was more shocked than a German when a German got caught relaxed! Thinking of ways to have fun even. Unbelievable. We'd feel like we had done something really bold ... almost a reason to be proud of, almost anarchy. Imagine that: A laid-back German in party-mood ... haha.

And now this ... a whole nation agog with expectation and excitement, having fun. Publicly partying and waving a banner that until not too long ago was carefully hidden if you didn't want to get into discredit.

Where does this come from, so all of a sudden? All these happy people on the streets - have they been rented for promotion purposes, to be broadcasted all over the world and support local tourism? Laid off TV-actors happy to earn a quick penny in a jobwise adverse season (with a whole country watching nothing but football, football and even more football)?

Well, I wonder ... again.

It feels really strange. Looking at your fellow countrymen thinking "who are these people" ..? But I admit it. It felt good. Just why did it take so long? Maybe it took a generation of people not brain-washed with guilt. People young enough to give a damn about what they are expected to feel or behave like or what others may think. Open minded and grown up in a variety of cultures, a new German melting-pot of nations and people. Lets just hope that we won't wake up to find it was only a bad case of mass-hallucination. Whatever caused this short and sudden outburst - an overdose of sun, endorphins, serotonin or football. Or the unusual co-occurence of all all four - give us more, anytime!

"If we could sniff or swallow something that would, for five or six hours each day, abolish our solitude as individuals, atone us with our fellows in a glowing exaltation of affection and make life in all its aspects seem not only worth living, but divinely beautiful and significant...then, it seems to me, all our problems (and not merely the one small problem of discovering a novel pleasure) would be wholly solved and earth would become a paradise."
(Aldous Huxley in "Wanted, a New Pleasure").

Well, for a very limited time it seemed like Football was the answer ...