German pride that surprises

The title of a recent IHT opinion piece says it all. Germans always took pride in the quality of their craftmanship, but it was a rare German who would admit to national pride. And that pride was always about some aspect of Germany, not its flag or people. Well, the World Cup seems to be the event where everyone sits up and notices that Germans are again happy to be identified as Germans.

On his way to the Bundestag, Germany's Parliament, Hans-Christian Ströbele usually rides his bicycle, but what he sees these days in Berlin's streets is not his cup of tea. Thousands of German soccer fans are waving German flags every night on the so-called "fan mile," which stretches west from the Brandenburg Gate.

"I don't necessarily like this flag waving, I have no intention of attaching one to my bike," the long-time member of Parliament said the other morning on the ARD TV morning show, which I host in Berlin.

Ströbele, one of the founding fathers of the Greens, represents the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, one of the most multicultural constituencies in Germany. Like many on the German left, Ströbele is uneasy about an unprecedented upswing of patriotism as a result of the soccer World Cup taking place in Germany.

The German left had an almost co-dependant relationship with many of the voters. By telling them that to be German was somehow slightly shameful, they kept Germans from feeling good about their accomplishments. And those accomplishments were stunning, at least on an economic level.

Showing love or pride for the country, flying the black, red and gold colors of the flag was strictly a no-no for the postwar baby-boom generation and "patriotism" was a dirty word for more than 40 years.

"In other countries this is much more normal. They take it for granted," Ströbele argued. "But we have our recent past, of which we cannot be proud." And therefore, he went on, Germans have to be more reluctant, more modest about their patriotic feelings, and "that must be true also in the future."

But the power of this mantra seems to be evaporating these days. And this change reaches far beyond the current excitement about the World Cup.

"Why should Germans not be proud of their country?" Charlotte Knobloch, thenewly elected chairwoman of the Central Committee of German Jews, asked in an interview, demanding more patriotism - words unthinkable from such a source only a few years ago.

"We must do everything not to give young people the feeling that they are guilty because of the past," she continued.

Jürgen Klinsmann, coach of the German national soccer team, says, "If there is some more patriotism, that's fine with us. What is developing here is great."

So far, the soccer-driven wave of patriotism is free of nationalistic undertones or other signs of German chauvinism. The hundreds of thousands of German flags mingle peacefully with flags from Brazil, Croatia, Italy, France and the rest of the world. The mood in and around the soccer arenas is excited yet relaxed.

I can confirm this. German fans were happy to wave their flags (also something new--I never recall seeing flags flying form cars or houses), but no chants for Germany interupted the Swiss and Togo chants (and German fans vastly outnumbered Togo's fans).

Interestingly, the World Cup is very much tied in with Germany's post war self rehabilitation. It was after the 1954 "miracle in Bern" that Germans first had something major to celebrate as a nation. Now their success in hosting this World Cup is removing willy-nilly the last vestiges of remorse Germans feel over being German. Now, if they could only learn to be more polite and less pushy while on vacation.

While the left is clearly on the defensive, the extreme right is not able to capitalize on the new patriotic mood in Germany, either. You will never see a neo-Nazi with a German flag. For them, black, red and gold, the national colors, stand for the new German democracy, something they hate and combat.

When Ströbele left the studio and the ARD morning show was over, I put on my running shoes and ran down the "fan mile," a stretch laden with history. Near the Brandenburg Gate is the Soviet War Memorial; the barrels of the T-34 tanks that conquered Berlin were pointing into the clear summer sky. Tonight, I thought, the fans will celebrate here again, right next to this symbol of a terrible German past, and only a few hundred meters from the Holocaust Memorial. Germans will have to live with their past, but they are on their way to doing it in a more relaxed way. As the president of the Bundestag, Norbert Lammert, put it this week when asked about the new patriotism, "It is the reconstruction of normalcy."

What this means for America is more tension and disagreement with Germany in the future, as Germany increasingly follows its own self-interest. Expect Germany to soon eclipse France as the voice of the EU's foreign policy. Which won't be a bad thing as France was unabashedly using the EU's bully pulpit to stave off its decline in the world.

Submitted to Carnival of German-American Relations, which is a complitation of posts covering all aspects of German-US relations. The second carnival will go live on 2 July at the always excellent Davids Medienkritik.