(German) Die Größe des Verlierers

Originally Posted by Skybird

This forum is not made of a representative sample of the American population, AntEater. Certain professional and social circles are over-represented here, and very much so.

On us Germans strangling ourselves in the garrottes of the left and right, I cannot disagree, though. We give a hilarious image of schizophrenia by that. but what do you expect from a people that after WWII got every national identity being pressed out of it's soul? the german nation was to be destroyed once and for all, forever. Only during football world championships we slide into an alternate universe for three weeks, and there dream a dream of being a nation. when it'S over, we go back into our national void, without feeling a real identity. We just have history to lecture about - and mistake that with feeling identity. But that is like the difference between the chemical formula for a perfume, and the smell of the perfume itself.

I need to disagree here. What you describe is changing atm, and changing big time. It's a process that started about 10 years ago, had it's first climax in recognizing the bombings of german cities and from there on graduadtly developed further. When in former times documentaries about the war and the past before that was like a report from other countries, lately the tone changed. Subtly, but if you have a certain sensitivity towards that topic you will notice that instead of "the germans..., the holy roman empire....etc" the labelling has changed to a "we". A prime example is the ZDF documentary "Die Deutschen", running on Saturdays. The premise of the show is "where do we come from, what is our past". While in former times Germany started in 1949, sometimes 1945, now these 13 years of dictatorship are more and more just becoming just a short episode in the much longer history.

Other subtle differences are observeable whereever you look. That may be the active singing of the german hymn at sport championships, it may be the ongoing discussion in the media how to label the current war in Afghanistan. This debate alone would have been impossible just 10 years ago. If anybody labeled such a conflict, with german troops participating, a "war", there would have been an outcry in the feuilletons. Now it is exactly those feuilletons advertising to name the facts as they are. Then check movies like "U-900", a movie parody over "Das Boot", making fun of the Wehrmacht in general. Another boundary broken there, similiar to more serious movies like "Der Untergang", where Hitler is displayed on screen for the first time in a german movie. Last but not least, germans are not bowing down anymore once anybody says "hey you, you killed jews and started the war", giving such a person the finger.

I am not sure what to think of these developments yet, if we are on a path to a healthy self esteem recogizing there is a long and at times even glorious past before Hitler came to power, or if we are drifting into some kind of stupid nationlism 2. Reich style coupled with an american or french style arrogance.
But the old after war attitudes certainly vanish at a rapid pace both on a domestic and an international level.