Physical Dramaturgy: Ein (neuer) Trend?

Dramaturgie im zeitgenössischen Tanz ist ? positiv gemeint ? ein heißes Eisen. Idealerweise sind Dramaturginnen und Dramaturgen während der Erarbeitung eines Stücks die besten Freunde der Choreografen. more more

GoetheInstitute

28/06/2006

Patriots of a new stripe

Thomas Brussig on the healthy new German patriotism

© Sven PaustianThomas Brussig © Sven Paustian
Unbelievable tidings: total strangers are putting their arms around each other at the public viewings, singing the German anthem together. Confectioners are decorating their tortes with black/red/gold flags. Things we haven't seen since August 1914.

Shocked, we ask ourselves: are we allowed? Are we dangerous again? Have we not learned? I confess, I too have been singing and wearing the German colours on my face for hours on end. And I'll probably do it again. The mood is contagious. And I'm so glad that the media barrage that lead up to the World Cup has finally been replaced by the real thing.

In 1990, many German flags were being waved but not by me. I was afraid that Germany, in a great failure of imagination, would carry on where it had had to leave off. I still haven't forgotten the election party of the "Allianz für Deutschland" a few months earlier, where I was personally confronted with the German nemesis. An Allianzler, drunk with victory, began to sing "Deutschland, Deutschland." Somehow he managed to string together the text and he was raising his right arm in the air, like a sleep walker. It was an eerie moment because there I was, among Germany's future. Years after reunification, I still couldn't say the word Deutschland out loud. It was not a word like any other. Saying "Deutschland" was like clicking your heels. It sounded military and yesterday. A good 15 years have passed since then. If you measure German unification against what was feared at the time, it has succeeded. But if you measure it against the expectations, it has failed. That goes just as well for soccer. Beckenbauer's prophecy of years of German soccer supremacy has remained as unfulfilled as many other confident prognoses.

Modern people tend to stay away from terms like patriotism, love of the fatherland, love of the homeland. These terms have been oppressed, abused and seen for what they are. But they express strong and authentic feelings that won't allow themselves to be dismissed. Belonging and connectivity are modern, cautious and most important innocent words for the same phenomena. The old patriotism is dead, finally. But without any patriotism at all, something is missing. And now it's there, occupying the void. At first it'll last just a few weeks. It's a new patriotism. New patriotism means: not the old one. Another one. We're still trying. The old patriotism lived in a Germany that doesn't exist any more. This new patriotism is going to be as different from the old one as Germany today is from what it used to be. Just as the ongoing World Cup will have as much in common with the 1936 Olympic Games as Beckenbauer does with Hitler, or Sönke Wortmann with Leni Riefenstahl.

What we are experiencing at the moment is more a soccer enthusiasm than a national one, but we'll only realise that when our team finally loses. The flags will hang at half-mast for three days, then we'll begin smearing our faces with other colours. Then we'll be for the Brazilians, Italians or Portugese. The fact that we were for Germany, just as the French were for France, the Italians for Italy or the Brazilians for Brazil won't be forgotten. Nor that it was alright to be proud of Germany without mutating into anything close to a Nazi. That's possible. What a miracle! It's this feeling of continuous, German harmlessness that allows me to celebrate with a waving flag.

When the world is our guest, what we have long suspected will become clear: Germany enjoys a sensational image abroad. German technology is exemplary, we're good about giving development aid, we're great protectors of the environment, everyone profits from our travel-happiness, we're totally non-unilateral and Germans weren't in the Iraq war or at Abu Ghraib. Stadium Germans once sang "Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles" – in 1954 at Wankdorf Stadium for instance, or in 1983 at the hockey world championships – but they don't any more. Maybe we're also celebrating the fact that we're not what we've suspected ourselves of being all along. And presumably, peoples, including the Germans, are susceptible to the same phenomena that's to be observed in individuals: namely, he who notices that he's popular, starts to glow.

Months ago, we Germans decided that these four and half weeks would be something special. We wanted something wonderful, and now we have it. We don't celebrate any worse than the others and we're playing soccer almost as well as they do. The world doesn't recognise these Germans. Now that Matthias Matussek has explained in his best seller "Wir Deutschen" (more in German) why everyone can like us, we're even starting to like ourselves these days. Or is that all just camouflage? Are these underground, smouldering dull deutsch feelings just using the World Cup to gain public acceptance? I know that I'm no rightie in disguise, but what about the driver who has mounted a black red gold plus eagle flag on the roof of his car? Might he be the singer from the election party?

It is of course possible that the German nimrod is playing a part in all this. But the fact that "I am proud to be German" no longer automatically means, "I am proud to be right-wing" is an achievement in itself. A German patriot of the new variety is ashamed that there are no-go areas (more) that dark-skinned people have to fear. A German patriot of the new variety would rather establish German schools and universities than send German troops around the world. This increases popularity and guarantees influence. And it pays off in the long run.

By the way, not all those who once refused to sing the third verse of the German anthem and turned down the German flag, have suddenly opted to go German. There are still doubters and sceptics. Which is why it's very important to affirm that every German has the right not to get excited about Germany. Even if we are Pope and become world champion.

*

This article originally appeared in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on Montag, June 19, 2006.

Thomas Brussig (German website) is a writer and screenwriter. His books have been translated into 28 languages.

Translation: nb

Get the signandsight newsletter for regular updates on feature articles.
signandsight.com - let's talk european.

 
More articles

Me and my Kindle

Monday 6 December, 2010

TeaserPic Ebooks are becoming a serious alternative to their papery predecessors. Does this mean we are on the verge of a fundamental shift in the medium of the book and its contents? Author, retired German Literature professor and enthusiastic ebook convert Ruth Klüger leads the way into the almost weightless future of reading.
read more

Not in our name!

Monday 23 November, 2009

The path of gentrification has, more often than not, been paved by artists. But Hamburg's creative community wants to jam the economic development machine instead. Here is their manifesto.
read more

Organic or bust

Wednesday 24 January, 2008

The Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg is the playground of the new Germany. But unless you fit in, life can be tough among the beautiful creatives of a gated community that needs no wall. By Henning Sußebach
read more

I am a Goggomobil

Friday 18 May, 2007

Germans are said to be a bit obsessed with their cars - sleek, robust, fast. But the cutest thing to ever grace the autobahn had other virtues. In view of the green future where Germany is a small car nation, Georg Klein sings praise of the Goggomobil.
read more

Paris pop paradise

Wednesday 14 February, 2007

Paris is the anti-Berlin. While the world's writers and artists are flocking to the ugly German capital, personalities like Sofia Coppola and Jarvis Cocker are drawn to Paris to pursue their work in freedom and impeccable style in front of perfect facades. By Eckhart Nickel
read more

A perfect place for a revolution

Monday 20 November, 2006

"This year I was struck by the number of articles saying you should do absolutely nothing on your holidays. We Poles have fully embraced the credo 'time is money,' and become a nation of workaholics." Taking the experts at their word, Edwin Bendyk searches for perfect idleness in post-communist Poland.
read more

What to do with Mother?

Wednesday 1 November, 2006

Mother's friend E. can't move her hands. Mr W. scalded himself in the shower. Mrs A. fell down in the kitchen and Mrs H. was trapped among thorny roses. Perhaps it's time to get Mother to a safe place. In coming decades the number of over-80s will grow from three to ten million, more than one third of whom will need care. But where? And how? Susanne Mayer looks at why we are overtaxed when Mother or Father become care cases.
read more

"Nix Aldi - Picaldi"

Wednesday, 25 October 2006

The Berlin cut-price label Picaldi has cornered the jeans market for hoodies, dolies and rappers. By Johannes Gernert
read more

Bionade: the triumph of a guiltless pleasure

Wednesday, 18 October, 2006

There's no quenching German thirst for the organic lemonade in a Bionade bottle. The factory can't meet demand and has sent Coca Cola packing. Cornelius and Fabian Lange describe the rise of the Bionade empire out of the ashes of the failing Peter brewery in what was once a failing region in Germany - soon to be home to the Bionade valley.
read more

Always caviar

Thursday 7 September, 2006

Compared with their permatanned clientele, the chefs appear pale and lost in thought. The look of people who spend sleepless nights melding creative relationships between marinated Barbary duck and puff pastry with ginger. Margrit Sprecher on the annual pig-out in the mountains that is the St. Moritz Gourmet Festival.
read more

A St. Moritz pilgrimage

Monday 21 August, 2006

What is it that people find in St. Moritz, 1,856 metres above sea level? Is it the proximity of the sky? The snow, the cold, the peace, the pure air? Or is it a sense of their own impermanence? German novelist Thomas Hettche travels in the footsteps of Nietzsche and the jet set to Switzerland's exclusive resort.
read more

Who will win the World Cup?

Wednesday14 June, 2006

Brazil is the obvious favourite. But what about the others? England has Wayne Rooney. Argentina is on a high wire between agony and ecstasy. The Netherlands will have to turn into a team of murderous sadists if they are to win. And Switzerland's card is the "principe melange". Eight writers rate their country's chances of victory.
read more

The return of the "principe melange"

Thursday 8 June, 2006

The FIFA World Cup kicks off tomorrow in Germany. In the last of our series by authors explaining why their country will win, Benno Maggi also tells exactly how Switzerland will become world champion.
read more

The Spanish Apocalypse

Wednesday 7 June, 2006

It will be an apocalyptic day when Spain wins the World Cup, says writer Guillem Martinez. But it might as well fall this year as any.
read more